The oil and gas industry has powerful allies in the White House, Senate and Congress.
Their investment in the 2024 United States elections is likely to yield heavy dividends.
And, the return of President-elect Donald Trump presents an existential threat to previous actions to manage climate change.
Trump, the 45th president of the United States, returns to the White House as the 47th tenant. He is known for his cantankerous denial of climate science.
Big Oil has a powerful ally in Trump to influence global responses to climate change actions. This time, it is not just Trump.
Many influential lobbies will jump onto the bandwagon of climate change denialism, courtesy of transactional democracy.
Yale Climate Connection, an influential climate action lobby, reports the oil and gas industry gave about $24 million (Sh3.1 billion) in campaign contributions to the members of the US House and Senate.
The members were sworn in on January 3. The financial might of the fossil fuel industry doesn’t stop once the new Congress is sworn into offi ce.
The industry spends over $100 million (Sh12.9 billion) each year to lobby politicians to enact legislation favourable to the industry.
This includes voting against climate policy, slowing the adoption of cleaner energy, adopting a lenient stand on pollution, and imposing strict punishments on peaceful protests.
The Yale Climate Connections review of campaign donations, further reports the gas and oil industry gave an additional $2 million (Sh259 million) to Trump’s campaign, bringing the total spending on the winning candidates to over $26 million (Sh3.4 billion), 88 per cent of which went to Republicans.
The industry further uses its power and infl uence to sow doubt in climate science, spread misinformation, and attempt to sway the courts.
The fossil fuel industry pours money into multiple avenues to protect its business model, even as the damages caused by burning oil, gas, and coal have become widespread.
The 2024 presidential election saw over $4 billion (Sh518 billion) in various contributions to the candidates’ campaign committees and outside groups supporting them.
Most of the money goes to political action committees and political party committees.
Open Secrets, an independent research group, further reports, “In the 2024 election cycle, the oil and gas industry funnelled over $151 million into the election via this additional spending. The industry gave $67 million to candidates (including those who didn’t win), bringing the total to a staggering $219,079,058 spent by the oil and gas industry to infl uence the 2024 election.”
The vast majority of this money went to Republicans, including nearly $23 million of oil and gas money donated to Trump’s campaign and political action committees supporting him.
These figures only include reported contributions – from individuals, political action committees and various organisations.
Transactions reported to the Federal Election Commission are gathered into a userfriendly format by Open Secrets, a research group that tracks political donations.
Candidate Trump promised he would defy climate science if top US oil companies contributed $1 billion (Sh129 billion) to his campaign.
Top oil executives complained about burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million (Sh51.8 billion), in 2023 alone, to lobby the outgoing Biden administration.
Washington Post reported Trump in May last year as selling transactional democracy to fossil fuel dealers during a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.
“You are all wealthy enough, he said, you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House.”
Washington Post reported Trump committed to scrapping Biden’s policies on electric vehicles and wind energy, and other initiatives the fossil fuel industry opposes.
Trump’s ‘drill, baby, drill’ pro-fossil fuel industry cry sits fine with Big Oil than Biden’s green energy approach. e sector made a killing during Trump’s 2016-2020 presidency.
The raunchy president-elect’s message was
clear: “You give me the money; I’ll do what you want
me to do.”
