One more reason why electing Trump would be a disaster:
An influential oil and gas industry group whose members were aggressively pursued for campaign cash by Donald Trump has drafted detailed plans for dismantling landmark Biden administration climate rules after the presidential election, according to internal documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The plans were drawn up by the
American Exploration and Production Council, or AXPC, a group of 30 mostly independent oil and gas producers, including several major oil companies. They reveal a comprehensive industry effort to reverse climate initiatives advanced during nearly four years of Democratic leadership. At the same time, the documents contain confidential data showing that industry’s voluntary initiatives to cut emissions have fallen short.
The lobbying blueprint takes particular aim at
a new tax on emissions of methane, a gas that the International Energy Agency (IEA)
says is responsible for nearly a third of human-caused global warming. The documents show the methane emissions of nine of 19 AXPC
member companies that responded to an internal survey are increasing — in many cases sharply.
The policy plans, contained in documents distributed to a wide group of company executives at AXPC board meetings in April and August, also call for a repeal of more than a half dozen
executive orders that lie at the center of the Biden administration’s efforts to combat climate change. Taken together, the group’s goals amount to a monumental rollback of some of the most aggressive federal tools to cut emissions.