Donald Trump is taking aim and city- and state-led fossil fuel accountability efforts, which have been hailed as a last source of hope for the climate amid the president’s ferociously anti-environment agenda.
In a Tuesday executive order, Trump instructed the Department of Justice to “stop the enforcement” of state climate laws, which his administration has suggested are unconstitutional or otherwise unenforceable.
The president called out New York and Vermont, both of which have passed “climate superfund” laws requiring major fossil fuel companies to help pay for damages from extreme weather.
“These State laws and policies are fundamentally irreconcilable with my Administration’s objective to unleash American energy,” the executive order says. “They should not stand.”
He also targeted the dozens of lawsuits brought by states, cities and counties against big oil in recent years, accusing the industry of intentionally covering up the climate risks of their products and seeking compensation for climate impacts.
The move left advocates outraged.
“This order is an illegal, disgusting attempt to force everyday people to pay for the rising toll of climate disasters, while shielding the richest people in the world from accountability,” said Aru Shiney-Ajay, the executive director of the youth-led environmental justice group the Sunrise Movement.
The new order came as Trump touted new moves to revive the coal, the dirtiest and most expensive fossil fuel.
It also followed a March meeting at the White House where fossil fuel executives reportedly lobbied Trump to give them immunity from climate litigation. Days earlier, 200 environmental, consumer advocacy and social justice groups had urged top congressional Democrats to block attempts from big oil to gain legal immunity, the Guardian reported.
Oil interests applauded the new move from the president. “Directing the Department of Justice to address this state overreach will help restore the rule of law and ensure activist-driven campaigns do not stand in the way of ensuring the nation has access to an affordable and reliable energy supply,” Ryan Meyers, the senior vice-president of top US fossil fuel lobby group American Petroleum Institute, said in a statement.
But advocates say the order is an an anti-democratic attack on municipalities’ climate action, which serve a crucial role in counterbalancing Trump’s anti-environmental agenda.
“Make no mistake: this executive order isn’t about energy independence or economic security – it’s about ensuring billionaire polluters never have to face a jury of ordinary Americans,” said Cassidy DiPaola, the communications director of Make Polluters Pay, which backs the climate superfund laws. “The American people deserve better than a government that protects polluters’ profits over people’s lives.”
Fossil fuel companies poured $96m into Trump’s re-election campaign and affiliated political action committees, as he pledged to roll back environmental regulations and loosen regulations on the industry. This was less than the $1bn Trump requested from the sector in an infamous meeting at his Mar-a-Lago club last spring, but still constituted record levels of spending.
Trump pledged to attack climate lawsuits, which he has called “frivolous”, on the campaign trail. And during his first term, his administration filed influential briefs in the cases supporting the oil companies.
But environmental lawyers question the validity of the new executive order.
“This illegal and unconstitutional order panders to the biggest polluters on the planet and shows Trump’s utter hypocrisy on states’ rights,” said Jason Rylander, the legal director of the climate law institute at the conservation organization Center for Biological Diversity. “Trying to sic the justice department on state officials who are protecting their people from pollution will fail because the US attorney general has no power to declare state laws illegal.”
In recent months, rightwing groups have launched campaigns attempting to shield oil companies from city and state climate accountability. Some have ties to Leonard Leo, who is known as a force behind the Federalist Society, which orchestrated the ultraconservative takeover of the American judiciary and helped select Trump’s supreme court justice picks.
A truck parked outside a major fossil fuel conference last month in Houston warned that city and state policies and lawsuits “are threatening America’s pro-consumer energy dominance”, linking to an op-ed from a group with links to Leo. The new executive order echoes this sentiment, saying the litigation and laws “threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security”.
