Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” energy policy will receive enthusiastic support from countries across the global South — excited about it?

From the Daily Skeptic

by Tilak Doshi

Donald Trump took office as the 47th President of the United States on Monday, January 20, promising to dramatically change the trajectory of U.S. energy policy pursued by the outgoing Biden administration and the previous two terms of President Obama.

In a speech and question-and-answer session on January 7, the president-elect said climate alarmism and Biden's energy policies are “a huge hoax”; he will end U.S. participation in the United Nations' Paris Climate Agreement; he will repeal Biden cynically allows “pause” on rules on LNG export infrastructure development, purportedly to assess its impact on U.S. energy security and domestic gas prices; he will repeal Biden's electric vehicle mandate “soon”; he will “Rescind” Biden's comprehensive ban on offshore oil and gas drilling; he will reverse all actions taken by Biden regulators that adversely affect or ban gas appliances and stoves; he also said he will eliminate Biden's wasted efforts on offshore wind power. He also vowed to repeal unspent funds earmarked for climate provisions in the euphemistically named and meaningless Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

Of course, it's too early to assess how quickly the incoming Trump administration can achieve these goals. Vested interests, bureaucratic backsliding, and the vast resources of the climate industrial complex will attempt to limit the Trump administration’s energy policy ambitions.

But it would be a mistake to view the Trump administration’s energy policy pledges as the only hope of reversing the decades-long assault on fossil fuels in the United States and Western Europe. Key developments in world energy affairs in 2024 show that the Trump administration will have important allies in Europe and around the world as it fights the globalist climate agenda.

Deindustrialization and Green Resistance in Europe

The impact of deindustrialization in Europe – a process that began in Germany with the adoption of energy transition In 2010, the U.S. was trying to replace fossil fuels and nuclear power with solar and wind power, and it became very apparent last year. Germany's Federal Statistics Office reported on January 15 that the economy shrank for the second consecutive year in 2024, highlighting that Europe's largest economy has fallen into a severe recession with few signs of imminent relief. The flood of headlines about Germany's economic and political collapse after Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired his finance minister last November is just the latest in a series of reports about the “sick man of Europe” over the past two years. economy”, “Germany is disintegrating when Europe needs it most”, “Europe's economic doomsday is coming”).

Europe is paying a heavy price through sky-high labor and business operating costs caused by countless overly bureaucratic regulations, and the world's highest energy prices caused by the stupid “climate leadership” policies of the EU and UK over the past two decades, dear. In 2008, the EU and US economies were on par. Today, the U.S. economy is 50% larger than its hapless allies across the Atlantic.

A growing “green wave” against the environmental agenda in Europe and the UK, coupled with a rejection of mass immigration and an indefinite commitment to finance the war in Ukraine, has led to the rise of populist “far-right” parties. They have achieved great success in regional and national elections in Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, France, Germany and the United Kingdom

Geert Wilders, the political leader of the Liberal Party, the four-party coalition that makes up the Dutch government, sounded as he condemned government spending on climate and support for Ukraine, as well as the need for tax cuts. Positively Trumpian, he said: “I hope we end up putting the Dutch first.”

Elise Weidel, leader of the Alternative for Germany party, is another potential ally of Trump. The party has the support of 20% of voters nationwide and is the second most powerful party in Germany. In a typically fiery speech to the Bundestag, she said: “Germany is in deep recession… This is not Putin, not the world or some imaginary climate catastrophe. This is an incompetent government dealing with collapse. Responsible…”

In a lengthy interview with Elon Musk, Ms Wedel branded Angela Merkel the first “green” chancellor who “devastated” her “nasty energy policies” and destroyed” this country. Musk will lead the Department of Government Effectiveness in the new Trump administration. This makes Germany “the first industrial economy to shut down nuclear power plants.”

Nigel Farage, leader of Britain's Reform Party, has long been a personal friend of Trump's and the party is currently tied with the ruling Labor Party at 25% in some polls. Like Mr Trump, Mr Farage is skeptical of climate alarmism, a trend that typifies most members of Britain's reformist establishment. His party manifesto states that net zero policies are “crippling our economy” and therefore “abolition of the climate change target should be a priority for the next government as it will save the public sector £30bn a year over the next 25 years”.

There are other leaders in the EU who share Trump’s opposition to the fundamentalist beliefs of the Climate Church. Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban has dismissed the EU's plans to combat climate change as a “utopian fantasy”. Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni pointedly stated that “the ecology has been occupied by the military left” and “Greta Thunberg's ideology will cause us to lose thousands of companies and millions of jobs in Europe” . Parties opposed to an unfettered green climate agenda are now part of governing coalitions in Finland, Sweden and Austria.

Energy pragmatists from the South

Since the first international forum dedicated to discussing environment and climate change was held in Stockholm in 1972, Western developed countries have made climate policy the core of their international relations. Since the earliest negotiations on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which began at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992, developing countries in the “southern hemisphere” such as China, India, Brazil and South Africa have shouldered “common but differentiated responsibilities.”

This means that developed countries (mainly Western countries, but also industrialized allies such as Japan and South Korea) commit to reducing carbon emissions by a specific amount over a specific period of time. This is said to be determined by science^TM This view is promoted in the “Summaries for Policymakers” published regularly by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Not only do developing countries have no binding policy commitments, they are also expected to receive substantial support in “climate finance” to help mitigate and adapt to climate change.

After nearly three decades of negotiations at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Forum Conference of the Parties (COP), the gulf between the policy views of Western collective governments and the rest of the world’s governments, which represent 80% of the global population, is no closer to being bridged . Delegations from developing countries such as China and India successfully insisted at the last minute at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 that the forum's final communiqué referred to a “phasing down” rather than a “phasing out” of fossil fuels. This is to ensure that their desire for higher living standards, which depend on reliable and affordable supplies of fossil fuels, does not wane.

At COP28 in Dubai in 2023, the contradiction between climate alarmists in the West (including government representatives and a large number of environmental NGOs that have gained semi-official status at the COP conference) and energy pragmatists in the “Global South” 'The matter became public and widely reported in the media.

Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, chairman of the COP28 climate summit and CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, said pointedly in an interview: “You are asking for the phase-out of fossil fuels… Please help me and show me the road map for the phase-out of fossil fuels. There will be sustainable socio-economic development, unless you want to take the world back to the cave.

Nor is Dr. Aljaber the only natural ally for the incoming “drill, baby, drill” Trump administration. Saudi Arabia's Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman further amplified Jaber's comments, telling Bloomberg that the world's largest oil exporter would not agree to Western demands to phase out fossil fuels. “Absolutely not,” he said in an interview in Riyadh. “I guarantee you, no one – and I'm talking about the government – believes this… If they think this is the highest moral issue, that's great. Let them do it themselves. We'll see what they do How much can be provided.

Last year, after Trump won the presidential election, COP29 was held in Baku, Azerbaijan, to the consternation of climate activists and media around the world. this financial times It is believed that Trump's victory is “a blow to global climate action” and will “cast a shadow over the United Nations COP29.” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, COP29 host, has emerged as one of Trump's most ardent supporters, describing Azerbaijan's oil and gas resources as a “gift from God” that will be available “for many years to come.” All will require oil and gas.

Subverting green geopolitics

There is no doubt that the incoming Trump administration will subvert the green geopolitics promoted by the progressive environmental left in the West. That was evident during confirmation hearings this week for key Trump administration nominees. Chris Wright, an oil executive and energy secretary candidate, said at a Senate hearing: “President Trump shares my passion for energy… If confirmed, I will work tirelessly to unabashedly of all energy resource managers to implement his bold agenda. He continued:

There are 7 billion people in the world who live different lives than we do… and they want what we have. Of course, they deserve what we have. Through market forces, improvements, and leadership, especially the leadership of President-elect Trump, I think we're going to see more and more abundant energy flow out of our country, and hopefully out of the world, so that everyone else can live like We have achieved this kind of life.

Treasury secretary nominee Scott Bessant was asked during his confirmation hearing about concerns that President-elect Trump's efforts to reverse progress on green energy will benefit China. He responded as follows:

China will build 100 new coal-fired power plants this year. There is no race to clean energy. There is an energy race. China will build 10 nuclear power plants this year. That's not solar power. I favor building more nuclear power plants. I will point out that IRAs are scored by CBO [Congressional Budget Office] In terms of upside spending, it's seriously out of control.

Trump expressed his promised energy policy with the slogan “America First.” Yet in his ambition to resurrect US energy production, he enjoys strong support from all corners of the world, without being beholden to powerful lobby groups with a globalist climate agenda.

Dr. Tilak K. Doshi is an economist and former Forbesand CO members₂ alliance.

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