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ed markey
Senate Democrats' Bill Would Block Trump Fossil Fuel 'Cartel' From Running Key Agencies
"Big Oil executives and fossil fuel lobbyists shouldn't be able to turn public agencies into private profit machines for fossil fuel shareholders," argued Sen. Ed Markey.
Jan 16, 2025
Faced with the imminent White House return of Republican President-elect Donald Trump and an administration stacked with fossil fuel industry veterans, a pair of progressive U.S. Senate Democrats on Thursday introduced legislation that would ban former oil, gas, and coal executives or lobbyists from leading numerous energy-related federal agencies for 10 years after leaving their private sector jobs.
The Banning In Government Oil Industry Lobbyists (BIG OIL) from the Cabinet Act—put forth by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.)—would apply to prospective secretaries of agriculture, defense, energy, the interior, state, and transportation; as well as key posts including administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; White House chief of staff; and directors of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Office of Management and Budget.
"Let's pass this bill and get fossil fuel executives and their ill-gotten bucks out of our government."
"Donald Trump isn't building a Cabinet, he's installing a cartel. Big Oil executives and fossil fuel lobbyists shouldn't be able to turn public agencies into private profit machines for fossil fuel shareholders," said Markey. "This is a clear ethical line—their work polluting our environment, destroying our climate, and prioritizing corporate profits over democracy must not be rewarded with even more power over the very safeguards set to protect American households from their influence."
"Especially in the wake of the Los Angeles wildfires and more frequent and dangerous disasters fueled by climate change, we can't afford to have a fossil fuel CEO like Chris Wright help the industry capture our federal agencies further for oil profits," Markey added, referring to the fracking services company chief executive nominated by Trump to head the Department of Energy. "We must have government agencies helmed by responsible, qualified executives without blatant conflicts of interest."
Merkley said: "Climate chaos fueled by dirty energy is humanity's greatest challenge, and Trump wants to make sure we fail that challenge by handing our government over to Big Oil. Let's pass this bill and get fossil fuel executives and their ill-gotten bucks out of our government."
Scores of climate, environmental justice, government transparency, and other groups have endorsed the bill.
"The fossil fuel revolving door has dominated American energy policy for decades and could poison our environment for centuries to come," Food & Water Watch policy adviser Drew Guillory said in a statement Thursday. "Oil and gas companies cannot be allowed to regulate themselves and use the government to guarantee their profits. The BIG OIL from the Cabinet Act is a crucial step in returning control of our climate to the American people."
Kelsey Crane, senior policy advocate at Earthworks, said: "The fossil fuel industry is notorious for spending millions of dollars to delay climate action and undermine progress on environmental justice. This bill ensures big polluters are not granted positions of power where it is guaranteed they would degrade environmental protections and block investments in a clean energy future."
Sunrise Movement executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay noted that "Los Angeles is on fire. Asheville is just starting to rebuild."
"The climate crisis is here and it's happening because oil and gas CEOs disregarded science and chose to keep burning fossil fuels," Shiney-Ajay added. "They chose to sacrifice millions of homes and lives so they could keep profiting. Those same people should not be in charge of creating energy policy."
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At COP29, Democrat Senators Vow to 'Rise Up' for Climate During 'Dark Days' of Trump 2.0
"Just like climate change won't be solved by any one president, climate action won't be stopped by any one president," Sen. Ed Markey said at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Azerbaijan.
Nov 16, 2024
A pair of Democratic U.S. senators pledged Saturday at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan to keep fighting for climate action during Republican President-elect Donald Trump's second term, while urging President Joe Biden to act decisively against liquefied natural gas exports before the end of his presidency.
Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Ed Markey of Massachusetts spoke at a press conference Saturday following a Friday joint panel discussion at COP29, where they both sounded the alarm over the dangers of Trump 2.0 and offered hope for climate action.
"With Trump and the Republicans taking their turn at the political reins, oil and gas companies will soon have their pick of lackeys to enable their destructive, polluting LNG wish list," said Markey, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Climate, Clean Air, and Nuclear Safety.
"Supercharged natural gas exports will be a new Trump energy tax on American households, costing households billions by sending fossil fuels abroad to the highest bidder," the senator continued. "Big Oil has a business plan—and is only here at COP29 to make their business deals, at the expense of working families in the U.S. and frontline communities around the globe."
"But our climate-focused, people-powered, renewable plan is better, and we're joining forces worldwide to fight for it and reject Big Oil's attempt to put private profits over the public interest—no matter who's president and no matter which cronies are at the controls," Markey added.
As the senator noted during a Friday press call, "Just like climate change won't be solved by any one president, climate action won't be stopped by any one president."
Earlier this week, Markey and Congresswoman Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) introduced the Targeting Environmental and Climate Recklessness Act (TECRA), legislation to "restrict access to the U.S. financial system for those individuals and companies most responsible for exacerbating climate change and deforestation."
Whitehouse said in a statement that "dark days are ahead in Washington as Donald Trump, Republicans, and their fossil fuel handlers abdicate America's leadership on climate just as the scientific and economic warnings of climate chaos grow more clear and grim."
"The world must be clear-eyed about the threat Trump's Republican Party poses to climate safety," the senator added. "At COP, I hope to reassure our foreign counterparts that Democrats will pursue climate progress at every level of government while fighting tooth and nail to expose the Big Oil-fueled corruption descending on D.C."
Markey stressed that "climate change and Donald Trump are both existential threats to our health and to our livable future—but we're not giving up on either front."
"Even if Donald Trump is ready to enact his day-one doomsday agenda and pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement yet again, we will rise up in support of ambitious climate action and climate finance targets—targets that will show that COP stands for Climate Outlasts Presidents," Markey argued.
"We must work together, both at home and in solidarity with lawmakers around the world, in order to delay and derail Trump and the fossil fuel industry's dirty agenda," he added.
The senators and green groups said one way to get a head start on fighting that agenda is for Biden to halt LNG export expansion. Although climate campaigners praised Biden's January pause on approvals for all LNG exports to non-Fair Trade Agreement countries, a Trump-appointed federal judge lifted the pause in July. In September, the Department of Energy granted LNG export approval to the company New Fortress Energy.
Under Biden's watch, the United States became the world's leading LNG exporter.
"While Trump stacks his cabinet with a carnival of corporate cronies, President Biden has just weeks to halt some of the biggest carbon bombs on Earth," Center for Biological Diversity senior climate campaigner Ben Goloff said at Saturday's press conference."
"From the Gulf Coast to Europe and Asia, U.S. LNG expansion is neither needed nor wanted. The Biden administration should urgently complete its review of LNG exports' many harms," Goloff added. "It should reject authorizations for monster polluter [Calcasieu Pass 2] LNG export terminal and other pending projects that fail to meet the public interest test required by law, science, and justice."
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100+ Global Lawmakers Urge Biden to Reject New LNG Exports
"Every dollar invested in unnecessary, harmful, and expensive LNG infrastructure costs us double—first, by our failure to invest instead in secure, abundant, and cheap renewable energies, and second, by locking in higher greenhouse gas emissions."
Sep 23, 2024
With Climate Week underway in New York City, 106 lawmakers from the United States and around the world on Monday urged the Biden administration to reject new liquefied natural gas export permits, stressing that they "are not in the U.S. public interest or necessary for the national or energy security of our allies."
Rejecting new permits, they wrote, "will help protect communities from the environmental harm that fossil gas causes; promote global energy security and encourage investment and trade in clean energy technologies; and help our nations satisfy both national and global climate commitments, including those made at the 2023 U.N. climate change conference COP28 in Dubai."
The letter to U.S. President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm was led by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Congresswoman Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.), and Lisa Badum, a Greens member of Germany's Bundestag. Along with other American and German lawmakers, it's signed by members of the European Parliament and legislatures in over a dozen other countries.
"Curtailing U.S. LNG export activity will send a strong global signal in favor of new investments in renewable energy."
They explained that in January, the Biden administration paused new export authorizations for liquefied natural gas (LNG) to countries that don't have free trade agreements with the United States, and although a recent federal court ruling blocked the policy, "that misguided decision does not force any immediate export project approvals, prevent the Department of Energy (DOE) from updating its environmental and economic analyses, or impact the factors that DOE already considers in its application review process."
"Far from being a clean 'bridge' fuel, LNG causes significant environmental harm," the lawmakers declared, highlighting the impacts of gas on not only the global climate but also the health of people exposed to nearby hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations and infrastructure such as processing plants, import facilities, export terminals, and pipelines.
"In addition to the environmental and health benefits, limiting U.S. LNG exports will actually support global energy security, not jeopardize it," they wrote. "Curtailing U.S. LNG export activity will send a strong global signal in favor of new investments in renewable energy, discouraging overinvestment in a volatile and high-priced fossil fuel."
The letter notes that the United States is "the world's largest exporter of LNG" and warns that such exports "affect the world's regions in various ways, but uniformly, they are negative," with sections on Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe.
"Every dollar invested in unnecessary, harmful, and expensive LNG infrastructure costs us double—first, by our failure to invest instead in secure, abundant, and cheap renewable energies, and second, by locking in higher greenhouse gas emissions, with attendant future climate damage," the letter emphasizes. "Continued reliance on LNG means more harm to frontline communities and the environment from extracting, transporting, and shipping fossil gas around the world."
The lawmakers' letter follows one that a coalition of more than 250 climate, environmental, and frontline groups sent to Biden and Granholm earlier this month—during the warmest summer on record and what is on track to be the hottest year on record.
"We are on the verge of seeing global average temperatures exceed 1.5°C warming above preindustrial temperatures, failing the internationally agreed upon goal of the Paris agreement and crossing the threshold upon which ever more catastrophic effects of climate change begin," the green groups wrote. "The only way world leaders can avoid this moral and political failure is to work together to end fossil fuel production."
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