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Public Land Sale Out, But Senate GOP Megabill Still Attacks Planet
"It's a job killer, a planet killer, and an economy killer," Sen. Ed Markey said of Republicans' so-called Big Beautiful Bill.
Jun 29, 2025
While welcoming that U.S. Senate Republicans are removing a provision that would have forced the sale of public lands from their budget reconciliation package, Democratic lawmakers and environmentalists this weekend condemned other attacks on the planet that are part of the megabill making its way through the upper chamber.
After Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough blocked Sen. Mike Lee's (R-Utah) initial public land sale policy earlier this week, the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources chair tried to sneak in an amended version late Friday. However, as the chamber's Republicans scrambled to generate enough support for a procedural vote Saturday night, Lee announced the withdrawal of his provision from the package.
"This is a momentous win for conservation and a powerful reminder that Americans deeply value our public lands and waters. That was made crystal clear by the remarkable, bipartisan outcry opposing the liquidation of our natural heritage," said Tom Kiernan, president and CEO of American Rivers. "Future generations should be able to continue to use these lands for fishing, rafting, hiking, and swimming, and to enjoy the clean water that begins in these priceless places. It is our responsibility to protect that legacy."
Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club's Lands Protection Program, said that "from the moment Mike Lee first introduced this proposal, Americans across the political spectrum have made it clear they oppose selling off the natural heritage of our public lands to fund tax cuts for billionaires—not now, not ever. This is a victory for everyone who hikes, hunts, explores, and cherishes these places, but it's not the end of the threats to our public lands."
U.S. President Donald Trump "and his allies in Congress have made it clear they will use every tool at their disposal to give away our public lands to billionaires and corporate polluters, whether it's Mike Lee's fire sale, leasing them to Big Oil CEOs for pennies on the dollar, or gutting the permitting and oversight process for industrial development," Manuel warned. "This fight isn't over, and we are going to keep working to keep the 'public' in public lands."
We won this battle, but no doubt Republicans are going to keep trying to sell off your public lands any chance they get. Our public lands are worth fighting for, and as long as I have the honor of representing Oregon in the Senate that's what I'll be doing.
— Senator Ron Wyden (@wyden.senate.gov) June 28, 2025 at 11:08 PM
Anna Peterson, executive director of the Mountain Pact, which works with over 100 communities on climate, outdoor recreation, and public lands policy, said that "as millions of Americans and western communities have reminded people again and again over the past few weeks, public lands are bipartisan, deeply revered, sustain our communities, power our economies, and serve as the cornerstone of our outdoor way of life. We must remain steadfast in our commitment to defending public lands, and continue to fight to make sure they remain where they belong forever: in public hands."
The Natural Resources Defense Council had criticized both the axed public land sale provision and attacks on renewable energy, which remain in the megabill. NRDC executive director Christy Goldfuss said that "the new budget reconciliation bill text is a shocking fossil fuels industry fever dream come to life. The corruption on display is galling."
"The bill has gone from fossil fuels boosterism to an active effort from Congress to kill wind and solar energy in the United States. This cannot be viewed as anything other than a 'Trump energy tax,'" Goldfuss said, blasting Republican plans to not only end incentives for renewable energy, but also impose new taxes on wind and solar generation.
"This bill was already going to force the biggest utility bill increase in history, but the new language can only be interpreted as a corrupt effort to advance oil, gas, and coal on the backs of everyday Americans," she continued. "This is a shocking effort to manipulate energy markets, siphon money from every household in the country, kill jobs, and shut down the fastest growing segment of the energy economy--all to enrich the barons at the helm of the most profitable enterprise in history."
Referencing one of Trump's early executive orders, Goldfuss added that "the administration claims that we are in an energy emergency, making it the wrong time to choke off the cheapest and fastest-to-deploy sources of energy."
Adrian Deveny, founder and president of policy advisory firm Climate Vision and a former policy director to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), told Politico: "It's a kill shot. This new excise tax on wind and solar is designed to fully kill the industry."
Costa Samaras, a clean energy leader in former Democratic President Joe Biden's White House, also warned on the social media network Bluesky on Saturday that the policy would kill Americans.
"The new bill in Congress puts a new tax on wind and solar. They're taxing clean energy to give your money to billionaires," Samaras said. "Taxing clean energy and making it harder for new clean energy to be built in the U.S. at a time when the grid is under increasing stress from extreme weather, will lead to people dying in heatwaves."
"They are taxing wind and solar power. Not just taking away the credits in Biden's climate law. But actively taxing wind and solar. My god this bill is terrible," he continued. "If you have a [Republican] representative, call and leave a message saying you don't want to raise taxes on clean energy... If you're a reporter, there's a story here. Why is the Senate putting the grid and Americans' lives at risk?"
Senate Democrats are also speaking out about the GOP assault on renewable energy. Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) are among those sounding the alarm.
"Big Oil has been getting tax breaks for more than a century," noted Markey. "Trump's big billionaire bill doesn't just cut clean energy incentives, it RAISES TAXES on wind and solar. It's a job killer, a planet killer, and an economy killer."
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The Power of Presidents—Even Trump—Is Nothing to the Power of Clean Energy Revolution
Ten years from now, Donald Trump will be remembered ruefully as our country’s very own King Canute, who used the full force of presidential power in a failed, futile effort to halt the tides of technological change.
Jun 20, 2025
He lived over 1,000 years ago, but King Canute’s life still has some important lessons for our own time. After conquering England, Denmark, Norway, and part of Sweden, he forged a vast North Sea empire that made him, by the year 1030, the greatest of all the Viking kings. At that peak of power, he ordered his courtiers to place a throne on the seashore. There, according to a contemporaneous account, he shouted at the rising tide: “Thou, too, are subject to my command, as the land on which I am seated is mine and no one has ever resisted my commands with impunity. I command you then not to flow over my land, nor presume to wet the feet and the robe of your Lord.”
But the tide, of course, kept rising and waves soon washed over the legs of his royal person. Stunned and chastened, Canute leapt backwards, saying, “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings.”
In our time, specifically on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump, who had vanquished his rivals, took office with full control of Congress, making him an exceptionally powerful president. On that day, he ordered his courtiers to set up an executive desk at the Capital One Arena in downtown Washington, D.C. There, before waves of cheers from MAGA-capped supporters, he commanded that the U.S. quit the Paris climate accord, announcing: “We are going to save over a trillion dollars by withdrawing from that treaty.”
In March, despite Donald Trump’s many prohibitions, wind and solar surged to 25% of the U.S. electrical supply, and when combined with other forms of “clean energy” like hydropower, already generated 51% of the country’s total electricity output, surpassing fossil fuels for the first time.
Retiring to the Oval Office, he then signed another executive order eliminating “the electric vehicle (EV) mandate” by ending “unfair subsidies and other ill-conceived government-imposed market distortions that favor EVs over other technologies.” More broadly, that decree also removed any barrier to the development of “domestic energy resources—with particular attention to oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower… and nuclear energy resources.”
Like King Canute before him, President Trump was attempting to do nothing less than command the tides to recede. Not the ocean tides, of course, but the no less powerful tides of economic and technological change. For the United States, and indeed the world, is at the cusp of a new industrial revolution in the way we live and work that will, within the coming decades, do nothing less than save humanity from the rising threat of global warming.
America’s Energy Transitions
To grasp the full import and unstoppable power of this impending change, let’s take a moment to place our current era in its historical energy context. Over the past 500 years, as I argued in my book To Govern the Globe, human life has been transformed by three great revolutions in the basic energy infrastructure that drove the global economy and shaped all human life on this planet.
Starting in the 16th century, European nations forged the world’s first maritime empires through technologies that maximized the power of nature’s raw energy. In the era’s first technological advance, Portugal’s agile sailing ship, the caravel, used multiple sails to master the winds and thereby conquer sea lanes from the South Atlantic to the South China Sea. Somewhat later, the Dutch district at Zaan (near Amsterdam) became the world’s first dedicated industrial zone, where 150 powerful windmills cut logs into low-cost lumber for shipyards that would build the world’s largest merchant fleet with 4,000 ships on the high seas. Starting in the 15th century, Portugal combined water mills with massed teams of enslaved laborers on the island of São Tomé off the coast of Africa to create a new form of agribusiness, the fazenda or sugar plantation, whose phenomenal profitability—achieved by using cruel coercion to push the energy output of the human body beyond its natural limits—soon led to the spread of slavery to Brazil, the Caribbean, and the American colonies.
During the 19th century, Britain’s coal-fired industrial revolution brought an energy transition that would move the world quickly beyond the wind and muscle power of the previous four centuries. Steam engines started powering factories in 1786, riverboats in 1810, railways in 1829, trans-Atlantic steamships by the 1830s, and the British Royal Navy’s warships by the 1840s. Meanwhile, Britain’s coal production soared from just 9 million tons in 1800 to a peak of 292 million tons in 1913. By the 1850s, an armada of steam engines was transforming the nature of work worldwide—powering factories, driving sawmills, threshing grains, husking rice, pulling gang plows, and crushing sugarcane. Coal-powered construction equipment sculpted the Earth’s surface, as steam shovels (patented in 1839) moved mountains, steam dredges (1844) cut canals, and steamrollers (1867) flattened roadways. Between 1880 and 1900, the number of steam engines in the United States tripled from 56,000 to 156,000, accounting for 77% of all the power that drove this country’s first industrial revolution.
That era of coal-fired energy, for both steam engines and electrical generation, lasted for nearly a century until it, too, began to fade during the 1950s before the power of petroleum. Even on the eve of World War II, when the United States produced two-thirds of the world’s petroleum, oil accounted for only one-third of its energy supply and just 10% of that of other industrial societies like Europe and Japan. However, as American automobile ownership climbed from 40 million units in 1950 to 213 million in 2000, oil consumption surged from 6.5 million barrels daily to a peak of 20 million barrels. By the time the 1973 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil embargo roiled American life, with gas lines of angry motorists wrapping round the block in cities across the country, oil accounted for 46% of total energy needs in the U.S., 60% in Western Europe, and an overwhelming 73% in Japan.
The Seeds of Change
After those three energy transitions over the span of 500 years, the world is now at the cusp of a fourth great transformation that will indeed prove critical for humanity’s survival. Energy from coal and oil may have freed the world from the curse of slavery and brought unprecedented prosperity to millions, but burning all that carbon also carried the threat of climate change. As early as 1896, Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius published the world’s first report on global warming, predicting with uncanny prescience that a continued increase in carbon (CO2) emissions would raise “the temperature in the Arctic regions… about 8-9°C.” Between the Rio Earth Summit that finally recognized the problem in 1992 and the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015, where 195 nations signed an agreement to limit CO2 emissions, the world started a fitful and initially unsuccessful transition to alternative energy.
At the outset, it seemed as if governments were trying to force a shift to alternative energy that carried high costs for questionable results. Solar panels were expensive then and their energy output was low. The few electric-powered cars cost a relative fortune and couldn’t go very far. By 2016, the climate issue had also become bitterly partisan, with the first Trump administration banning the federal government from any mention of climate change while trying desperately to save coal-fired electrical plants and introducing 74 executive actions to weaken environmental protections.
Now that technology has resolved so many of the cost constraints holding back the world’s transition to alternative energy, it’s possible to grasp the shape that America’s new industrial revolution is likely to take within a decade or even less (no matter who is the president of the United States).
But as had happened during the world’s earlier energy transitions over the past 500 years, technological innovation was already fusing with economic rationality to catalyze a phenomenally powerful transformation in the world’s energy infrastructure. After solar and wind power began spreading across the globe around 2000, engineering innovation and economies of scale began making alternative energy not only ever more affordable but also ever more efficient. Between 2010 and 2019, the cost of solar power fell by 82% from $0.37 per kilowatt hour to just $0.05. By 2020, the International Energy Agency, known for its rigorous analysis, reported that the world’s best solar schemes already had the “cheapest… electricity in history.”
By the time Joseph Biden took office in 2021, the tides of technological change were just starting to turn. In a bid to ride that tide, the Biden administration invested a massive $1 trillion in “clean energy”—including semiconductor manufacturing ($446 billion), clean power ($188 billion), and electric vehicles ($182 billion).
Despite all the Biden-Harris election hype about factories built and jobs created, the gains for the country’s energy infrastructure were still… well, distinctly incremental. By the end of Biden’s term in December 2024, wind and solar had inched up to just 17% of U.S. electrical generation, though they had finally passed coal, that dirty fuel left over from the horse-and-buggy era, which fell to a historic low of 15%. Simultaneously, however, natural gas surged to a record 43% of the U.S. energy supply, meaning that carbon was still king. Compared to Norway where a proliferation of 400 chargers for every 100,000 Norwegians has allowed EVs to hit 90% of new car sales, even leading American states like California still only have a pathetic 46 chargers per 100,000 population—a key reason EVs still account for just 8% of this country’s new auto sales.
But beneath such dismal statistics, by the end of Biden’s term there were also some significant signs of deep, underlying change. In September 2024, an industry group reported that solar energy, which had been four times more expensive than fossil fuels in 2010, was now less than half the cost (56% lower) than them.
Portents of a New Industrial Revolution
Despite all the political (and climate change) pyrotechnics of Trump’s tumultuous first months in office this year, those deeper processes of technological change have continued their ceaseless, mechanistic march toward transformation. Indeed, in recent months there have been some telling signs—veritable portents—that we are indeed at the cusp of a transition to alternative energy of sufficient power to drive a new American industrial revolution. Let’s read the tea leaves.
In April, the first driverless 18-wheeler “robotruck” appeared on a U.S. highway, delivering refrigerated goods along Interstate 45 in Texas. In May, Elon Musk announced the debut of Tesla’s “cyber cab” service in Austin, Texas, with 10 driverless trial cars that are expected to lead to the deployment of “hundreds of thousands of robotaxis across the U.S.” Lending substance to that claim, Alphabet’s competing Waymo taxi service announced in May that its paid driverless rides had doubled to 10 million in the previous five months, launching the company on “a path to profitability.” Within days, China’s top EV car maker BYD had dropped a “price bombshell” by slashing the sticker price on its top-selling Seagull subcompact to an amazingly low $7,700—and that, mind you, is for a brand-new sedan loaded with self-driving features and able to travel a 200-mile range on a single charge. These days in America, it would be hard to beat that price with any sort of gas-powered car, even, say, a 2012 Honda Civic with 150,000 miles on the clock.
But perhaps most important, in March, despite Donald Trump’s many prohibitions, wind and solar surged to 25% of the U.S. electrical supply, and when combined with other forms of “clean energy” like hydropower, already generated 51% of the country’s total electricity output, surpassing fossil fuels for the first time. “This is a first signal,” explained energy analyst Nicolas Fulghum, “that the U.S. is approaching a tipping point where clean power takes the lead over fossil generation, and where the importance of coal and gas inevitably starts to fade.” Indeed, just this month, the authoritative International Energy Agency announced that the “global energy investment scene is changing fast,” with two-thirds of this year’s $3.3 trillion investment in energy production slated for “renewables” (such as wind and solar), double the amount for fossil fuels.
The Shape of the Future
If that impending transformation follows the pattern of history’s past transitions, technology and the global economy are about to achieve a sudden, silent synergy that will unleash not just a tide but a veritable tsunami of socioeconomic change. To cite some past examples, within the 15 years after George Stephenson launched The Rocket, a steam locomotive with an average speed of just 13 miles per hour in 1829, Britain covered the country with 2,200 miles of rail lines, transforming English life and work. And in the 10 years after 1907-1908, when Henry Ford upgraded the mass production of his Model-T motorcar, the price for it dropped steadily from $850 to just $260 while the number of automobiles registered nationwide soared from 140,300 in 1907 to nearly 5,000,000 in 1917, putting America on the road to becoming a petroleum-powered nation on wheels.
Now that technology has resolved so many of the cost constraints holding back the world’s transition to alternative energy, it’s possible to grasp the shape that America’s new industrial revolution is likely to take within a decade or even less (no matter who is the president of the United States). After rendering high-cost fossil fuels largely obsolete by 2035, solar and wind power, backed by storage farms equipped with new safer technologies like sodium-ion batteries, will create a reliable electrical grid, cutting the country’s basic energy costs by well over half and sparking a proliferation of innovation.
In the decades to come on our interstate highways, the left lanes will undoubtedly be filled with endless packs of a dozen or more electric-powered, driverless 18-wheelers, drafting six feet apart. They will be guided by uninterrupted digital signals transmitted from fiber optic cables laid down along the median strip, slashing both fuel consumption and transport costs. Those semi-trailer platoons will be headed for massive distribution depots that are likely to ring American cities, large and small. From them, drivers will be dispatched with robot-packed loads for the delivery of foodstuffs and consumer goods direct to individual households. Those truckloads will also include things like factory-produced complete kitchens and bathrooms for on-site installation at mass-assembly construction sites—slashing costs and making housing once again more affordable for working Americans.
Since an EV is simply a steel box housing a battery, for about $9,000 an American family will be able to purchase a brand-new, self-driving sedan with a 600-mile range from a single 10-minute charge, providing maintenance-free transportation for a typical monthly fuel cost of about $35. With the electrical grid generating cheap solar power, every urban hub will be connected to its suburbs by electrical rails and to its own neighborhoods by electrified mass transit. Once downtown, commuters will move about easily, freed from the stress and cost of parking by fleets of robotaxis that will move quickly through inner-city streets no longer jammed with private cars. Their only competitor for curb space will be the flotilla of delivery vehicles whose drivers will circulate ceaselessly about the city, fulfilling same-day orders.
With the world’s lowest cost for critical inputs of energy and transportation, combined with the most extensive grid of fiber optic cables, the United States will hold the pole position in the ceaseless race for international competitiveness. Once modern history’s fourth great transformation takes hold and that new energy infrastructure is in place, productivity, profits, and global power will soon follow on a far healthier and cooler planet. With domestic transport costs but a fraction of those for international shipping, the economic logic of “nearshoring” will become inescapable, making “Made in the USA” compellingly economical and creating countless new jobs that could strain the country’s labor supply.
Oh yes, and I almost forgot: all that technology will, of course, be emissions-free and so will bring America close to net-zero carbon emissions well before the 2050 date mandated by the 2016 Paris climate accord.
America’s King Canute
Ten years from now, Donald Trump will be remembered ruefully as our country’s very own King Canute, who used the full force of presidential power in a failed, futile effort to halt the tides of technological change that, by then, will have launched this country headlong into the world’s new industrial revolution.
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We Can Accelerate the Clean Energy Transition, Even Under Trump
The momentum toward a sustainable future will be unstoppable if clean energy supporters speak up in their own communities.
Feb 23, 2025
Here's a bold prediction for the start of the second Trump administration: The next four years will be the best yet for America's clean energy transition.
That may sound surprising, given the significant steps President Donald Trump has already taken to try to reverse American leadership on climate and clean energy. There's much still unknown about the potential impact of Trump's early executive orders, but one truth remains clear: Far from slowing down, we could be entering a period of unprecedented renewable energy progress.
There's already strong momentum behind the clean energy shift, and whether that momentum continues is less dependent on the federal government than you might think. Trump can't change the reality that, for a huge number of clean energy projects, the permitting authority rests not with federal agencies, but with state and local decision-makers.
Now more than ever, speaking up for clean energy in your community is one of the most impactful steps you can take for the planet, your local economy, and the health and safety of future generations.
This means that the main determinant of how much progress clean energy makes over the next four years isn't the Trump administration. It's your neighbors—and you.
Don't be distracted by all the ink that will be spilled in the coming months about Trump's efforts to slow progress on offshore wind and electric vehicles, or to roll back the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). For starters, experts agree that a full repeal of the IRA—which made the single largest investment in climate and energy in American history—is unlikely. This landmark law has been an economic boon to red and blue states alike, earning bipartisan support.
The way forward remains open for the vast majority of clean energy projects permitted mostly or entirely at the state and local level. There, local governments, influenced by support across the political spectrum, have become powerful engines of clean energy progress.
Solar and wind are now the cheapest energy options available, even without subsidies. Across the country, these technologies are increasingly boosting local economies, generating revenue for public services, creating well-paying jobs, and delivering health and climate benefits for millions.
Now, our often-overlooked town planning and zoning commissions or county councils hold the key to driving clean energy forward in the coming years. Right now, these spaces are often dominated by small numbers of highly organized opponents—many backed by the same fossil fuel-linked interests that are now shaping Trump's energy policy. Left unchecked, these opponents have become adept at stalling or derailing clean energy progress. As of early 2024, at least 15% of U.S. counties had effectively banned utility-scale wind or solar projects, despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans support these technologies.
Here's the opportunity. With so few people in attendance at local hearings, noisy opponents can significantly influence local decision-makers. That also means every person who makes the choice to speak out in favor of clean energy projects can make a big difference.
Take Mesa County, Colorado, where volunteers with the Western Colorado Alliance came together to overturn a moratorium on solar development in spring 2024. The handful of volunteers who took the time to show up to the pivotal public hearing helped ensure that community support for solar growth was on clear display, outweighing the opposition and convincing local officials to lift the county's ban.
This small group of volunteers helped create jobs, improved health, made their grid more reliable, and had a bigger impact for the climate in one step, together, than through years of individual actions. Even one 500-megawatt solar array that gets built as a result will help avoid the carbon emissions of more than 80,000 people switching to electric vehicles.
With a focus on supporting more of these projects in communities nationwide, clean energy will continue to boom in Trump's second term and beyond, creating a more livable climate and stronger economy for all.
So how do you take action where you live? It's easier than you think—here's a guide to getting started. Visit your city, county, or town's website and see what's on the planning docket. Check your local media for news about clean energy. And when you hear about a proposed project, don't just assume it will happen—or that it will fail. Do your research, share what you learn with neighbors, and reach out to organizations like the one I founded, Greenlight America, for help.
Most importantly, follow the project's approval process and, when it's up for a vote, be there or write in to voice your support to local leaders. They say 90% of success in life is showing up. For clean energy permitting, it's more like 100%.
Now more than ever, speaking up for clean energy in your community is one of the most impactful steps you can take for the planet, your local economy, and the health and safety of future generations.
There will be hundreds of opportunities to make this impact across the country in the next four years. Together, project by project and community by community, we can all fight climate change and pollution and bring clean energy and its economic benefits to all of our communities. The power is in our hands.
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