There is a crazy-making, wallet-inspector vibe to the continued insistence from some corners of the Senate Democratic caucus to vote to confirm Donald Trump’s nominees, in particular those who will quite obviously try and sabotage climate change progress. Last week, billionaire Doug Burgum and his general oil enthusiasm got votes from more than half of Senate Dems in his confirmation to run the Interior Department. Lee Zeldin got three Dem votes to helm the Environmental Protection Agency; there are already reports that he may fire 1,000 people who work on climate change. And on Monday, seven Democrats plus Independent Angus King voted to confirm Chris Wright to run the Department of Energy. The climate party, voting for a literal oil executive.
Wright, who has admitted climate change is real but staked out a mildly clever little corner of Denial Island by calling it a “global phenomenon,” will join Burgum and others in the administration in doing everything possible to make the problem worse. In general, Democrats have at least tried to do the opposite; they ushered the Inflation Reduction Act through the Senate, and have helped push many billions of dollars toward clean energy. And yet.
The Democrats who voted for Wright include: both New Hampshire Senators, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen; both Colorado Senators (Liberty Energy, Wright’s company, is based in Denver), John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennett; both New Mexico Senators, Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich; and Arizona’s Ruben Gallego. The question, as with all this, is why.
Bennett has said that Wright has “deep expertise in energy innovation and technology,” which, sure, if you mean fracking technology. Hickenlooper thinks Wright “believes in science,” which doesn’t sound like much an endorsement, really. “While I do not agree with Mr. Wright on a number of issues, he has committed to working with us in good faith,” said Heinrich in a statement last month; he said more or less the same thing about Burgum.
What that “good faith” might look like to Heinrich is anyone’s guess: if there is one thing the first two weeks of the Trump administration has demonstrated, it is that none of the people working for him have literally any interest in the traditional tit-for-tat of old-school politics. They are finding, at least so far, that there is very little chance of a consequence for just breaking whatever they feel like breaking; what can blue or purple state senators offer the new Energy Secretary that he might want? Yes, the GOP majority means they can force through anyone they want to, given the apparent lack of appetite for even single defections. But that doesn’t mean the opposition needs to help them. There are already no brakes on the car; Democrats didn’t need to grease the wheels.
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