Only an simpleton would turn up the heat — and Trump is doing exactly that

As the price of oil explodes, Trump is doing everything he can to kill cheap energy alternatives. The administration just announced that the U.S. is paying one billion dollars to a French company, TotalEnergies, to cancel wind farm projects already underway, in exchange for new investments in oil and gas. Darwin posted a cryptic ‘SMH’ in response to the news.

Doug Burgum announced the deal, claiming, “the era of affordable, reliable and secure energy is here to stay.” Someone might want to tell Burgum that we’re in the middle of a war proving just the opposite. With crude oil prices skyrocketing, and WWIII looming over the Strait of Hormuz, there’s nothing reliable or secure about fossil fuels except for campaign donations to Trump.

Trump’s war on alternative energy has led to an extraordinary transfer of public money to prop up fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change, which Trump still calls a “hoax.” Trump’s fight to overrule science and abandon all climate protections seems more like a compulsion to destroy than to govern; Trump likely assumes he’ll be pushing up daisies before Big Oil ever compensates victims for over $3.1 trillion in climate damages to date.

Courts are stopping Trump’s war on cheap energy

In December, in continued service to Trump’s fossil fuel donors, the Interior Department ordered all work to halt on five wind farms, claiming the projects were a “national security” threat. But a Reagan-nominated judge, after reviewing the classified security report under seal, didn’t see any claimed threat, and ruled that the administration's order halting the wind projects was pretextual and unlawful.

It was the fifth consecutive court victory for wind developers, and it allowed all halted projects to resume.

In an earlier ruling, after the administration issued a stop-work order against another wind project that was already 90% complete, the same judge found that Trump was “vocal in criticizing offshore wind farms for reasons unrelated to national security.” As of two weeks ago, that project was back up and running, delivering enough power to New England’s electric grid for 350,000 homes, saving residents $500 million a year. Trump, now paying companies not to produce wind energy that saves Americans money while saving the climate, again looks like a force of deliberate destruction.

The earth is cooking. Only an idiot would turn up the heat.

Last Friday, four different locations in Arizona and California hit 112 degrees, passing the continental U.S. record by 4 degrees for the hottest day in March. The record-breaking heat is expected to continue with a huge heat dome spreading across the country. As it moves eastward, the dome may unleash one of the most expansive heat waves in American history.

On March 23, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO), reported that the 11-year period ending with 2025 was the hottest in recorded human history. 2024 was identified as the hottest year ever, followed closely by 2025, confirming an accelerating climate crisis. Despite climate damages already topping $150 billion annually, Trump continues to lie about the causal connection between burning fossil fuels and climate change.

Instead, on brand, the administration is erasing the evidence. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which formerly tracked the cumulative and rising costs of climate-charged weather events, now displays an ominous message on its public website: “In alignment with evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) will no longer be updating the Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters product.”

Trump clearly doesn’t want taxpayers to know how much they are paying for local climate damage as they subsidize his wealthy fossil fuel donors.

A scorched earth war in Iran continues the pattern of destruction

While Trump is busy dropping bombs and threatening power plants in Iran, the high-tech munitions in use by all sides are scorching the earth with irreversible deep-soil chemical runoff and chemical saturation. When warhead toxins and heavy metals like lead, antimony, chromium, and arsenic burrow into the soil and penetrate the deep earth, the region’s capacity to grow food and support wildlife is damaged for generations. These pollutants also leach into groundwater where they are absorbed by any crops that do manage to grow. Meanwhile people in the region are being warned that the air is not safe to breathe, as sooty rain falls from a black sky.

The Guardian reports that the war in Iran is not only causing severe environmental damage, it is also accelerating climate destruction, with the emission of 5 million tons of CO2 in just the first 14 days. The soil where the missiles land will not grow food again in our lifetimes.

Sometimes when I’m trying to make sense of the world, I wonder whether Trump is a death force meant to accelerate our species’ removal from the planet. Random cell mutations that serve no purpose other than the destruction of life sometimes form in our bodies. Maybe the planet, also a living organism but of unfathomable intelligence, is hastening our demise so it can get back to healthy trees, clean mountain air, and streams full of salmon. If Trump is but a malignancy meant to usher us off the earth more quickly, maybe MAGA is right, he really is ‘chosen.’

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.

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