Five thousand feet below
As black smoke engulfs the sky
The ocean floor explodes
11 mothers cry

— “Help Is on the Way,” Rise Against

The Mad King and his MAGA minions are working to unleash a torrent of fossil fuels on a raging fire and the anti-wind crowd is still squawking about the amount of oil used to build and operate offshore wind turbines.

Offshore wind turbines, on average, use about 80 gallons of specialized synthetic oil for lubrication annually. For comparison, most home heating oil tanks hold 275 gallons of fuel.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster dumped 134 million gallons (3.2 million barrels) of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Nearly 1.7 million offshore turbines would need to explode to release that much oil.

The Exxon Valdez tanker crash allowed some 11 million gallons of oil to escape into Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The spill polluted some 1,300 miles of shoreline, with vast impacts on fish and wildlife and their habitats. An estimated 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, 22 orcas, and billions of salmon and herring eggs were killed. Nearly 138,000 offshore wind turbines would need to fall into the sea at the same time to cause that amount of destruction.

Electric vehicle opponents mewl that these cars produce three times as much pollution as internal combustion engines, if, they say, you take into account the mining of the rare earth materials required to make the vehicles. They never apply this same standard to gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicles, or to the new phones they buy every year.

They complain (rightfully so) that forests are being cleared to build solar energy, but stay quiet when mountaintops are leveled to get at coal and tar sands mined for oil. The anti-wind rabble and EV adversaries apparently believe fossil fuel infrastructure and our electronics opulence are made of nuts and berries and delivered by storks and unicorns.

For decades the fossil fuel industry hid the toxic and polluting dangers of its products behind lies and propaganda. Now that the truth about fossil fuels is unequivocally known, MAGAs want more of it.

Muskrat isn’t the unelected president. He’s just another useful idiot, like the Mad King. Another hypersensitive racist prone to throwing temper-tantrums on social media or in the White House, for all the world to see. The adult in the Oval Office, admittedly an irresponsible one, is the fossil fuel industry. It has been pulling strings for decades, and twice MAGAs delivered the perfect puppet.

The climate crisis — not immigrants, transgender people, DEI, books or knowledge — is the biggest threat to our existence. The burning of fossil fuels is the main driver of this emergency. Offshore wind and EVs are no panaceas, but they are steps, albeit tiny, in a better direction.

We’re moving rapidly in the wrong direction, however, as we continue to rely heavily on methane, oil, coal, gasoline, diesel, and propane to power our overconsuming lives. We continue to build new fossil fuel infrastructure that will tie us into decades of more climate-changing pollution.

Unfortunately, the industry has the Mad King on his knees kissing a lump of black coal. He even says its clean. The rest of MAGA world follows.

Last week the horde of MAGAs in the U.S. House of Representatives, with help from six Democrats, voted to overturn a Biden administration program that would have charged fossil fuel companies for excess methane emissions. The repeal, should the Senate follow suit, would allow polluting corporations to pocket more money at the expense of human and environmental health.

The fee was expected to bring billions of dollars into the federal government, to help taxpayers fund a functioning society.

To further reward the drivers of climate change, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, has called for a rewrite of the agency’s 2009 finding that determined planet-warming greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide — endanger public health.

The endangerment finding supports greenhouse gas regulations. Repealing it would ignore scientific consensus and make it easier for the industry to pollute, and profit.

Zeldin testified in his conformation hearing — three Democrats supported his nomination — that he would respect science and listen to the experts. He lied. It’s a MAGA trait. (He also has no science or environmental protection experience. It would be like naming me the lead engineer on the Washington Bridge rebuild.)

Since 2019, utilities and fossil fuel trade groups, including the American Gas Association and National Propane Gas Association, have worked together to stop municipal and state efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They have waged a coordinated campaign to kill pro-electrification policies that ban methane connections in new construction.

A kakistocracy is more pliable.

Last month, after stripping consideration of environmental justice issues and climate costs from its final analysis of the Carlsbad Field Office Oil and Gas Lease Sale, the regime opened one of its first sales of fossil fuel leases on federal land.

The sale showcased the regime’s pro-development approach to energy production, except when it comes to offshore wind and most other renewable energy projects. Those will be held to higher standards, if not banned outright. The natural world will suddenly matter. The anti-wind rabble, hiding behind endangered North Atlantic right whales, embraces this hypocrisy.

The Mad King wants to make it easier for the fossil fuel industry to profit off its destruction of public lands by weakening or removing environmental reviews.

The 1,317 acres in southeastern New Mexico to be opened for oil and gas extraction under the new lease are in the Permian Basin. This large sedimentary basin is home to three endangered species: lesser prairie chickens, dunes sagebrush lizards, and freshwater mussels called Texas hornshells. Decades of relentless fossil fuel drilling in the area have helped push the trio to the brink of extinction.

More fossil fuel extraction and burning will cause further damage to those three species, biodiversity in general, and all of us.

MAGAs don’t care. The climate crisis, endangered species, public health, and the future are someone else’s concern. Besides, it’s all a big hoax. For some reason, they don’t believe the wrecking ball their selfish king is hatefully swinging will strike them.

The regime wants to pass regulations that would reduce fuel-efficiency standards for the auto industry, even if the industry isn’t really interested. MAGAs want to smother themselves in black gold. They’ll blame wokeness when they get torched.

More than half of the senior executives at the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), the regulatory body responsible for overseeing 2.5 million miles of U.S. pipeline carrying fossil fuels, are leaving, forced out by the Mad King and his Muskrat.

This leadership exodus followed the discovery of a pipeline rupture that contaminated the drinking water of homes in Bucks County, Penn. The Sunoco pipeline was leaking jet fuel for at least 16 months before being discovered.

To improve pipeline safety, the regime has removed expertise and withdrawn carbon dioxide pipeline regulations inspired by a horrific leak in 2020. A former fossil fuel industry lobbyist is now overseeing pipeline safety.

Advocates and experts had been calling for heightened safety requirements since a carbon dioxide pipeline ruptured near the village of Satartia, Miss., five years ago, The Lever recently reported. The disaster dumbfounded local emergency responders and poisoned unsuspecting victims who reported lingering respiratory, cognitive, and neurological impacts years later.

After a multiyear investigation, federal regulators announced on Jan. 15 what they hoped would be “the strongest, most comprehensive standards for carbon dioxide transportation in the world.” The rule has since been removed from the PHMSA website.

“We will drill, baby, drill,” the Mad King said to cheers during his Jan. 20 inauguration speech. The fossil fuel industry immediately praised its puppet for the barrage of pro-fossil fuel and anti-climate change executive orders he quickly signed.

The industry envisions an even more profitable era of methane, oil, coal, gasoline, diesel, and plastic addiction. The puppet masters got exactly what they paid for — fossil fuel interests poured $96 million into Trump’s campaign and spent another $243 million lobbying Congress — and the MAGAs cheer the increase in pollution that will flood their homes, burn their neighborhoods, sicken their families, and diminish their children’s future.

Note: The biggest threats to North Atlantic right whales are entanglement in fishing gear, vessel strikes, and climate change.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.