We’ve all seen it: Fossil fueled fascist billionaires — call them Oiligarchs- have captured our government at the highest level.
From Trump’s Secretary of Energy – Chris Wright, a former fracking CEO who calls climate change “hype”; To his Secretary of the Interior – Doug Bergum a longtime backer of the Dakota Access Pipeline who is personally invested in the fossil fuel and pipeline companies he’s supposed to regulate. Even Elon Musk and the tech bros are in on the action, with AI and Data centers demanding an endless supply of electricity on demand, and increasingly partnering with the same bad companies (like Chevron) to get it from fracked gas.
The impacts are all around us: higher prices, devastating climate chaos, pollution, and the increasingly stupid and autocratic movement to eliminate all of our federal government (the good, the bad, and the bureaucratic alike) with private profit chatbots.
Trump’s election creates a crisis point – the exchange of a $1 billion campaign bribe for access to all of the Government’s power, all of our tax revenue, and unfettered control over our daily lives through control of our fuel, electric grid, and an AI powered surveillance economy.
What we are witnessing is a radical restructuring of the American political economy. There is a subversive shift to authoritarian capitalism, where power is concentrated in a strong leader surrounded by oligarchs who control key economic sectors. America appears to be following the path of countries like Russia, India, China, and Hungary, where state power is wielded to enrich elites, disseminate misinformation, and suppress dissent.
But we can build a better America, together. We’re the richest society on earth, and if we invest our collective wealth and our national effort into creating clean, efficient, locally-owned communities theres nothing we can’t achieve – including actually hitting our climate goals.
By directing our national work and investment to support our communities and the dignity of our work — not foreign investors and billionaire hedge funds — and ensuring that our wages and our taxes are invested in the people and communities who need and deserve it — not the wealthiest and best connected — We can break the corporate capture of our government — and we should start with the fossil fuel industry.
On the call Monday night, you’ll hear from leaders from Our Revolution, Greenpeace, Sunrise Movement, Friends of the Earth, Zero Hour, and the new United to End Polluter Handouts Coalition. They’ll explain how the Trump tax cuts of 2017 expire this year, and why that gives us a unique opportunity to erase more than 100 years of polluter handouts in our tax code, and turn the page on fossil fuels for good.
Just by ending polluter handouts, we can lower climate emissions, reduce related harm in frontline communities, and raise $170 billion in revenue over the next ten years.
But the Oiligarchs know this too. Experts predict that as much as 60% of their future projects are “subsidy dependent,” meaning that they are dependent on our hard earned tax dollars to move forward. As a result, they’re willing to fight hard to keep their perks and profits. They’ve already announced a $20 million lobbying campaign to defend their billions of dollars in handouts.And Trump has already declared a bogus “energy emergency” which somehow enables fossil fuel exports and foreign investment, but bans locally owned renewable energy.