As President-elect Donald Trump‘s picks for his upcoming administration continue to roll in, many have a noticeable link - their stance on climate change.
The former president, who has pledged to “drill, baby, drill,” while in office for his second term, has called climate change a “scam.” Many of his nominees share that thinking.
This year was the warmest in Earth’s record, fueled by the fossil fuel industry’s continued production of greenhouse gas emissions that warm the planet’s atmosphere. Without reductions, Earth could pass worrisome tipping points, with consequences for all of its inhabitants.
Here’s where some of Trump’s cabinet picks stand on the issue:
Lee Zeldin, nominated for administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency
Lee Zeldin, the former New York Republican congressman, was nominated as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. His stance on climate change is mixed, but his discourse often falls with the GOP party line.
Zeldin, who was a member of the Conservative Climate Caucus and the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus during his time in office, said in 2016 that one of his “top priorities in Congress [was] to safeguard our environment.”
During the first Trump administration, Zeldin opposed efforts to expand offshore oil and gas drilling. He’s called hope for a bipartisan compromise on climate a “very important issue.”
But, Zeldin has voted against that interest roughly 85 per cent of the time, according to a liberal website run by his old congressional district called “Lee Zeldin Record.” Zeldin opposed the Inflation Reduction Act, which is widely lauded as the largest piece of climate legislation in history.
Before his time in office, Zeldin told the Newsday editorial board he wasn’t as “sold yet on the whole argument that we have a serious problem” when it came to cliamte change.
He said he didn’t support a tax on carbon, but believed in environmental stewardship. Zeldin said that assuming “everything was 100 per cent true,” some reforms to take care of the environment are good to do” and that one doesn’t have to agree or disagree on climate change to support certain proposals.
“There are so many disagreements and debates about what exactly is true and what’s not true in regard to climate change. Again, I am going back to a point I said earlier, I’m not going to make believe I am some kind of expert. I’m willing to listen to people who are a lot smarter than me to tell me what their positions are and what their science is,” Zeldin said.
“They know I have no idea what they’re talking about. I think it would be very productive if we could just get to exactly what is real and what is not real because I think both sides of the climate change debate are filled with people who are stretching truths...Every time I’ve had any type of a conversation, they are purposefully talking over my head.”
On Monday, Zeldin said he would seek to ensure the US could “pursue energy dominance ... bring back American jobs to the auto industry and so much more.”
“There are regulations the left wing of this country have been advocating through regulatory power that ends up causing businesses to go in the wrong direction,” he told Fox News Channel.
Chris Wright, nominated for secretary of energy
In a win for the fossil fuel industry, Trump announced his pick for energy secretary is oil CEO Chris Wright.
The fossil fuel executive of Denver-based Liberty energy is a vocal advocate of oil and gas development and a climate change skeptic.
In a video posted on LinkedIn last year, he said: “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.”
He also previously said he doesn’t care where energy comes from “as long as it is secure, reliable, affordable and betters human lives.”
Trump announced that Wright would work alongside Burgum on the newly formed Council of National Energy.
He was described in the president-elect’s announcement as a “dedicated humanitarian with a passion for bringing the benefits of energy to every community in the world.”
Matt Gaetz, nominated for attorney general
Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz is Trump’s pick for attorney general.
Gaetz has recognized climate change as an issue.
He told Politico in 2017 that he believes history will “judge very harshly those who are climate deniers.”
“Climate change is real. Humans contribute,” he wrote on social media in 2019.
He repeated that sentiment in his 2020 autobiography,”Firebrand: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the MAGA Revolution.”
In it, Gaetz acknowledged that there is a “scientific consensus that the Earth is getting warmer. There is a moral consensus that we should do something about it.”
However, he said, climate change does not demand a “socialist takeover,” he wrote.
“Being smarter for our land and people doesn’t require surrender to AOC’s Green New Deal socialist Woketopia,” he said. “AOC” refers to New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Kristi Noem, nominated for secretary of the Department of Homeland Security
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is Trump’s pick to serve as the next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Noem, who has been governor since 2019, was asked years ago if she believes that the climate is changing.
“I think that the science has been varied on it, and it hasn’t been proven to me that what we’re doing is affecting the climate,” she told reporters.
In 2021, Noem joined a multi-state lawsuit aimed at stopping federal regulators from making decisions that factor in the social cost carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have on the environment.
“After a year of misguided lockdowns in response to the Covid pandemic, the last thing that America needs is more burdensome regulation that will cripple our economy,” Noem said then. “President Biden’s attempt to implement a ‘social cost of greenhouse gases’ value will result in government sticking their hands into virtually every aspect of our day-to-day lives.”
Noem is one of five governors who declined to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s planning grants that the Biden administration offered to address climate pollution.
In 2019, Noem proposed and later dropped proposed anti-protest laws related to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. She said that she considered the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests in North Dakota to be “riots.”
“Families all across the U.S. are facing life-threatening cold right now,” Noem said in a statement. “This should remind everyone – including President Biden – that an America-first energy policy is critically important for the continued success of our great nation.”
Marco Rubio, nominated for secretary of state
Florida Senator Marco Rubio was named as nominee for Secretary of State. Rubio, whose state is greatly impacted by climate change and the increasingly intense hurricanes born out of record-warm ocean waters, has waffled on climate.
This summer, Rubio was named in a list of 123 members of Congress that publicly deny the scientific consensus of human-caused climate change. The report cited a quote from 2018.
In 2019, Rubio wrote op-eds acknowledging that “Earth’s climate is changing,” and encouraging “proactive adaptation.”
Over the years, Rubio’s stance has evolved. He told the Miami Herald in 2009 that he is “not a scientist” and “not qualified” to make a decision regarding humanity’s impact on climate.
A year later, he told the Tampa Tribune that he didn’t “think there’s the scientific evidence to justify it.”
“I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it,” he said on ABC News’ “This Week” in 2014. “And I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it. Except it will destroy our economy.”
Pete Hegseth, nominated for secretary of defense
Pete Hegseth, a host on Fox News’ morning show “Fox & Friends,” is Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary. Research from 2022 found that the US military emits more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than entire countries.
Hegseth has been a vocal critic of the issue, calling it the “religion” of the left.
“The left says it all the time. This is what they believe. It is their religion,” Hegseth said in 2019 on his show. “They want to fight the weather. The rest of us want to deal with real threats that want to take away our freedoms.”
More recently, he sounded off on Democrats’ “climate change blame game.”
“It used to be global cooling ... then it was global warming, then it was climate change. So, anything that happens ... we’re always to blame for it. We are gods in control of the weather,” said Hegseth.
Doug Burgum, nominated for secretary of the Department of the Interior
North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum is Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of the Interior.
The department oversees the nation’s national parks and monuments.
Burgum, a former software executive who was rumored as a possible running mate for Trump earlier this year, was elected governor in 2016. While he had no energy experience, Burgum has backed a controversial pipeline project that would collect carbon emissions from ethanol plants in multiple states and store them in a deep rock formation in central North Dakota.
While opponents say the pipeline could cause environmental damage, company Summit Carbon Solutions touts it as the “largest carbon capture and storage project in the world.” It said the project could permanently store up to 18 million tons of greenhouse gas-producing carbon dioxide each year. On Friday, the state’s Public Service Commission approved a route permit for the project.
The governor, who has been a critic of the Biden administration’s efforts to tackle climate, has said he views the pipeline as a tool to help North Dakota achieve carbon neutrality.
Burgum has outlined plans to make North Dakota carbon neutral by 2030, saying he believes in “innovation over regulation” when it comes to climate policy. He has also been an advocate of hydrogen and has longstanding ties to the fossil fuel industry, according to The New York Times.
“This has nothing to do with climate change,” Burgum said in March on a North Dakota radio program. “This has to do with markets.”
