Trump and Poilievre: Big Oil’s bodyguards
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U.S. President Donald Trump (left) declared a National Energy Emergency, granting himself extraordinary powers to fasttrack fossil fuels. Conservative Party Leader Pierre has promised to grant the oil lobby's full wish list. Illustration by Ata Ojani/Canada's National Observer
As the invisible hand of the market tilts in favour of cheaper and cleaner renewable energy, Big Oil is counting on the heavy hand of governments led by Donald Trump and potentially Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre to defend them against its clean energy competitors and environmental critics.
It’s not subtle.
On his first day in office, Donald Trump declared a National Energy Emergency, granting himself extraordinary powers to fasttrack fossil fuel (but not wind or solar) projects, and pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement. There was even a separate Executive Order limiting wind project approvals.
In Canada, Poilievre won’t just axe the carbon tax, a policy the main contenders to replace Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau are promising to walk back. He has promised to grant the oil lobby’s full wish list: kill the oil and gas pollution cap, the clean electricity regulation, the low-carbon fuel rule and the Impact Assessment Act, while building pipelines in all directions. We’ve seen a preview in Alberta, where the provincial government has let the oil industry off the hook for cleaning up abandoned wells and crippled the once-thriving renewable energy industry.
This may seem like overkill, given that oil production hit record highs under Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau. Yet even the modest climate policies Biden and Trudeau adopted are viewed as too much by an oil industry facing an existential threat in the form of plummeting costs for wind and solar power, electric vehicles, batteries and heat pumps. Clean energy can do all the things oil and gas do now, but at a lower cost and without frying the planet.
In response, oil executives have adopted a three-pronged strategy.
First, they are financing and supporting politicians who will give tax and regulatory breaks to oil and gas while throwing up barriers to renewable energy. In the 2024 U.S. election cycle, oil companies and executives donated over $170 million to Republican candidates and their conservative allies — compared to only $1.4 million to the Democratic side — after Trump brazenly promised oil donors lucrative tax and regulatory favours in return for campaign donations. In Canada, the Conservative Party organized a $1650/plate fundraiser where top oil executives got private time with Poilievre.
Second, they are pushing for draconian new legislation to intimidate their critics. Oil and gas lobbyists have been shown to be the key architects behind a wave of new anti-protest laws. Twenty-two U.S. states have passed laws that can punish people protesting against oil rigs, gas pipelines, dams and other so-called critical infrastructure with long prison terms and hefty fines. Alberta passed its own controversial anti-protest law in 2020 and we can likely anticipate something similar from Poilievre, who has demanded punitive measures against Indigenous and environmental protests while supporting the right-wing protesters who shut down Ottawa in 2021.
Third, oil giants are launching lawsuits to silence their critics and tie them up in costly court battles. Greenpeace chapters have fended off legal attacks from oil giants Shell in the UK and Total Energy in France, but still face a $300M lawsuit in the United States from Energy Transfer Partners (ETP). ETP is the company behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline and whose CEO donated $15 million to Trump’s campaign.
Environmentalists aren't alone on the resurgent right-wing’s “enemies within” list. Just ask any transgender kid or migrant labourer what it’s like to be a political punching bag. The next time you see powerful people bemoaning the “woke” agenda, remember that “woke” can usually be replaced by “kindness.”
There is, however, a method to this madness. Authoritarians like Trump, and the oil and tech billionaires backing him, need an enemy to justify an agenda few would otherwise support.
And it is horrifying to watch hate being mobilized and weaponized to advance it. But it’s not the first time this has happened. In times like these, writer Rebecca Solnit reminds us, it is important to remember the lessons of past struggles:
“They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything. And you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving. You may need to grieve or scream or take time off, but you have a role no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in. Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is. The pain you feel is because of what you love.”
In the coming months and years, let’s fight for what we love.
Keith Stewart is a senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada. He has a Ph.D. from York University and is a part-time instructor at the University of Toronto, where he teaches a course on energy and environmental policy.
Comments
Wake up! There are two oil and gas parties in Ottawa — not just one. For climate activists to focus their fear and loathing on the Conservatives — and give the Liberals a free pass is a fatal error.
A vote for the Liberals is a vote for failure on climate.
In fact, the Liberals and AB and BC NDP have proved far more effective than the Conservatives in delivering on Corporate Canada's agenda — and Big Oil's plan to fail.
The Conservatives are loud, crude, and clumsy. The Liberals just get things done. Service with a smile. Stealing your grandchildren's future and getting you to pay for it. And even vote for it.
The Liberals' climate plan is predicated on fossil-fuel expansion. A plan to fail.
Big Oil couldn't ask for a better setup. Terrified by the Conservative bogeyman, progressive voters run into the arms of Trudeau's Liberals/provincial NDP. CAPP can set their Conservative hounds on the Liberals/provincial NDP, while the petro-progressives give the O&G industry just about everything on its wishlist.
Federally, the Liberals play the fear card every election to limit the NDP and Green vote. The Liberals play a slick game, and progressive voters fall for it every time.
Keith Stewart notes that oil production hit record highs under Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau. In fact, record profits on record production. Not an accident.
Max Fawcett: "The oil and gas sector will miss Justin Trudeau. No, really" (National Observer, January 8, 2025)
"It’s worth noting that while Canada was 'closed' for oil and gas business, the industry increased its oil production by more than a million barrels per day. Its biggest companies posted record profits in 2022, and then almost did it again in 2023. Meanwhile, in 2024 the federal government completed the construction of the first pipeline to Pacific tidewater in decades, one that immediately (and significantly) increased oil prices received by the same companies complaining so bitterly about Trudeau’s reign. LNG Canada, meanwhile, is set to begin operations in 2025, and will have a similarly beneficial impact on the price of natural gas in Canada and the companies that sell it.
"The truth here, one the oil and gas industry’s advocates would never dare acknowledge, is that JUSTIN TRUDEAU HAS BEEN THE BEST PRIME MINISTER THEIR INDUSTRY HAS SEEN IN DECADES. He has done more to advance their interests, often at the cost of his own political capital, than any of his living predecessors. In addition to TMX and LNG Canada it also fought successfully for Line 3, a major expansion project that faced significant political resistance from the Democratic governor and other politicians in Michigan. Oh, and it also threw more than a billion dollars at the oil and gas industry to help it clean up its old oil and gas wells."
With enemies like the Trudeau Liberals, Canada's O&G industry does not need friends.
With friends like the Trudeau Liberals, Canada's climate movement does not need enemies.
So, are we going to fight for what we love?
Who's worse on climate?
Liberal partisans falsely portray the Libs and Cons as diametrical opposites. Good and evil.
False duality. In reality, Trudeau and Poilievre are the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of climate disaster. Both parties serve Corporate Canada. Only the Liberals are far more effective.
The petro-progressive Liberals and provincial NDP are not in a tug-of-war with Conservatives over climate. They are dance partners. Two sides of the same coin. Regardless of who is in office, Corporate Canada and Big Oil are in power. Corporate Canada dictates the agenda.
The Liberals and provincial NDP promote fossil-fuel expansion and take science-based options off the table. This allows the "conservatives" to shift even further right, doubling down on denial and fossil fuel intransigence. But it's Trudeau, Notley, and Horgan who shift the Overton window. It's Trudeau, Notley, and Horgan who shut down the space for effective science-based climate policy.
The climate plans of the Liberals and provincial NDP are premised on fossil-fuel expansion. Petro-progressives like Trudeau, Notley, and Horgan claim to accept the climate change science, but still push pipelines, approve LNG projects, promote oilsands expansion, subsidize fossil fuels, and let fossil fuel interests dictate the agenda. Canada's idea is to "green" (i.e., greenwash) its fossil fuels, not get off them.
It's the NDP and Liberals who pay lip service to science and undermine the climate movement.
When it comes to oilsands and fossil fuel expansion, Trudeau, Harper, Scheer, O'Toole, Poilievre; Notley, Nenshi, Kenney, Smith; Horgan, and Eby are all on the same page.
The federal Liberals and petro-progressive provincial NDP are not in a tug-of-war with Conservatives over climate. They are dance partners. The NDP and Liberals promote fossil-fuel expansion and take science-based policy off the table. This allows the "conservatives" to shift even further right, doubling down on denial and fossil fuel intransigence. But it's Trudeau and Notley who shift the Overton window. It's Trudeau and Notley who shut down the space for effective science-based policy.
When AB Premier Danielle Smith jams a wrench into the spokes of renewables, or Poilievre promises to axe the tax, progressives fight back. When the NDP and Liberals build pipelines, progressives applaud or stay silent. "At least, it's not the Conservatives."
"Canada is a continually bad actor on the global stage, despite protests that Justin Trudeau is ruining the oilsands. Drawing on research from Quebec's French-language newspaper Le Devoir, the New Democratic Party has argued Trudeau has been kinder to Big Oil than Stephen Harper ever was. He has also been crueller to the most vulnerable."
"Oil and gas approvals spell ecocide" (National Observer, 2023)
In the past decade of Liberal government, Canada remains a climate laggard, not a leader. As dutifully recorded by The Observer's columnist Barry Saxifrage:
"Canada's fossil-fuelled sprint away from climate safety"
"Canada is a rogue super-emitter"
"Wrong-way Canada emitting more while our G7 peers clean up"
"'Electrify everything'? Canada cranks fossil burning instead"
Progressive voters supporting the Liberals and provincial NDP are voting for fossil-fuel expansion. A vote for the Liberals or provincial NDP is a vote for climate failure. The delusion that the Conservatives are the arch-climate villains (but less effective servants of the fossil-fuel industry) is the rationalization that allows progressives to keep voting for climate failure.
Geoff Dembicki: "How Trudeau's Broken Promises Fuel the Growth of Canada's Right" (The Tyee, 2019)
"The Liberal party plays on voters' desire for far-reaching transformation while guaranteeing the endurance of the status quo. The Liberals effectively act as a kind of shock absorber of discontent and anger towards the elite…
"So on climate, Trudeau was presented as this kind of river-paddling environmental Adonis. He promised that fossil fuel projects wouldn't go ahead without the permission of communities. But the Liberals create these public spectacles of their bold progressiveness while they quietly assure the corporate elite that their interests will be safeguarded. So at the same time Trudeau was going around the country and convincing people that he was this great climate hope, the Liberal party had for years been assuring big oil & gas interests that there would not be any fundamental change to the status quo.
"As early as 2013, Trudeau was telling the Calgary Petroleum Club that he differed with Harper not so much about the necessity of exporting huge amounts of tarsands internationally, but because he didn't think Harper's approach — which stoked divisions and an incredible amount of resistance that turned Canada into a climate pariah — was the most effective marketing approach.
"The Liberal climate plan essentially is a reworking of the business plan of Big Oil and the broader corporate lobby. …The plan is to support a carbon tax and to effectively make it a cover for expanded tarsands production and pipelines. That was a plan hatched by the Business Council of Canada back in 2006, 2007. For 20 years oil companies had resisted any kind of regulation or any kind of carbon tax and fought it seriously. But they started to realize that it would be a kind of concession that they would have to make in order to assure stability and their bottom line not being harmed. The climate bargain that Trudeau went on to strike with Alberta of a carbon tax plus expanded tarsands production was precisely the deal that Big Oil had wanted."
Thanks for this Geoff.......it is likely essentially the true history of the Liberal's decade in office. Still, it has to make us sit up and smell the coffee to realize that even this relatively mild sop to the climate reality has resulted in the resurgence of the Denialist Conservative Party......
That so many well meaning, and good Canadians still do not see that our future depends on getting off fossil fuel addictions and moving as quickly as we can, individually and collectively, to a wide variety of draw down solutions.........is the triumph of the fossil oil and gas cartels that operate everywhere........in plain sight.
What is it the Manning Centre is calling itself now???
The whole truth is hard to swallow.........but trying to digest what you've laid out for us, might help us get over our love of two answers, one of them wrong.
We're still mostly enthrall to Big Fossil Fuels...and a lot of progressive fossil fools.
It doesn't create many jobs, or much real prosperity......but one way or another, most of us are still voting for the continuation of our petrostate.
Poilievre and Trump will fastback O&G until it puts North America at a competitive disadvantage. Then it is too late. So bring on the Oil and Gas until there is little world wide market except in North America. Should be interesting to watch. China's strategy is to surpass the US in economic output and this may be their answer.
Richard Wolff argues it is already happening....China's growth outpacing anything America can do by a factor of 3 to 1. Likely the real reason for all that ginned up worry about Chinese interference........while America meanwhile plots to take over our great country and its many advantages going forward into a green clean energy world.