Where to even start? The agenda of Donald Trump’s new White House administration leaves you breathless and fearful with its audacity and ambition. Amid the flurry of executive orders, the pardons, the threat of trade tariffs, the promise of peace treaties and simultaneous invasions of sovereign states, the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, the cancellation of its WHO subscription, however, one idea trumps all others in this administration: Greed is Good.

Nowhere is this more nakedly expressed than the Donald’s discarding of environmental commitments. The vow to ‘drill, baby, drill’ looks to all the world like a reckless response to the climate change threat. As average temperatures last year passed the long-term 1.5C global warming target, the Paris Agreement’s commitment for greenhouse gas emissions to peak in 2025 is well and truly busted. Instead, Trump has adopted an ‘if you can’t beat them join them’ approach, in which lower oil prices from America’s vast oil riches can provide a hedge against the inherent inflation of his protectionist agenda. It’s even painted as a foreign policy tool to cripple Russia’s most valuable export. And it’s certainly not just the US that’s doubling down on fossil fuels. Brazil’s left-wing president, Lula da Silva, wants to alleviate poverty by drilling for the black stuff in the Amazon.

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Perhaps the only difference with other world leaders is the absence of hypocrisy in Trump’s stance. The host of COP29, Azeri president Ilham Aliyev, believes Azerbaijan’s oil and gas resources are “a gift from God”. The 2025 UN Conference of Parties (COP) climate summit will be hosted by Brazil (in the Amazon rainforest). And China is tipped alongside Brazil to lead COP30 negotiations. Then again even China was reported this week to be worried about the US leaving the Paris Agreement.

But as the industry faces into inflated costs from DRS and EPR; and with further sustainability targets maturing in 2025, the obvious question that arises from Trump’s ‘burn, baby, burn’ agenda is: what’s the point? What’s the point of being responsible? What’s the point of making sacrifices and burdening ourselves with extra costs?

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