It’s been difficult to keep track of the Trump administration’s relentless all-out all assault on clean energy in the US. Here’s a good one-stop shop of evidence by Thomas Edsall in his latest column in the NYT (Gift link). He concludes:

What makes Trump’s energy policies so egregious is that there is no credible justification for them.

Instead, three factors appear to be driving his decisions.

The first is Trump’s “deal” (his word) with the fossil fuel industry in April 2024 that he would gut Biden administration policies restricting the oil, gas and coal industries if the companies and their executive ponied up $1 billion for his election campaign.

The second is that Trump and many elected Republican officials see green energy as a liberal attempt to weaken oil and gas industries, or, as Trump put it, “This is all a scam, a giant scam.”

The third is the most petty. From 2006 to 2014, Trump bitterly fought plans to install wind turbines a mile from his Scotland golf course in Aberdeen. In February 2014, a Scottish civil court judge, Lord Doherty, ruled against Trump and granted approval for Aberdeen Offshore Wind Farm Ltd. to go forward with the project. The ruling left a deeply bitter taste in Trump’s mouth that lingers on.

He was unable to block the wind turbines in Aberdeen Bay, but he is determined to make such projects here as difficult and costly as possible.