On April 15th, 2010, the CEO of the global oil conglomerate BP (formerly known as British Petroleum), Tony Hayward, spoke to company shareholders at the Annual General Meeting in London. “For a long time, BP has advocated a proactive approach to climate change and supported action to curb carbon emissions.”
Five days later, disaster struck in the Gulf of Mexico. The 52,587 ton semisubmersible oil drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank into the Atlantic. A total of 134 million gallons of oil leaked into the Gulf, becoming one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. Mike Williams, an engineer and father, stood atop the rig and looked into the eyes of a coworker named Andrea, who said, “I’m scared.” Soaked in blood, a scorching inferno of flames and smoke behind them, Mike and Andrea jumped 90 feet off the rig into the Atlantic, where the Coast Guard later rescued them.
The disaster killed 11 people and injured 17. Two months later, in a congressional hearing, Hayward dismissed responsibility, saying, “I was not part of the decision-making process on this well…I had no prior knowledge.” Following the Deepwater Horizon incident, photographers documented the devastating ecological damage caused by the spill. In one photo, a NOAA veterinarian holds up a sea turtle coated in a thick layer of oil. The turtle was one of 95,000 to 200,000 that did not survive the aftermath. Another picture shows a dolphin inhaling the dark, gelatinous substance through its blowhole. The Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 cost approximately $7 billion to clean, and the Deepwater Horizon spill cost $61 billion.
Despite the oil and gas industry’s expressed concerns about climate change, the industry has contributed more to global temperature rise than any other sector. The UN has confirmed that burning fossil fuels — specifically, coal, oil and natural gas — is the most significant cause of climate change. It accounts for roughly 75 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions.
Moreover, a 2017 Carbon Majors Report found that just 100 companies — with ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron at the top of the list — were responsible for a little more than 70 percent of all man made global carbon emissions produced since 1988.
In 2023 alone, the U.S. consumed approximately 7.39 billion barrels of petroleum and made roughly 4,795 million metric tons of CO2 emissions. Studies find that, in 2018, a total of 8.7 million people globally died from air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels, which equated to one of every five people who died that year in total. When fossil fuels burn, fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) enters the atmosphere as a byproduct. When a person inhales, particulate matter enters the lungs and bloodstream. If the atmospheric concentration of PM2.5 exceeds five micrograms per cubic meter — the benchmark specified by the World Health Organization, indicating a generally safe level of ambient PM2.5 — the risk of severe health consequences, such as respiratory infection and heart disease, becomes precariously high. China and India, two nations consuming vast quantities of fossil fuels, recorded the highest mortality rates of any country, with 3.5 million and 2.5 million premature deaths, respectively, caused by dangerously high levels of PM 2.5 in the air.
Although the amount of oil spilled by tankers has decreased in recent decades — with less than 10,000 tons spilled every year, compared to the 300,000 tons spilled annually during the 1970s — the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has warned that one gallon of used oil can contaminate up to one million gallons of freshwater.
Despite the danger fossil fuel energy poses to the world, the Trump administration has presented a vision for America’s energy future that contrasts with the low-carbon agenda of his predecessor, former president Joe Biden. During his 2025 inaugural address, Donald Trump appeared to speak directly to fossil fuel giants when he proudly proclaimed, “We will drill, baby, drill.” He then followed this statement by saying, “ [America has]…the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on earth — and we are going to use it.”
But why is the Trump administration championing fossil fuels, even when China is overtaking international clean energy markets and will likely dominate future global energy supplies? Shall we follow the money and see where it leads? Fossil fuel industry donors spent roughly $445 million in the 2024 election cycle on donations, lobbying and advertising to help Trump win and to influence Congress. Fossil fuel donors spent $243 million lobbying Congress, $80 million on pro-Trump and pro-Republican advertising, $16.3 million on Republican House races and over eight million dollars on Republican Senate races.
In April of 2024, Trump invited a group of oil executives from companies such as ExxonMobil, EQT Corporation and the American Petroleum Institute to a private dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. There, Trump vehemently urged the tycoons to donate one billion dollars to his presidential campaign. He promised he would repay them by using his time in office to increase fossil fuel subsidies and dismantle the EPA’s environmental regulations. Executives forked over 96 million dollars to Trump’s reelection campaign and super-PAC.
After he secured the White House, Trump wasted no time delivering on those favors. He promptly appointed Chris Wright — founder and CEO of the one-billion-dollar American fracking company Liberty Energy — as the new Secretary of Energy. During a speech to members of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship on February 18th, 2025, Wright called the global renewable energy transition “lunacy.” As part of Trump’s July 4th One Big Beautiful Bill the federal government will allocate billions to oil and gas companies as repayment for the $105 million that fossil fuel donors spent to ensure Republicans would vote for the bill.
Oil and gas companies have enjoyed the support of the federal government for decades — even raking in 250 billion dollars during Joe Biden’s presidency. A 160 percent increase in profits accumulated during the first three years of Trump’s first term. Despite Biden’s climate-conscious Inflation Reduction Act, Reuters estimates that the cost of federal government subsidies to oil and gas companies is likely between $10 billion and $50 billion annually. Thus, it is not solely the fault of Trump that Big Oil and Gas have become so cozy in Washington. But, Trump is certainly exacerbating the problem.
This industry has spent billions on climate denialism and misinformation campaigns and, in the three years following the 2015 Paris Agreement, allocated a billion dollars of shareholder money to lobby Congress. The oil and gas industry should not receive favorable treatment from the federal government, especially at a time when estimates suggest that climate change could kill 40 million people by the end of the century.
Fossil fuel executives have known about the effect that their business has on the environment since at least 1968 and more likely before that. An article titled “The Earth’s Carbon Cycle,” which the Shell Corporation published in 1959, states that the burning of fossil fuels likely produces two and a half billion tons of carbon dioxide each year. The authors specified that this could “conceivably change the climate.”
Despite knowing that climate change could wreak havoc in the future, fossil fuel executives have intentionally misled the public about the seriousness of global warming for decades. To mitigate the damage caused by the fossil fuel industry and gain a competitive edge in the rapidly developing clean energy market, which China currently dominates, the Trump administration must shift its stance on American energy and take proactive steps to ensure a zero-carbon future.
Acknowledgment: The ideas expressed in this article are those of the individual author.