Make America Dirty Again: The Trusk Doctrine—how the Trump administration is unleashing a dark age of American energy policy

In April 2024, a deal was struck behind closed doors at Mar-a-Lago—Trump asked the energy titans for $1B in campaign donations, promising it would be a “deal” for them. They ponied up, Trump won, and now Trump and Musk are busy Making America Dirty Again by revoking climate protections, greenlighting fossil fuel projects, and more with his “Unleashing American Energy” Executive Order. Since his inauguration, Trump has been busy honoring his debt to donors while increasing America’s national debt and shrinking climate protections.

In the Trusk Universe, reality bends around the gravitational pull of their egos and logic evaporates like polar ice caps in July. The Make America Dirty Executive Orders go farther than simply paving a pathway for oil and gas companies to make record-breaking profits—it attempts to stop cleaner tech from competing. By expediting approval for new fossil-fuel projects (but not solar and wind), eliminating funding for clean energy innovation, freezing all permits for wind projects, withdrawing the federal electric vehicle subsidies (and attempting to prevent states from offering their own EV incentives), Trusk has benched clean energy for the season while fossil fuels get a permanent spot in the starting lineup—complete with referees who looks the other way.

So why would Trusk want to cut out greens when the EO cited the necessity of creating a “​​reliable, diversified, and affordable supply of energy” and declared a “national energy emergency?” We can only speculate since it doesn’t make any logical sense since America is already the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas. What fossil fuel producers want isn’t more supply, but less competition. By eliminating competition from renewable energy sources, they can keep supply low and costs high for the American taxpayers. Apparently, the ‘diversified’ mandate in the EO only applies to energy supplied by Trump donors—because nothing says ‘free market’ like government-backed monopolies. Not surprising, though—this administration treats ‘diversity’ the same way it treats climate science: as something to deny, defund, and delete from official records.

What about the Musk half of the Trusk equation? One upon a time, Musk claimed to be “super pro-planet.” That made sense in 2010 when Tesla benefitted from a $460M low-interest loan from the US federal government to develop electric vehicles, back when Tesla had sold less than 2,000 vehicles. Since that time, Tesla has made an estimated $10B+ from selling emissions credits to polluters and benefitted from the $3.4B in tax credits given to consumers to help them afford Tesla electric cars. In other words, Musk built his empire with government help—then jettisoned the booster stage that got him there, letting it crash and burn while he soared ahead.

One might think Musk might be a champion of the US government investing in the kinds of subsidies and investments that helped make him the planet’s richest man. Instead, Musk is hard at work dismantling the very institutions and policies that fueled his success. So what’s changed? The climate science hasn’t changed—the predictions are more dire than ever. Musk’s profit centers and legal liabilities, however, have shifted considerably (like his jaw and hairline). Musk companies (Tesla and SpaceX) were subject to numerous investigations which are now presumably called off thanks to the Trump-controlled Department of Justice. Also, US government payouts to Musk companies ($20B for SpaceX vs. a relatively paltry $41. M for Tesla) may explain why Musk would sacrifice Tesla (and the fate of the planet) for SpaceX. 

Trusk is the corporate equivalent of a blood-sucking tick—except this tick also tweets conspiracy theories at 2 a.m. and thinks science is a liberal hoax. They’ve embedded themselves into the flesh of the US government, feasting on our country’s wealth and bleeding its resources to feed their insatiable needs for power, praise and attention, showing that the only green thing that matters to them is money. Meanwhile, the World Economic Forum estimates that climate-related deaths will reach 14.5 million by 2050, with a cost of $12.5 trillion in economic losses. The Trusk administration is unleashing alright, but what they’re unleashing is a dark age, not a golden one. 

A golden age of energy is attainable—and it can be affordable and sustainable. But while the Trusk machine busies itself by funneling funds and resources away from renewable energy and supporting other world leaders with similar exploitative, dark age mindsets, other countries and companies will develop the technologies that will power the second half of the twenty-first century. The US was on course to lead the renewable energy transition, but Trusk policies have rerouted the US, placing it in full self-driving mode—too bad the system hasn’t been updated since 2016 and keeps mistaking ‘cliff’ for ‘open road.’ Fossil fuels are the problem, not the solution, and we need leadership that moves us forward instead of shackling us to the past.