United States: A Democratic Senator denounces the oil lobby to the White House
Opinion (with AFP)
Washington – The administration of US President Donald Trump no longer governs, it “occupies” the country in the service of the fossil fuel industry, tonnes of an influential Democratic senator. Sheldon Whitehouse, one of the most committed American elected officials on climatic issues, sounds the alarm in an interview on the omnipotence of the black gold lobby in Washington. “It is no longer a government,” lands the elected representative of the Rhode Island, 69 years old. “It is a force of occupation of the fossil fuels industry that has infiltrated the key positions”. For the Democrat, members of the government “have offices, titles”, but “they are fossil fuels (…) they do not care in the world of public opinion or public security”. Whoever is preparing to hold his 300th alert discourse on the climate crisis on Wednesday, a speech he entitled “Time to Wake Up” (“it’s time to wake up”), urges the extent of this “scam” to counter it. According to a recent analysis of the Climate Power organization, large oil companies spent at least $ 445 million to have Donald Trump elected in November 2024, an amount probably very underestimated because many donations remain anonymous. – “Corruption” – Since his return to power, the Republican leader has started a reverse march all in terms of fighting climate change, once again emerging the first world power of the Paris climate agreement, undergoing scientific agencies and unraveling the environmental measures of its Democratic predecessor. And this while the signs of this crisis are multiplying, the United States crying this week by its dead after devastating floods in Texas, the occurrence of which was made more likely by climate change. The “most sordid dreams” of polluters “come true”, accuses Mr. Whitehouse, who calls on his peers to publicly denounce what he describes “as the most serious corruption and political fraud that the country has ever known”. For him, the grip of the oil lobby on politics dates back a controversial judgment of the Supreme Court dating from 2010 and having lifted any limits to the financing of political campaigns by companies. They “were able to enter the Republican Party and say: +We will give you unlimited sums. You will have more money in your elections that you have never seen before+, “says Mr. Whitehouse. Before that, elected Democrats and Republicans collaborated on climatic issues and the 2008 presidential candidate, John McCain, even had a program on this subject” quite respectable “, he insists. And as proof, according to him, that it is a question of money: Donald Trump: In 2009, he was an exhorting publication of the president of the time, Barack Obama, to make it more in terms of climate. Canada, Mexico and Australia could copy the border tax mechanism adopted in this sense by the European Union in 2022, and this would affect the United States via the numerous merchant transactions binding Washington to these countries, he hopes. Transparent. But the most concrete solution could come from the American economy itself, because it is threatened by climate change. spectacular, “he says.
