@earthjustice.org President Abigail Dillen on @ayanaeliza.bsky.social's show this morning, talking about why abundance-style deregulation is dangerous: "Let's not have fake neutrality about winners and losers. Let's make some choices about the future that we want and build laws to encourage that."

NEWS RELEASE: Nine in 10 New Mexicans support oil and gas bonding reform to rein in public costs from abandoned wells. $1.6 billion in liabilities at stake. #NMPol hearing begins 10/20.

While the Trump administration and Montana’s elected officials continue pushing to expand the state’s coal industry, companies on the ground appear to have a waning appetite. Read more from @dailymontanan.com

NEW: A Third Way fellow claimed in the Wall Street Journal's editorial pages that Democrats “alienated” Big Business into allying with Trump, and that our organization deserves some of the blame. Our full response in today’s newsletter:

OpenAI *really* isn't hiding its intention to power the AI boom with fossil fuels. New from me @desmog.com www.desmog.com/2025/10/13/o...

Reporting from @daveweigel.bsky.social shows the salience of campaigning against data centers. Candidates of both parties are working to harness Virginians' anger. For @prospect.org, @dylangyauchl.bsky.social and @maxmoranhi.bsky.social argued that Dems should lean into fighting the AI industry.

As we fight to hold the line in this moment & assess challenges & opportunities that (will) emerge from the Trump 2.0 ruins, I hope demand-side dogmatists abandon this argument. Too much is on the line. We need both supply & demand side energy strategies. Full stop.

Activists & advocates who directly confront the harms caused by fossil fuel production – as well as fossil fuel executives, per below – have long understood an obvious & otherwise unremarkable proposition: Fossil fuel supply creates fossil fuel demand.

Just like the fossil fuel industry, Big Tech, flush with investor money and a rabid desire to build out data centers, cares little about affordability and is more than happy to leverage it's power to have utilities shift the energy costs of AI data centers onto families.

Don't think for a second that the fossil fuel industry cares about affordability. They care about profits. And right now, they want to drill, baby, drill to feed the buildout of AI data centers to peddle even more AI slop.

The desire to further plunder public lands owned by all Americans (not oil & gas companies) is a key reason why the fossil fuel industry relentlessly pushes for "permitting reform."

Remember, too, that Sen. Mike Lee wanted (but failed) to sell off millions of acres of public lands -- lands owned by the American people. "Permitting reform" is simply a different mechanism for Lee to achieve the same objective: The plunder of America's cherished public lands & environment.

White House offers white glove, concierge service to fossil fuel companies. Meanwhile, wind and solar aren’t even allowed to check into the Motel 6. Great scoop from @jakespring.bsky.social www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

"Scarcity is indeed a choice...but not one being made by overzealous regulators or litigators. Scarcity is a choice made by those who profit from imposing it on the rest of us...Abundance is a detailed indictment of the wrong suspect, which only serves the interests of the real culprits."

BREAKING: The Trump admin has installed 100+ fossil fuel insiders and corporate lobbyists to roles across federal agencies. These staffers are enacting a dirty energy agenda and destroying our public lands. Our new report with Revolving Door Project breaks it all down ⬇️

Trump’s Exec. Order on seafood threatens decades of marine protections by opening national monuments to industrial fishing. Gear like trawls, gillnets and longlines devastates habitats and both targeted and not species. Tell NOAA to protect ocean ecosystems! secure.everyaction.com/cvNZk5i6cUaE...

A fireball lit up the sky across the Los Angeles area on Thursday night after an explosion at a Chevron refinery in El Segundo, alarming nearby residents who said it felt like an earthquake. The cause of the explosion was not clear. No injuries were reported. nyti.ms/42pPCaW

Love this work — We use it at my organization (@westernlaw.org) as a key conceptual tool for thinking about our advocacy goals and strategies. Recommend.

More here, including a letter @westernlaw.org & friends sent to Congress in July.

But it makes utterly no sense to cut a shitty “permitting reform” deal w/the devil now that’ll just entrench fossil fuels for next 3 years vs. waiting until a post-Trump politics (assuming we survive) where pro-climate folk will presumably have a far stronger hand to secure good climate policy.

Yglesias & Barro recognize “permitting reform” would prove meaningless during Trump (except re: buildout of natural gas infrastructure, which they support) with Barro, at the least, still evidently supporting it under pretext it sets stage for post-Trump action.

The Trump admin is doing this because they care more about providing a steady stream of profits to Trump's fossil fuel donors than providing clean, affordable energy to working people.

Yglesias is trolling various folks, but if you read the article (vs. screenshot it as Yglesias did), seems like UK's Labour intent to ban fracking is quite reasonable, supportive of working class voters, & is something that non-reactionary moderates would agree with!

Environmental groups are suing the Montana Department of Environmental Quality accusing the state agency of failing to follow the state Supreme Court’s order to consider a power plant's impact, report @dailymontanan.com and @statesnewsroom.com

NEWS RELEASE: We just filed a motion in the #NMPol #fracking wastewater rulemaking before the Water Quality Control Commission to disqualify 7 commissioners and vacate their votes to proceed because @govmlg.bsky.social and @jameskenney.bsky.social were caught tainting the process.

“Once again, DEQ ignored Montanans’ constitutional right to a stable climate when it failed to disclose the impact of a whopping 25 million tons of greenhouse gases from NorthWestern Energy’s large methane gas plant along the Yellowstone River,” said Anne Hedges, executive director of the MEIC.

NEWS RELEASE: MDEQ has once again not fully considered or disclosed the plant’s greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related harm despite being ordered to do so by the #Montana Supreme Court following an inadequate 2021 analysis. cc: @meic-official.bsky.social @earthjustice.org

The fastest way to reduce methane emissions is to slash the use of natural gas, and particularly LNG

Remarkably, I also heard this from a state Democratic legislator a year ago — one who is a solid climate vote — relative to state-level subsidies in New Mexico. Was a bit shocked. Seems there’s a myth that O&G = “free market”; renewables = “government-subsidized market.”

Full report here: oilchange.org/publications...

"The Trump administration has already added nearly $40 billion in new federal subsidies for oil, gas, and coal in 2025," is the way @wired.com reported on the 2025 @oilchange.bsky.social report. www.wired.com/story/us-tax...

Why did the line of questioning stop there? The NY Times in the past has reported on "nearly a dozen tax breaks, including incentives for domestic production and write-offs tied to foreign production" taking a very limited view of subsidies. www.nytimes.com/2024/03/15/c...

The U.S. Energy Secretary just said on stage at @nytimes.com Climate Forward event that “there are not oil and gas subsidies" in response to a good question from David Gelles. “It’s not a subsidized industry.” Uh. @oilchange.bsky.social @oilchangeus.bsky.social

Tough break for Alex Trembath and all the other abundists who insisted this is a "bottom-up" movement. Looks the speech delivered at the Abundance Conference just three weeks ago is hilariously out of touch with reality.

Someone had to say it

NEW fm @thenewmexican.bsky.social: It’s clear the admin is in an all-out effort to get the petition “over the finish line," as one staffer wrote...That included “huddles” behind closed doors w WQCC members. Most unseemly, & potentially violations of how the WQCC should be run under state law. #NMPol

$40 Billion in oil subsidies as... "The world’s five largest listed oil companies have made profits of more than a quarter of a trillion dollars since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to dramatic increases in energy prices and household bills" Reports @theguardian.com

MLG's administration has really bungled this -- aligning with fossil fuel interests and sidelining its own agency experts. Really disappointing.

NEW from @riogranderift.bsky.social: The @govmlg.bsky.social admin is pressuring the #NMPol water protection commission to allow Big Oil to discharge treated #fracking waste to our rivers, streams, groundwater, and land. It's 100% political, reckless, and not possible/safe with current tech.

🔎 New MethaneSAT insights reveal a striking contrast between states in the Permian. In New Mexico, which has strong methane protections, methane intensity is less than half that of operations in Texas. 🔗 www.methanesat.org/project-upda...

🛰️ New insights from @methanesat.bsky.social data show oil and gas methane intensity in New Mexico is less than half that of Texas in the Permian Basin — corresponding with strong state standards under @govmlg.bsky.social. 🔍 Check it out: www.edf.org/Z6rC

What's really going on with all the back channeling over oil and gas wastewater? Source NM and Capital & Main teamed up to investigate.

Good morning, BlueSky. I am at the Doña Ana County government building for a pivotal hearing on Project Jupiter, a gi-normous data center project proposed for Santa Teresa. Commissioners are expected to approve a staggering $165 billion industrial revenue bond, plus LEDA incentives. 1/

This is the same terrible Democrat behind the SPEED Act to gut the most essential environmental law in the U.S.: The National Environmental Policy Act. Our statement on Golden's awful bill with Republican Bruce Westerman from Arkansas who is so hostile to the environment it's crazy:

This is awesome. Read the whole letter. This is the way to write a comment letter to fools.

"Many climate advocates are rightly focused on defense—working indefatigably to extinguish the flames that Trump’s Cabinet has ignited in our climate policy edifice. But we also need architects to start sketching what we’ll build in the ashes."

Last day! PLEASE COMMENT....we need the roadless rule, and so do the countless creatures who live in these forests.

We signed on to the nonprofit letter to USFS Chief Tom Schulz to save the #RoadlessRule along with 328 other well-respected groups. We don't expect him to listen. After all, he is the first USFS chief who has never worked at the Service. Prepare for a knock-down, drag-out fight. We are.

Comments opposing rescinding the rule needed now! Due today by 8:59 PM PDT & 11:59 PM ET www.regulations.gov/commenton/FS... @westernlaw.org