The fossil fuel industry is enjoying a new moment of splendeur thanks to President-elect Donald Trump’s special taste when it comes to choose his cabinet. A few days after Mr. Trump appointed Rex Tillerson, chief executive of Exxon Mobile, as secretary of state, he announced Rick Perry, former governor of Texas, to be the new secretary of Energy.

If Perry becomes energy secretary, his background in conservative politics will mark a dramatic break with the scientific expertise of the current Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, a nuclear physicist, reports The Atlantic. Perry has a track record of questioning climate science. As Texas governor, Perry presided over an uptick of natural gas drilling and defended oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. According to a New York Times report, “Under Mr. Perry, Texas has moved eagerly to build coal-fired power plants, even as other states have stopped issuing permits for the plants because of pollution concerns.”

“Trump seems to view fossil fuels as at the center of U.S. economic power at home and abroad, providing cheap energy for the dream of increased domestic manufacturing and also lucrative export markets for U.S. oil, natural gas and coal,” says Paul Bledsoe, an energy consultant and former climate change adviser in the Clinton White House, as quoted in The Washington Post.

In the final months of Obama’s presidency, his administration has finalized several rules designed to bolster and protect his environmental legacy. They include a restriction on the flaring of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, during oil and gas operations on federal land. But Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and campaigned on promises to dismantle Obama’s climate initiatives. 

As reported in The Washington Post and The Atlantic.