Donald Trump's presidential transition is basically reality television | Richard Wolffe Read more

Swamp monsters are about to take over the White House, and the consequences for the environment are terrifying. Tech millionaires are known for making lofty promises on climate. Now that they’ve jumped into the bed with Trump, they’ll be quick to say they can “disrupt” the administration from within. That’s nonsense.



At a meeting in New York on Wednesday, Trump gathered a slew of industry all-stars – including Uber’s Travis Kalanick, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and Apple’s Tim Cook – to talk jobs and economic development. Among the more surprising faces at the table was Elon Musk, the media darling and renewable energy magnate who criticized Trump during the campaign, and has long raised alarm bells about the potentially disastrous impacts of man-made climate change.



Now, Musk looks poised to become part of a small but growing group of green-tech millionaires willing to work with Trump. Musk had an intimate meeting with just Trump and Cook. He’ll also join Kalanick and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum.



He’s not the only one who thinks Trump can be reasoned with. Al Gore – now making a modest fortune as a green-tech investor – was optimistic about the potential for finding “common ground” with Trump on climate following a recent meeting with him. “[I]n this energy space,” Bill Gates said after his own meeting with Trump, “there can be a very upbeat message that [Trump’s] administration [is] going to organize things, get rid of regulatory barriers, and have American leadership through innovation.”



While “innovation” may help Musk, Gore and Gates turn a profit, it alone won’t save the planet from Donald Trump – or his cabinet picks. Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson is poised to become the United States’ chief diplomat. In line to head the Department of Energy is former Texas governor Rick Perry, who sits on the board of the company behind the Dakota Access pipeline and once suggested the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster was an “act of God”.



Still, the rosy views coming from these “eco-optimists” is tempting. As federal regulatory agencies face threats from inside and out, a simple and market-friendly solution would seem to offer an easy out for a problem as big as climate change.

If inventors could simply unlock the potential of clean energy technology – through tax incentives and a healthy injection of start-up capital – solar panels and wind turbines could proliferate, making dirty fuels obsolete.

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For such thinking, Musk, Gates and Gore have all been hailed as saviors of a sort, quirky geniuses who offer a pragmatic and optimistic approach to solving the climate crisis – not to mention a whole lot of capital. Leveraged effectively, they say, technology can create a world-saving “Breakthrough,” as the name of Gates and other billionaires’ new $1bn clean energy fund suggests.

But there’s one big problem with such an apparently quick and harmonious fix: the fossil fuel industry, along with its $5.3tn in subsidies and men on its payroll who are snapping up cabinet positions. There’s nothing inherent to an uptick in clean energy that means we’ll start digging up less fossil fuels. As climate scientists have been warning for years, that’s exactly what we need to do.

For just a two-in-three shot of keeping below the 2C (3.6F) target outlined in the Paris agreement, wealthy nations like the US should fully decarbonize their energy systems by 2035.

In other words, we need to phase fossil fuels out of our economy entirely within just 20 years – no pipelines, no drilling and no gas-powered cars. That’s not just a problem for the future, either. Simply burning fossil fuels is already killing 5 million people each year.



Granted, market signals and technological innovations are a critical part of transitioning away from fossil fuels. But the main task of climate policy over the next four years is no different than what it was before Trump was elected: challenging the power of the fossil fuel industry on all fronts.



That now entails challenging the administration itself, and defending agencies like the EPA from the climate deniers and free market zealots now in charge of them. There’s no path to a low-carbon future without strict regulations on coal, oil and natural gas. And every signal from Trump’s transition team points to a free reign for fossil fuel developers, in the United States and around the world.

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Musk, Gore, Gates and the other so-called climate champions who choose to collaborate with Trump should beware. They will be guilty of their own form of climate denial if they can’t see the glaring conflict between what he says behind closed doors and the havoc his cabinet threatens to wreak on the planet. Left to their own devices, Trump and his Silicon Valley allies will just slap more Teslas and solar panels onto a burning planet.