The chopped steak eaters
The people who profit from climate destruction have names and faces. Last month, they all ate chopped steak.
There’s a detail I keep coming back to from Donald Trump’s recent fundraising dinner with oil executives, during which he reportedly asked them for $1 billion in campaign donations in exchange for repealing all of the Biden administration’s climate policies.
Surrounded by opulence, wearing fancy suits and discussing a Thanos-level mass extinction plan, the oil executives were eating… chopped steak.
Chopped steak is literally just breadcrumb-less meatloaf. It is, as I understand it, a shaped mound of ground sirloin usually topped with brown gravy. I don’t mean to knock the dish in general; I’m sure it can be good. I just feel like, if I were proposing a literal billion dollar “deal” in exchange for my aid in destroying a livable climate for all future generations, I’d at least serve an aged rib eye or something.
But I digress, because in the end, the chopped steak isn’t really very important, nor is the person who chose to serve it.
It’s the chopped steak eaters who deserve our scrutiny: the relatively anonymous oilmen and oilwomen fueling Trump’s probably-ketchup-based gravy train, as well as countless other campaigns to reverse climate progress.
The fossil fuel industry is Trump’s fifth-largest industry donor this election cycle, having already given $7.3 million to his campaign and associated groups, compared to $186,000 in support of Biden. The oil and gas industry has also poured another $6.4 million into a joint fundraising committee called Trump 47, which helps pay for some of Trump’s legal defense.
That $7.3 million is at least three times more than what the fossil fuel industry gave Trump’s campaign by this period in 2020, according to OpenSecrets. And now that Trump’s made the ROI explicit, the industry is very likely about to give much more.
Because while Biden hasn’t exactly been the anti-fossil fuel champion climate activists wanted, his administration thoroughly enraged Big Oil by pausing new permits for liquefied methane gas terminals.
In fact, Biden has pissed off Big Oil so much that, this morning, the New York Times reported that three oil executives are hosting another private fundraising lunch for Trump tomorrow in Houston.
It is tragically ironic that the executives are meeting in Houston, where more than 200,000 homes and businesses are still without power from a violent storm that killed at least four people, and where a dangerous heat wave is currently building. Storms like these are “on the rise in a warming climate,” Bloomberg reported.
But climate costs for regular Houstonians are likely not on oil executives’ minds. According to an analysis from Friends of the Earth, taking Trump’s “deal” could save the fossil fuel industry $110 billion over time if Biden’s proposed elimination of industry tax breaks comes to pass.
The cost for the world’s most vulnerable, of course, will be unfathomably higher. And should he be re-elected, Trump will always be a recognizable face to blame.
But the chopped steak eaters deserve a place in the history books, too. So here are some of the most important ones to commit to memory.
Harold Hamm, kingpin fracker
“If Harold has an idea, the rest of us have to chase it around,” former Trump energy adviser Mike McKenna recently told the Times about Hamm, the executive chairman of fracking giant Continental Resources, and “one of the pioneers of the shale oil boom that turned the United States into the world’s largest crude exporter.”
Worth a whopping $18.4 billion, Hamm organized last month’s fundraising dinner for Trump because he “wants that LNG pause gone, he wants the California waiver and the tailpipe rule gone,” McKenna told the Times, referring to three major climate actions taken by the Biden Administration.
Hamm is also co-organizing tomorrow’s fundraising lunch for Trump, despite originally supporting Trump’s Republican primary opponents, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.
He reportedly “hates” to be called a “fracker,” which “to his ear sounds pejorative and disrespectful,” according to Forbes. So do with that what you will.
Kelcy Warren, pipelines and propaganda
“You must grow until you die.” That’s the mantra of Kelcy Warren, co-organizer of tomorrow’s fundraising lunch and CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, which owns and operates the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline.
When the company is not partnering with police to fight Indigenous-led water protectors, Energy Transfer also makes commercials designed to convince Americans that solving climate change will destroy everything they love. The disappearing football ad was one of our favorites.
From pipelines and propaganda, Warren has made himself a nice living: He’s worth approximately $7 billion. That’s in part due to the unique way he’s structured his company, which allows him to largely avoid paying taxes.
Warren’s money has bough him many things, including: “A 23,000-square-foot home in Dallas, which boasts a 200-seat theater, a bowling alley and a baseball field … a fleet of private planes, an entire Honduran island, and an 11,000-acre ranch near Austin that has giraffes, javelinas and Asian oxen,” ProPublica reported.
Although Warren did also receive a COVID stimulus check in 2020. So you know. I’m sure he too knows tough times.
Vicki Hollub, carbon capture cons
The CEO of “Warren Buffett’s favorite oil company,” Occidental Petroleum, Vicki Hollub was reportedly at Trump’s chopped steak dinner fundraiser last month and is a co-organizing Trump’s fundraising lunch in storm-ravaged Houston tomorrow.
A peasant by oil industry CEO standards, Hollub is reportedly worth $31 million. But she’s a true pioneer of a new and booming fossil fuel industry technique: investing in carbon capture not to solve climate change, but to drill more oil.
As NPR reports, Occidental Petroleum is investing in direct air capture, a technology which scientists say will necessary to keep the planet from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. But instead of using it for that purpose, NPR reports: “The company intends to use the technology to do what it does best: to extract more oil, thus helping prolong the life of the same fossil fuels that climate experts say need to be wound down.”
Hollub’s plan is to capture all of the fossil fuel industry’s carbon and store it underground in a massive, volatile pipeline system that stretches all over the country. If she can do that, she said, “There's no reason not to produce oil and gas forever." Hooray!
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Other chopped steak eaters reportedly include:
Chevron CEO Mike Wirth
ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods
Continental Resources CEO Robert Lawler
Chesapeake Energy CEO Domenic Dell’Osso,
Venture Global CEO Mike Sabel
Cheniere Energy CEO Jack Fusco
EQT CEO Toby Rice
American Petroleum Institute (API) CEO Mike Sommers.
Further reading:
Trump pitch to oil companies turns off two-thirds of likely voters, poll finds. The Hill, May 2024.
House Democrat presses oil CEOs for details of Trump’s fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago. CNBC, May 2024.
Weather Like the Deadly Houston Windstorm Is Being Fueled in Part by Climate Change. Bloomberg, May 2024.
Trump asked Exxon for money. Period. HEATED. October 2020
No Catch of the Day today; e-mail length limit won’t allow it. You’ll have more furry friend pics in your inbox later this week!
Absolutely the best opening lines about the cheapness of serving chopped steak.
Hilarious! I was hooked!
Besides the excellent content, Saturday Night Live may want you for their own purposes.
Thanks very much!
Sorry if this comes off as political but something I have noticed for a while now among articles like this covering Republicans and Trump and the fossil fuel companies, across all sorts of climate newsletters or sites, is the Inflation Reduction Act missing from the discussion, and how Republicans and fossil fuel companies wanting that repealed. And more generally a lack of coverage in general from climate oriented outlets.
I think when polling shows 7 in 10 Americans know little or nothing about the IRA, that is a problem both for getting its benefits to people and what it means politically. I will lose my mind if Trump wins, and all that negatively means for the climate, in part because of people not knowing about the IRA, which I think would be a collective failure, including from me.
To be clear, I'm not asking for reporters to become Biden cheerleaders, just, idk, more proactive on the specific topic of the IRA.
Don't want to take anything away from this piece, and I'm not being critical of your journalism. I'm grateful for this great reporting on these people, and the obvious imo quid pro quo going on between Trump and fossil fuel execs! Just more concern and curiosity if you in your discussions with other climate journalists, feel there is a hesitation (maybe not the right word) in discussing the IRA? Curious on your thoughts if you want to share!