CRUDE (OIL) JOKE

Donald Trump vowed to “drill, baby, drill,” but it’s hardly so simple: Markets are already flooded with crude, and oil drillers have other ideas, as climate reporter Stephanie Ebbs explains.

• President-elect Donald Trump’s big plan to unleash American fossil fuel energy has a problem: It’s already unleashed! U.S. oil production hit an all-time record under President Joe Biden. America now pumps more oil than Saudi Arabia — or about 13 percent of global supply. Trump can’t just snap his fingers and make more oil gush out of the ground cartoon style. “Drill, baby, drill” may be a catchy slogan, but it’s hardly a coherent policy, Brian Prest, an economist at the nonpartisan think tank Resources for the Future, told What A Day.

• The oil industry is shrugging its shoulders at Trump’s big talk. Companies that produce, buy, and sell fossil fuels make decisions based on global market forces — not cheerleading from the White House. In short, they drill more when oil is expensive, and they don’t want to flood the market and drive down prices. “When the price goes up, drilling goes up,” Prest said. “You can plot over time the path of the price of oil and the number of oil wells drilled.”

• Some big players in the oil patch worry that drilling more would push prices down, according to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal. There’s little appetite to radically increase production, one Exxon executive said. “We’re not likely to see anybody in ‘drill, baby, drill’ mode,” Reuters reports.

• The biggest change Trump is expected to make is to open up leases that give companies permission to drill on public lands and federal waters offshore like the Gulf of Mexico. But leasing does not always equal production. While we may see companies snapping up leases, they may just sit on them until the price is right, Prest said.

Trump’s pro-fossil fuel agenda could still make a big difference, though — and so could his attacks on the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s landmark plan to spend hundreds of billions of dollars fighting climate change.

• The IRA provides incentives for clean energy projects and Electric Vehicles aimed at speeding up a “clean energy transition” to replace fossil fuels. Trump’s efforts to stall that progress means we’ll be hearing a lot more about fossil fuels than wind or solar power over the next four years. Trump could greenlight old-school, dirty-energy infrastructure projects that make it easy for the country to keep guzzling oil and natural gas — things like pipelines and terminals.

• Wind and solar are cheaper than oil and natural gas once they’re built. But a lot of the country doesn’t have enough of them to flip the switch to a 100 percent renewable grid. And there are still way more regular engines on the road than electric cars and trucks. This longer-term infrastructure transition matters a lot to the future of climate change. But it’s hardly the same question as Trump’s simplistic idea to just drill more.

Scientists have warned that to prevent more damage to our climate, fossil fuel use needs to “peak” and start coming down. That’s not what Trump and the fossil fuel industry want to hear.

This story is supported by our nonprofit partner, Crooked Ideas.

GAIN THE WORLD, LOSE YOUR SEOUL?

South Korea entered a spiraling political crisis after the country’s president temporarily suspended the country’s normal legal system and rules of governance, only to reverse himself hours later.

President Yoon Suk Yeol shocked the country with a surprise declaration of martial law last night, vowing to “eliminate” his opposition amid a drop in his popularity and a struggle to pass his agenda. Yoon’s opposition and even his own conservative party immediately slammed the move as an authoritarian overreach not seen in Seoul since the 1980s. Yoon, who has rebuked calls for independent investigations into scandals involving him, his wife, and top officials, accused his opposition of being aligned with North Korean communist sympathizers.

South Korea’s parliament voted 190-0 to lift martial law, showing the kind of unanimity rarely seen in American politics. (By comparison, as Crooked’s Max Fisher astutely pointed out, 139 Republican lawmakers and eight senators voted to certify Donald Trump’s attempted coup in 2020.)  Later today, Yoon backed down, and agreed to lift his martial law order.

Now, the question becomes whether Yoon’s move will ultimately backfire, leading to his impeachment. Most South Koreans want to see him impeached, according to a November survey, and his approval rating has fallen as low as 17 percent.

Yoon’s move to target alleged communists, seemingly with the intent of strengthening his grip on power by using the military, is reminiscent of an authoritarian playbook used by U.S.-backed leaders around the world throughout the mid-20th century. That phenomenon is excellently documented in The Jakarta Method by journalist Vincent Bevins, which I highly recommend.

NEWS NEWS NEWS

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has recently signaled that he’s open to negotiations with Russia to end the war, even if it allows Moscow to keep the land it has taken over the past two years. But Zelenskyy wants a promise that Ukraine will be able to soon join NATO, which Russia and Western countries (including the U.S.) have opposed.

Fox News host Pete Hegseth’s drinking habits while at the TV outlet worried colleagues, including some who smelled alcohol on him before he went on air, according to NBC News. Not only that, Vanity Fair reports that Hegseth admitted to having five affairs while he was married to his first wife. FIVE affairs? Who has the time??? Republican senators are saying they want close scrutiny of Hegseth before they confirm him as defense secretary.

Donald Trump suggested to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that, if he doesn’t like his tariff proposal, the land of Tim Hortons and maple syrup could just become the 51st American state. Trudeau reportedly laughed nervously, like the famous Julia Louis-Dreyfus meme from “Veep.”

Trump’s transition team reached a deal with the Department of Justice today to allow the FBI to conduct background checks on his top appointments. “Allow”? Thank you, your highness! This is usually a normal thing, but Trump was dragging this out because he hates the FBI ever since they raided his home in Florida, and, of course, his nominees are especially sketchy, so who knows what they’re hiding. At least someone’s going to have a look!

A 27-year-old American woman in Springfield, Ohio was sentenced to a year in jail after she admitted killing and eating a cat. Her case had sparked the false claims spread by Vice President-elect JD Vance that Haitian migrants in the city were eating their pets. She had originally pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to a charge of cruelty to animals, but entered a guilty plea on Monday.

Coca-Cola tried to use artificial intelligence to recreate some of its old, nostalgic Christmastime ads — and drew immense backlash because, well, people hate AI. Critics called the commercial “soulless” and blasted the company for not using human animators or actors. Wanna take bets on whether the company used ChatGPT to draft the press release defending itself?

Crypto billionaire Justin Sun — who spent $6 billion on a banana duct taped to a wall and then ate the damn thing — invested $30 million in Trump’s crypto project shortly after the election. Now, the guy’s under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Sounds about right.

Florida Sheriff Chad Chronister, Trump’s pick to lead the Drug Enforcement Agency, withdrew his name only three days after being tapped, claiming, essentially, that he just realized that he doesn’t have the experience to do the job. “The gravity of this very important responsibility set in,” he said. Chronister also set off criticism in MAGAworld for previously enforcing social distancing rules during the pandemic. So, ironically, it may not have been that he was too unprepared for his next job, but too diligent about his old one, to catch a gig in Trumpworld.

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