Center for Biological Diversity


For Immediate Release, November 21, 2016

Contact: Randi Spivak, (310) 779-4894, rspivak@biologicaldiversity.org

Trump's New Interior Department Transition Team Leader Believes Burning
Fossil Fuels Is a 'Moral' Imperative; Has Ties to Koch Brothers, ExxonMobil

WASHINGTON— President-elect Trump today again shook up his anti-environmental transition team, naming the director of a pro-Big-Oil think tank to lead his Interior Department advisory group.

Doug Domenech is director of the Fueling Freedom Project, a subsidiary of the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is heavily funded by the billionaire Koch brothers and ExxonMobil. The Fueling Freedom Project advocates and celebrates the continued burning of fossil fuels, and its goals include exempting CO2 from pollution rules. Its prime directive is to defend “the forgotten moral case for fossil fuels,” according to its website.

The Center for Biological Diversity issued the following statement in response to Domenech’s appointment:

“It’s beyond frightening that Trump would appoint a shill for Big Oil to plot the direction of a department that administers millions of acres of public lands that belong to all Americans,” said Randi Spivak, the Center’s public lands director. “This is a clear signal that in a Trump administration it will be open season for corporations who want to frack, drill or mine our public resources, regardless of climate chaos, water pollution, species extinction and health impacts to communities. Any attempt to open up America’s public lands to increased fracking, drilling and extraction will be met with a wall of public resistance. That’s the real moral imperative.”

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.1 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.


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