"Drill, Baby, Drill!": Slow Violence During a Second Trump Presidency
- Robin Bacon & Patricia Warren
- May 7
- 8 min read
We finished this blog post on May 1st, 2025, at 3:33pm. We have reached 4 years, 81 days, and 19 hours left before ever-growing irreversible ecological damage propels us into the nightmare that is the mass extinction of an entire planet, our planet… and our own president ignorantly demands to speed up the process.
Before Trump’s election in 2024, significant progress was made towards combating climate change thanks to the efforts of the Biden administration. Biden had plans to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century. He sought to halve U.S. peak carbon pollution levels by 2030. He created more than 271,000 new clean energy jobs. On top of that, the Ocean Justice Strategy and the passage of legislation provided billions in funding towards environmental justice. And that just scratches the surface… Throughout his presidency, Biden continued his efforts toward combating climate change. The Biden administration not only reversed the active harm Trump made during his first presidency, but it also made halving carbon pollution levels in 2030 a very real possibility. That is, until Trump returned…
It is no secret that President Trump and his administration couldn’t care less about climate change and its disastrous impacts. In fact, Trump has been quite vocal about his support for fossil fuel extraction (a key contributor to the warming of the planet) and wants us to drill more, saying: “We are going to drill, baby, drill”. In A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold writes, “Man’s invention of tools has enabled him to make changes of unprecedented violence, rapidity, and scope.” (A Sand County Almanac, 217). The tools used by the Trump Administration are numerous and they enact violence on the biosphere at multiple spatial and temporal scales.
During his first few months in office, The Guardian reported that Trump used U.S military power and tariffs to create more oil, gas, and coal production in other countries, while cutting aid that would help developing countries shift to renewables. He also fired thousands of federal workers in agencies related to environmental protection, removed references to climate change from federal websites, ambushed environmental regulations, and reneged on federal grants. As long as Trump is in office, we can expect to see a growing reliance on fossil fuels and propaganda that climate change is nothing more than a hoax.
These attitudes have begun to impact our beloved national parks, threatening 100 years of work aimed at protecting and preserving them. The National Parks Conservation Association has spent more than a century giving a voice to our national parks and declaring them protected land. Now, during a second Trump Administration, these efforts are under attack. Within weeks, park staff have been fired in large numbers, park facilities have been closed, and there have been attempts to erase important history. Even worse, efforts have been made to start drilling and mining in parks. Most recently, the Trump Administration has pushed for illegal mining in the Mojave National Preserve, citing that there are “rare earth minerals”. Mining in the Mojave is prohibited due to its status as protected land, but that has not stopped the Trump Administration. Trump has declared an energy emergency to give himself authority in speeding up oil and gas projects leading to inevitable ecocide. Leopold explains that the land recovers, but at a reduced complexity level and carrying capacity for living beings. The damage will not stop at national parks. Leopold asserts, “a system of conservation based solely on economic self-interest tends to ignore, and eliminate, many elements in the land community that lack commercial value, but are essential to its healthy functioning.” (A Sand County Almanac, 214)
So why is he doing this? There are many reasons he has given, but it is difficult to imagine that any of them are more important than the well-being of our entire planet and all the living beings within. But try telling that to a rich white man who profits directly off environmental destruction. In human history, Leopold suggests we’ve come to find the conqueror role is self-defeating. Why? The conqueror believes they know how community systems work and the values within. However, they are mistaken, and this results in their demise.
This man is the human embodiment of the Windigo. He represents the epitome of greed, consumption, uncontrolled desire, selfishness. He radiates insatiable hunger for money and requires constant attention to feed his ever-growing ego. Societal and environmental harm go hand in hand with his actions, and in those actions, he thrives while the many of the rest of us plummet into the destruction and chaos left behind. Trump uses the logic of domination and mechanistic, "I"-ethics ways of thinking to justify his environmental destruction. He believes that he, himself, and making money is more important than the well-being of the biosphere. He sees living ecosystems as a mere tools for financial gain. He has decided that climate change is a joke and unworthy of combating. He caters to the rich as most of them fall into his lap because climate change will affect them last. Trump “calls for no sacrifice, implies no change in the current philosophy of values.” (A Sand County Almanac, 208)
A caterpillar of the moth Haploa reversa. Photo by Patricia Warren.
You may wonder, why should we care?
These policies harm the intricate and delicate ecosystems that have flourished for thousands of years. Our culture is largely rooted in individualism and anthropocentrism, ideas that place humans superior to and removed from the natural world. Is it correct to assume that just because other species don’t experience life the same way we do that it's okay to impose harm on them and their ecosystems for our perceived benefit? We would argue that it's not. The ways we exist do not dictate our value, or the value of other non-human species. Leopold asserts that it is confounding how ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect, admiration, and high regard for value (in a philosophical sense). National parks are the lifeline for many species, supporting biodiversity and ecosystems that could not exist otherwise. Trump’s anthropocentrist goals threaten to destroy their homes. We optimistically believe if we shift our collective mentality and understand that other animals and plants have their own personhood, we would have an undeniable moral obligation to protect them. Perhaps we would do more for them simply because they are inherently worthy of life.
Aside from plants and animals, climate change also affects humanity, particularly marginalized communities due to lasting impacts of historical exploitation of resources and labor. This leads to today's structural violence in society that includes systemic racism, financial hardship, exposure to environmental toxins, and lack of access to critical resources necessary for life. Those in power may make efforts to adapt to climate change without acknowledging those most impacted by the lasting effects of historical injustices and systemic racism. Trump expediting the extraction of fossil fuels by the world's wealthiest corporations directly leads to further suffering of marginalized communities. Olufemi Taiwo writes in Reconsidering Reparations, “We ought to think of fossil fuel companies like we think of police, as generators of insecurity, and make similar efforts to divert resources from them back into looted communities” (Reconsidering Reparations, 182-183). For Taiwo, the reparations project must be global in scale and distribute capabilities (and as a result, resources) more justly if we want to meaningfully address structural violence that has accumulated over centuries of slavery and colonialism.
The devastating outcomes of the slow violence that is climate change have already begun. We are seeing this in rising sea levels, species extinction, hotter heat waves, and rapidly melting ice sheets and glaciers. Extreme weather patterns are becoming increasingly more frequent and devastating with severe flooding, droughts, wildfires, and hurricanes. We see the chaos all around us. We read and watch the results of climate change in the news. Every summer we visit Manhattan. We stare at the climate clock as it drastically declines year after year. We see protesters fighting for change and we hear the agonizing rebuttals of science deniers because, unfortunately, as Leopold writes, “The evidence had to be economic in order to be valid.” (A Sand County Almanac, 210)
Sometimes we discover these painful truths from friends firsthand before they inevitably reach our screens. We learned from friends of the wildfires that brought immense destruction to Los Angeles just a few months ago. We have watched loved ones be directly affected by the climate violence that doesn't seem so "slow" when fires sweep through entire neighborhoods. Some friends had their homes burned to the ground, others left their belongings behind as they were forced to evacuate, not knowing if they’ll have a place to return to. Animals were left running for their lives from their homes. Neighborhoods were completely leveled. The air was still painful to breathe days after the fires. We fear we take the very air we breathe for granted.
Trump tries to keep us from making changes, but it is vital we continue combating climate change. We need to recognize Earth’s inter-connectedness. It’s our responsibility to ensure mutual care towards all life and promote sustainable ways of living. We have responsibilities to future generations - human and non-human - more than ever. There is much about our planet we are not privy to, facts of which we just learned this semester. Knowledge that has changed our outlook on life. It’s on us to educate ourselves and encourage others to do the same using our newfound wisdom. Education and a “We"-Ethics state of mind is vital.
About 2,000 miles away from Los Angeles is the only home we’ve known: Chicago. Although we haven’t experienced the destruction of ravaging wildfires, we’ve seen firsthand the changes in weather patterns. We fondly recall my childhood when we expected blizzards and snow days every winter. The snow collected inches above ground, and we would put on our snow pants to build snowmen taller than we were. Nowadays, we don’t often have snow for Christmas. Sometimes a few inches in January, but nothing like how it used to be. Everywhere there is evidence of our planet changing. When will we accept that these changes aren’t natural fluctuations, but a product of our own greed and negligence, enacting slow violence on the biosphere and ourselves in pursuit of short-term material wealth? Devastation after devastation, we take to the streets, we chant, we donate, we research, we hope to be heard by those in power…and the future of the biosphere and our communities hangs in the balance.
-- Robin Bacon & Patricia Warren
Works Cited
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