The Energy Covenant: Energy Dominance and the Rhetoric of the Aggrieved

Abstract

The Trump Administration has adopted "energy dominance" as its guiding ideology for energy policy, marking a notable shift from decades of "energy security" rhetoric. This paper analyzes how Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke, one of the administration's key spokespeople for energy dominance, uses "energy covenant renewal" to frame the importance of energy dominance for the conservative base. Covenant renewal is a modified form of the jeremiad; Zinke uses it to unite conservative identities around energy politics and policies. Energy dominance thus invites those who feel aggrieved under Obama administration regulatory policy and the multicultural identity politics of the left to renew their commitment to fossil fuels, American exceptionalism, and a restored social order and privilege.inTrODUcTiOn On September 29, 2017, Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, was hosted by the conservative organization the Heritage Foundation, where he gave his first major policy address titled: "A Vision for American Energy Dominance. " In this speech, Zinke outlines a vision for how the Department of the Interior (DOI) can aid in reversing decades of "American energy dependence. " The speech received media attention for how Zinke began it-he provided a lengthy defense of his own use of non-commercial flights, relevant because Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price had just been ousted from the Trump Administration for the same action (Adragna, 2017). What received less popular attention, however, and what is especially important about the speech, was its substance: Zinke's explication of the Trump administration's new approach to energy policy, known as "energy dominance. " We focus on that substance in this paper.We examine this speech because it is one of the more complete statements addressing energy policy to have emerged from the often-chaotic messaging apparatus of the first-year Trump administration. It also comes from one of its key spokespeople. Zinke, along with Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Rick Perry, Secretary of the Department of Energy, are the primary mouthpieces for "energy dominance. " We use rhetorical analysis to demonstrate that energy dominance not only draws on previous, familiar energy and political discourses but also departs from them in ways that have significance for how conservative identity politics are playing out in this political moment. This analysis is therefore in conversation with other types of energy communication work that focuses on how legacy energy systems resist change, consolidate power, and construct identity (see Endres et al., 2016).

Racial prejudice, education, and views of climate change

“…During the Obama presidency, conservative think tanks, industry leaders, and Republican elites engaged in aggressive climate change denialism (Boussalis and Coan, 2016;Cann and Raymond, 2018) and linked Obama to climate policy and opposition to resource extractive industries, for example, "Obama's War on Coal" (Schneider et al, 2016). During the Trump presidency, elite rhetoric about restoring coal and jobs to rural, white mining communities further reinforced these relationships (Schneider and Peeples, 2018). Other commonly used narratives in opposition to environmental policy emphasized the unfairness of international climate agreements, the betrayal of hard-working Americans in coal and mining, and the uneven distribution of costs and benefits across communities in the United States (Schneider et al, 2016;Stokes, 2015), all of which map onto similar themes of racial resentment and grievance about who takes and who gives to American society.…”

“La justicia ambiental es para ti y para mí”: Translating Collective Struggles for Environmental and Energy Justice in Puerto Rico’s Jobos Bay Communities

“…This arrangement provides a material reminder of whose existences are marked as exploitable and expendable and whose lives are valued in the service of capital-in the form of tourism and other business interests. This system also evinces which communities experience energy privilege, and which do not, as this inequitable reality calls attention to how racialization, racism, colorism, income and wealth, geographies, and other factors affect communities differently, including blackouts and toxic exposures (Onís, 2018a;Schneider and Peeples, 2018;Castro-Sitiriche, 2019;.…”

Energy Democracy: Redistributing Power to the People Through Renewable Transformation

“…In many respects, the Trump administration's adoption of "energy dominance" as their guiding principle can be considered the antithesis of energy democracy. 17 Energy dominance explicitly celebrates the ways in which fossil fuel extraction and the perpetuation of fossil fuel dependence concentrate wealth and power among a few corporate and political elites. Energy dominance also focuses on the competitive nature of fossil fuel energy and how those who have access to exploiting and profiting from fossil fuel resources have control over those who do not.…”