Energy

Trump Says Talarico Will End Oil Drilling. Here’s What His Bill Actually Did

Screenshot/YouTube/The Joe Rogan Experience

President Donald Trump claimed early Friday that Democratic Texas Senate nominee James Talarico would end oil drilling in Texas.

Talarico’s 2021 Texas Climate Action Act would have required state regulators to cap Texas’ greenhouse gas emissions at least 90 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, according to the text of House Bill 2206. While the bill did not mention drilling it did propose stringent emissions regulations in the name of combatting climate change.

The Texas Legislature’s website shows no reported action on the legislation since it went to a House committee in March 2021.

The bill would have required a 2030 limit at least 50 percent below the 1990 level and allowed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to adopt a system of “market-based declining annual aggregate emission limits” for sources of greenhouse gases, according to its text.

Texas emitted 570.1 million metric tons in 1990 and 663 million in 2022. The bill’s 2050 limit of 90 percent below 1990 works out to 57 million tons, about 91 percent below 2022.

Applied to the state’s energy-related carbon dioxide emissions alone, that limit would mean cutting them by about 91 percent from 2022 levels, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of Energy Information Administration (EIA) data. The bill also directed state regulators to work with the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry, on parts of the plan covering petroleum refining and statewide fuel supplies, according to its text.

Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that Talarico “recently stated, with a large mask covering his face as he spoke, that, ‘FOSSIL FUELS ARE DESTROYING THE PLANET.'”

“In other words, no more drilling for Oil in Texas. That should be the end of his campaign!!!” the president added.

Talarico made the remark at a February 2022 forum on Winter Storm Uri, according to video of the event.

He also said at the forum that oil and gas is “a big part of our heritage” and that his great-grandfather worked in the oil fields, and that he wants Texas to be “number one” in renewable energy.

The White House referred the DCNF to the 2022 video of the Democrat. The Talarico campaign did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

Trump, who called the Democrat “TalaFREAKO” in the post, wrote that the Democrat is “running for U.S. Senate against the greatest Attorney General in the history of Texas,” a reference to Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the GOP nominee in the race.

Talarico, a member of the Texas House, wrote on X on Feb. 24, 2021, the day he filed the bill, that it “will marshal the resources of our state government to fight climate change.”

Talarico “supports an ‘all of the above’ energy strategy so Texas can remain a leader in oil and gas, wind, solar, geothermal, and more,” campaign spokesman JT Ennis told The Dallas Express in April.

Talarico’s 2021 climate bill also claims that “climate change has a demonstrated and researched-backed impact on human health and safety, including increased natural disasters and increased, intensifying extreme weather, causing damage to ecosystems, social systems, and infrastructure,” as well as “increased risks of waterborne and foodborne diseases … and distribution of disease-carrying insects and animals, carrying diseases such as SARS-CoV-2, Zika and Lyme.”