Remember Their Names

The men who gathered in the Oval Office on June 4th knew exactly what they were consecrating.

On June 4th, President Trump gathered the machinery of federal power in the Oval Office to announce $700 million in emergency funding for the coal industry. He opened by discussing water.

For more than 50 years, 22 waterfalls in Washington had not run. They were broken, he explained. The marble was cracked. Graffiti covered them. But in the hours before this event, his administration had finished repairs. “The water is pouring in as we speak,” he said. He showed photos — a man in a cart, proudly displaying the work, an American flag visible behind him. The reflecting pool, dormant since 1922, was now sealed with silicone. It wouldn’t leak. “It’s called swimming pool on steroids,” he said.

He was not joking.

He talked about this for several minutes. The beauty of clean water. The size of the pool compared to the biggest buildings in the country. The broken marble fixed. The graffiti removed. “All of the hate and everything is removed from them,” he said of the restored monuments. Some damage had been done “through stupidity,” but it was fixed now, and they looked beautiful.

Then, finally: “So we’re here to talk about clean, beautiful coal.”

The celebrants each stepped forward, each offering benediction.

Chris Wright, Secretary of Energy: “No coal, no modern world. Stated another way, without clean, beautiful coal, the modern world is impossible.” He said this as revelation. The doxology was repeated back: the modern world cannot exist without the fuel that is ending the conditions the modern world was built in. He continued: if those 17 coal plants had closed, “hundreds conservatively hundreds of Americans would have lost their lives” during the winter storm. “Hundreds of Americans would have lost their lives.” The prevented deaths count. The real ones, the tens of thousands who die each year from coal’s particulates, its mercury, its heavy metals, never entered the room.

Mark Gordon, Governor of Wyoming, offered the ceremony’s most tender moment. Coal is “high tech jobs” now, he said, not digging, not the way we used to. “Very, very technologically proficient. Environmentally sound.” The children’s education, he noted, is “paid for in large part by coal severance taxes.” He said this as a gift. The past finances the future; extraction underwrites the classroom; the children are taught that their inheritance is the thing being burned. The proposed new plant would sit in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, a region north of Anchorage known for its glaciers and its salmon. Build the furnace next to the ice, and send the children to school on the proceeds.

Doug Burgum, Secretary of Interior: This administration had done more for coal than “any administration perhaps ever.” The number was stated as achievement: $700 million investment would protect 14 coal plants and 42 coal mines, build two new coal plants and one massive new export terminal, supporting over 14,000 jobs and saving the American people $50 billion in electricity costs. The math was offered as benediction.

Lee Zeldin, EPA Administrator: The prior administration’s EPA had tried to “strangulate out of existence” coal, to “destroy it.” The word “strangulate” the fervor of someone describing a deliverance. Trump “declared a national energy emergency, creates a national energy dominance council,” and the agency moved at “Trump’s speed” to rid itself of regulations. Deregulation that “means for cost of living just on that act alone, $2,400 more affordable per vehicle for Americans.”

Outside the Oval Office, the instruments don’t attend ceremonies.

While the celebrants gathered around the Resolute Desk, scientists at four deep-ocean monitoring stations were recording what they’ve been recording for two decades: the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, the vast conveyor belt of heat and salt that moderates the climate of the entire North Atlantic, that keeps winters livable, coastlines stable, rainfall patterns intact, has been weakening consistently, from the Caribbean to eastern Canada. A study published in April found the decline more extensive than previous models projected. Some researchers now believe it could collapse within the next decade. An AMOC collapse last happened roughly 12,000 years ago. It caused chaos.

Across the American West, wildfire seasons that used to end no longer reliably do. Nearly 2.35 million acres have burned in the United States in 2026 through early June, and peak season, the forecasters note, typically arrives in August. Canada is projected to lose between 11 and 15 million acres this year, well above its historical average, though mercifully below last year’s 22 million. The burning of fossil fuels is lengthening fire seasons, the forecasters say plainly. Reducing those emissions is an important part of limiting how much wildfire risk continues to grow.

These systems do not negotiate. They do not respond to ultimatums. They cannot be managed with emergency declarations or Defense Production Act authority or the phrase “clean, beautiful coal” repeated often enough that it becomes true. They operate on their own timeline, indifferent to news cycles, to quarterly earnings, to the price of oil on a given Thursday afternoon in June.

The men in the Oval Office know what the instruments say. The information is not hidden. The AMOC data is published in peer-reviewed journals. The wildfire projections come from the government’s own forecasters. The mortality figures for coal particulates are in the public record, uncited, uncontested, waiting.

Remember their names.

Not because history is kind to scorekeeping, but because history is merciless toward the powerful who mistake proximity to power for absolution.

Donald Trump presided. Chris Wright called coal indispensable. Doug Burgum blessed the expansion. Lee Zeldin promised deregulation at “Trump’s speed.” Mark Gordon praised Wyoming’s “cleanest, most beautiful coal.” Others gathered close enough to be included in the photograph, close enough to share in the performance, close enough to know exactly what was being consecrated.

They were not bystanders, they were celebrants.

When the accounting comes, not in some distant future, but in insurance withdrawals, failed crops, burned towns, flooded streets, poisoned lungs, vanished fisheries, and children learning climate vocabulary no child should have to know, it will matter that this was done by people with names, offices, budgets, signatures, and choices.

The instruments were already warning. Fires already burning. Oceans already storing the heat. The currents were already weakening. The data was already public.

They held the ceremony anyway.

What happened in that room on June 4th was a consecration. Emergency powers invoked. Wartime authority deployed. Carbon-reduction funds repurposed. Glaciers noted, salmon noted, children’s education noted, furnace approved. Each man offered his benediction in turn. The liturgy was recited. The sacrament was signed.

They are not stumbling blindly into the dark ages.

They are holding a ceremony for the trip.