As Donald Trump prepares for this year’s US presidential election, he continues to summarise his energy policies with one simple slogan: “Drill, baby, drill.”
The Republican candidate has laid claim to the phrase, arguing that more drilling will allow him to cut inflation and flood the country with the “liquid gold” that is oil.
However, it was Michael Steele, the US politician who served as the first African-American lieutenant governor of Maryland and chair of the Republican National Committee, who came up with the slogan back in 2008.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Steele stresses that Trump had “nothing to do” with “drill, baby, drill” – a phrase he coined to promote US independence from Middle Eastern oil.
Expressing regret that it has been taken up by the Republican challenger for the White House, Steele says that, with the rise of electric cars, today the slogan could change to “plug, baby, plug”.
Here, Carbon Brief explores the history of “drill, baby, drill”, from the Black Panther-associated slogan “burn, baby, burn” through to its status as a rallying cry for pro-fossil fuel US conservatives.
‘Drill, baby, drill’
In a recent interview with Fox News, Trump explained his plans for US fossil-fuel production if he wins November’s election, saying:
“We are going to – I used this expression, now everyone else is using it so I hate to use it, but – drill, baby, drill.”
It is a phrase that he has repeated at rallies across the nation in recent months, sticking with his preference for three-word campaign slogans.
Yet, despite Trump’s assertion, it was Steele who invented the phrase. While addressing the Republican National Convention in 2008, he told the crowd:
“Let’s reduce our dependency on foreign sources of oil, and promote oil-and-gas production at home. Let me make it very clear: Drill, baby, drill – and drill now.”
Steele tells Carbon Brief that the slogan came to him late at night, after a fit of “writer’s block”.
“Donald Trump…his BS aside, had nothing to do with ‘drill, baby drill’,” says Steele, who today is a staunch critic of the Republican presidential candidate.
Steele was met with rapturous applause at the 2008 convention. Chants of “drill, baby, drill” from the crowd even interrupted a speech by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.
This was during a period of soaring fuel prices in the US, linked to conflict in the Middle East. The government was under significant pressure to expand offshore drilling.
Later that year, the “drill, baby, drill” slogan was taken up by supporters throughout the campaign of Republican John McCain, in his unsuccessful presidential bid against Barack Obama.
It became particularly associated with Sarah Palin, the climate-sceptic Republican vice-presidential pick, who said in a debate with her Democratic challenger Joe Biden:
“The chant is ‘drill, baby, drill’. And that’s what we hear all across this country in our rallies because people are so hungry for those domestic sources of energy.”
In the years that followed, the phrase was repeated endlessly by Republican politicians, as well as in comment articles and political analysis. (It did, however, see a dip in popularity following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, with Senate Republicans stating that they had never endorsed such a phrase.)
Since then, the slogan has spread and been applied to countries from Scotland to Guyana. In recent years, it has even been used to lobby for the expansion of gas in Africa.
‘Burn, baby, burn’
Despite its runaway success, there was some initial bemusement from commentators at a slogan that appeared to have been derived from “burn, baby, burn”.
That phrase, which has since made its way into everything from disco songs to hot sauce, was originally associated with Black nationalist group the Black Panthers and particularly the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles.
It was chanted as buildings were set on fire, amid civil unrest sparked by police violence against an African-American man.
Writing shortly after the Republican National Convention in 2008, journalist Derrick Z Jackson alluded to this when he wrote in the Boston Globe:
“This 93% White gathering blithely stole from the race riots of the ’60s to lustily chant ‘drill, baby, drill’.”
‘Plug, baby, plug’
For his part, Steele tells Carbon Brief that his intention was to use a colloquial expression to “connect it to something that was very real” – namely, cutting US reliance on Middle Eastern oil. He explains his thinking at the time:
“We should look at this from a very basic point of view, let’s not overthink it. We have the capacity, we have the means. Drill, baby, drill.”
However, he expresses frustration at its adoption by Trump:
“Unfortunately, a lot of people use it…in a way that they don’t fully appreciate what the point was, and the point was the self-sufficiency of the American spirit.”
Today, the US is no longer reliant on oil from the Middle East and is, in fact, the world’s largest oil producer.
A key focus of current US energy policy is achieving independence from Chinese electric-vehicle manufacturing through measures in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). However, Trump has pledged to scrap the IRA along with other environmental measures.
Steele, who has expressed climate-sceptic views himself in the past, says that his point in 2008 was not to override environmental commitments. He says:
“It’s not just ‘drill with abandon’, it’s also the idea of drilling responsibly and understanding the impacts that we do have environmentally.”
With the growth of electric cars and other technologies in the US, he adds:
“‘Drill, baby, drill’ may at some point in the future change to…‘plug, baby, plug’. Plugging your electric car into the port…It is the idea of self-sufficiency, independence, freedom, which again is an orientation that very much is in line – well, was in line – with the old Republican party. That seems to have given way to something very different today.”
Nevertheless, Steele accepts that while he will “always be there to remind [Trump]” of where the slogan came from, it is now out of his hands:
“My only regret is that I didn’t copyright it and put it on a T-shirt.”
A shorter version of this article was first published in DeBriefed, Carbon Brief’s weekly climate newsletter, on 15 March. Subscribe for free.
The post ‘Drill, baby, drill’: The surprising history of Donald Trump’s fossil-fuel slogan appeared first on Carbon Brief.
‘Drill, baby, drill’: The surprising history of Donald Trump’s fossil-fuel slogan
The case shows that climate change is a fundamental human rights violation—and the victory of Bonaire, a Dutch territory, could open the door for similar lawsuits globally.
From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Paloma Beltran with Greenpeace Netherlands campaigner Eefje de Kroon.
A Tiny Caribbean Island Sued the Netherlands Over Climate Change, and Won
Climate Change
Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
SYDNEY, Saturday 28 February 2026 — Greenpeace International and Greenpeace organisations in the US announce they will seek a new trial and, if necessary, appeal the decision with the North Dakota Supreme Court following a North Dakota District Court judgment today awarding Energy Transfer (ET) USD $345 million.
ET’s SLAPP suit remains a blatant attempt to silence free speech, erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock movement, and punish solidarity with peaceful resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace International will also continue to seek damages for ET’s bullying lawsuits under EU anti-SLAPP legislation in the Netherlands.
Mads Christensen, Greenpeace International Executive Director said: “Energy Transfer’s attempts to silence us are failing. Greenpeace International will continue to resist intimidation tactics. We will not be silenced. We will only get louder, joining our voices to those of our allies all around the world against the corporate polluters and billionaire oligarchs who prioritise profits over people and the planet.
“With hard-won freedoms under threat and the climate crisis accelerating, the stakes of this legal fight couldn’t be higher. Through appeals in the US and Greenpeace International’s groundbreaking anti-SLAPP case in the Netherlands, we are exploring every option to hold Energy Transfer accountable for multiple abusive lawsuits and show all power-hungry bullies that their attacks will only result in a stronger people-powered movement.”
The Court’s final judgment today rejects some of the jury verdict delivered in March 2025, but still awards hundreds of millions of dollars to ET without a sound basis in law. The Greenpeace defendants will continue to press their arguments that the US Constitution does not allow liability here, that ET did not present evidence to support its claims, that the Court admitted inflammatory and irrelevant evidence at trial and excluded other evidence supporting the defense, and that the jury pool in Mandan could not be impartial.[1][2]
ET’s back-to-back lawsuits against Greenpeace International and the US organisations Greenpeace USA (Greenpeace Inc.) and Greenpeace Fund are clear-cut examples of SLAPPs — lawsuits attempting to bury nonprofits and activists in legal fees, push them towards bankruptcy and ultimately silence dissent.[3] Greenpeace International, which is based in the Netherlands, is pursuing justice in Europe, with a suit against ET under Dutch law and the European Union’s new anti-SLAPP directive, a landmark test of the new legislation which could help set a powerful precedent against corporate bullying.[4]
Kate Smolski, Program Director at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This is part of a worrying trend globally: fossil fuel corporations are increasingly using litigation to attack and silence ordinary people and groups using the law to challenge their polluting operations — and we’re not immune to these tactics here in Australia.
“Rulings like this have a chilling effect on democracy and public interest litigation — we must unite against these silencing tactics as bad for Australians and bad for our democracy. Our movement is stronger than any corporate bully, and grows even stronger when under attack.”
Energy Transfer’s SLAPPs are part of a wave of abusive lawsuits filed by Big Oil companies like Shell, Total, and ENI against Greenpeace entities in recent years.[3] A couple of these cases have been successfully stopped in their tracks. This includes Greenpeace France successfully defeating TotalEnergies’ SLAPP on 28 March 2024, and Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International forcing Shell to back down from its SLAPP on 10 December 2024.
-ENDS-
Images available in Greenpeace Media Library
Notes:
[1] The judgment entered by North Dakota District Court Judge Gion follows a jury verdict finding Greenpeace entities liable for more than US$660 million on March 19, 2025. Judge Gion subsequently threw out several items from the jury’s verdict, reducing the total damages to approximately US$345 million.
[2] Public statements from the independent Trial Monitoring Committee
[3] Energy Transfer’s first lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2017 under the RICO Act – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a US federal statute designed to prosecute mob activity. The case was dismissed in 2019, with the judge stating the evidence fell “far short” of what was needed to establish a RICO enterprise. The federal court did not decide on Energy Transfer’s claims based on state law, so Energy Transfer promptly filed a new case in a North Dakota state court with these and other state law claims.
[4] Greenpeace International sent a Notice of Liability to Energy Transfer on 23 July 2024, informing the pipeline giant of Greenpeace International’s intention to bring an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against the company in a Dutch Court. After Energy Transfer declined to accept liability on multiple occasions (September 2024, December 2024), Greenpeace International initiated the first test of the European Union’s anti-SLAPP Directive on 11 February 2025 by filing a lawsuit in Dutch court against Energy Transfer. The case was officially registered in the docket of the Court of Amsterdam on 2 July, 2025. Greenpeace International seeks to recover all damages and costs it has suffered as a result of Energy Transfers’s back-to-back, abusive lawsuits demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from Greenpeace International and the Greenpeace organisations in the US. The next hearing in the Court of Amsterdam is scheduled for 16 April, 2026.
Media contact:
Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
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In a new report that outlines a dozen high-risk pollutants given new life thanks to weakened, delayed or rescinded regulations, the Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group of hundreds of former Environmental Protection Agency staff, warns that the EPA under President Donald Trump has abandoned the agency’s core mission of protecting people and the environment from preventable toxic exposures.
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