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
Shaun Martin is vice president for adaptation and resilience at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in the United States.
“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.” A century later, H.G. Wells’s warning reads less like philosophy and more like a prediction for the near future.
Last week, the World Meteorological Organization forecast that a powerful El Niño – a naturally occurring climate pattern marked by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Pacific – will develop in 2026, becoming potentially one of the strongest on record, capable of triggering floods, droughts and extreme heat across the globe.
This warning should make one thing crystal clear: we need to move faster to adapt to the rapidly changing climate.
Scientists warn El Niño could intensify climate extremes in 2026
What does it mean to take climate change adaptation seriously? It means recognising that building resilience to increasing hazards must inform planning and policy-making efforts that go beyond trying to reduce climate emissions.
Rising climate risks like extended heatwaves or massive bursts of rainfall should guide decisions about where homes are built, which crops are grown, and how natural resources are managed. We need to invest in systems that withstand and recover from climate-driven shocks rather than collapse under them.
Impacts arriving ahead of schedule
For decades, climate action has been anchored in mitigation – reducing emissions to prevent future harm. That work remains essential. But it is operating on a slower timeline than the impacts we are now experiencing in real time and ahead of schedule. The strengthening 2026 El Niño makes that mismatch impossible to ignore.
In the first few months of 2026 more than 600 thousand square miles of forest land burned globally – the equivalent of 81 million football fields – the highest on record for this point in the year. Ocean surface temperatures are at historic highs, Arctic sea ice has hit record lows, and multiple regions have experienced extreme, out-of-season heat.
The strengthening of El Niño later this year could push these conditions even further, potentially making 2026 one of the hottest years ever recorded.
El Niño expected to bring next record-hot year as soon as 2027
The climate today is fundamentally different than the one that shaped past El Niño events. Heatwaves run hotter. Droughts last longer. Rainfall increasingly comes in destructive bursts. Even historically cooler periods no longer offer relief.
El Niño’s counterpart, La Niña, now occurs in a warmer world with ocean temperatures during cooler La Niña phases exceeding those seen during past “super” El Niño events like 1998 and 2016. Yesterday’s extremes have become today’s baselines, and this new level of turbulence will test the limits of preparedness across the country.
Pragmatic preparations to build resilience
When it comes to policy-making, the focus should be on strengthening the health and resilience of communities facing growing climate risks. Across the United States, communities are already feeling the impacts of the quickly changing climate. Preparing for and withstanding what’s ahead is not ideological; it’s pragmatic.
WHO issues new guidance on heat-health action plans, as El Niño sets in
Planning that prioritises resilience, modernises infrastructure and invests in adaptation helps safeguard food systems, protect homes and supply chains, and reinforce critical infrastructure. Keeping the strength and stability of local communities at the centre of decision-making is essential to building a more secure and resilient future.
Conservation organisations have long emphasised that adapting to climate change is not just about reacting to disasters, but about building resilience in ways that support people and nature. That means working with communities, governments and businesses to reduce vulnerability to natural hazards, strengthen local capacity, and deploy solutions that improve nature’s ability to protect us.
Adaptation rooted in nature
In coastal regions, for example, mangrove forests act as natural defences – absorbing storm surge, stabilising shorelines and protecting nearby communities.
In Mexico, World Wildlife Fund and its partners are using networks of sensors, drones and artificial intelligence to monitor mangrove health and weather in real time. The project analyses how these ecosystems respond to storms, heat and changing water conditions, helping communities and policymakers adapt their conservation strategies accordingly. It is a glimpse of what climate change adaptation looks like at its best: locally grounded, data-driven and rooted in nature.
Climate risk is not a single problem to solve but a system to manage. Addressing it requires rethinking and integrating conservation, economic development and disaster risk reduction into a single, yet multi-dimensional, agenda focused on resilience.
It will also expose vulnerabilities in infrastructure, stress-test disaster response systems and challenge assumptions about what constitutes a “normal” climate year. And it will remind us that even the best forecasts cannot reduce impacts – only preparation can.
The problem is not that we have ignored climate change. It is that we have misjudged its timeline. These hazards are no longer a future risk to be avoided; they are a present reality to be managed. H.G. Wells’ warning remains. We need to adapt or perish, now as ever.
The post A supercharged El Niño is coming – are we ready? appeared first on Climate Home News.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/07/06/a-supercharged-el-nino-is-coming-are-we-ready/
From a striking sand installation in Kenya, to tens of thousands of people protesting against the Altri/Greenfiber mega-cellulose plant project in Spain, here are some of our favourite recent images from Greenpeace work around the world.
Kenya
Volunteers and community members gathered at Pirates Beach/ Jomo Kenyatta Beach in Mombasa around a sand installation carrying the message “The Ocean Connects Us All” to highlight the interconnected challenges facing coastal communities across Africa and the need for ocean protection.
Mexico
In the context of the World Cup, Greenpeace Mexico activists staged a peaceful protest at Terminal 2 of Mexico City International Airport (AICM) to remind people that the climate crisis is already changing the conditions in which we live, work, and play. With the messages “The game has extra time, the planet doesn’t” and “If the climate changes, the game changes,” the organisation drew attention to the increasingly evident impacts of climate change and the need to act urgently to prevent its effects from continuing to worsen.
Protecting marine and terrestrial ecosystems such as the Maya Forest, as well as a sustainable and just energy transition—one that no longer relies on oil and says no to fracking—are the kinds of decisive changes we need in the current government’s climate policy to truly help combat and curb the impacts of climate change. With the giant balloon—placed in the central rotunda of the airport terminal—as a backdrop, and under the gaze of domestic and international travellers, Greenpeace Mexico activists positioned themselves beneath the balloon, mimicking flames that represent the extreme heat threatening both the game and the planet.
Germany
Greenpeace activists protest against Amazon cloud provider AWS’s unscrupulous business dealings with controversial companies at the AWS Summit held at the Hamburg exhibition halls. The cloud provider is promoting its business, which it conducts without keeping exclusion lists.
A sculpture of a globe controlled by servers is erected in front of the trade fair building, on which installed screens display scenes of human rights violations and environmental destruction that could be caused in a similar manner by business partners of “Amazon Cloud Services.”
Belgium
Greenpeace Belgium activists unroll a massive banner in Brussels’s historic Grand Place square, condemning the use of the celebrations of the United States’s 250th anniversary to promote Trump’s political and corporate agenda.
Germany
Simon Steill, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), visits ‘The Wayfinder’s Roadmap’ photo exhibition at Bonn SB64 Climate Change Conference. The Greenpeace Australia Pacific exhibition highlights Pacific communities navigating the greatest global challenge of our time: climate change and the end of the fossil fuel age. The team gave Mr Steill a copy of their new report launched at Bonn, ‘Where the Ocean Leads Us’.
Spain
Tens of thousands of people took part in A Illa de Arousa in a massive demonstration against the Altri/Greenfiber mega-cellulose plant project in Palas de Rei (A Ulloa, Galicia) and the reopening of the Touro-O Pino mine under the slogan “In defense of the Ulla River and the Arousa estuary. Let’s stop Altri and the Touro-O Pino mine.” Both projects would have a massive environmental impact on the Ulla River basin, which flows into the Arousa estuary—the most productive yet also the most environmentally degraded in Galicia.
Greenpeace has been a pioneer of photo activism for more than 50 years, and remains committed to bearing witness and exposing environmental injustice through the images we capture.
To see more Greenpeace photos and videos, visit our Media Library.
https://www.greenpeace.org.au/learn/greenpeace-pictures-of-the-month/
Back in 1978, my year two teacher at Kelmscott Primary School in the foothills of Perth was a woman named Lesley Choules, who was especially fond of homely aphorisms as part of her teaching approach. Mrs Choules would deliver these cheerily, or icily, depending on how we had been behaving, but not much time would pass on any given day without her reminding us that “a smile costs nothing, but gives much”, or more ominously, “idle hands make the devil’s work”. All very old school, no doubt, but delivered with care and sincerity.
I think Mrs Choules was the first person I ever heard say that a “stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet”. A simple but profoundly lovely sentiment, which is so at odds with the contemporary encouragement by demagogues and algorithms, to treat strangers with suspicion, or as subjects for exploitation.
And I’m exceedingly fortunate to experience the phenomenon of ‘stranger as friend’ quite a bit today as an adult. It occurs on every occasion when I meet someone new and end up finding out that they support Greenpeace.
These moments are wildly unpredictable in their timing-–being told “yes, I support Greenpeace”, mid-needle, by the person giving me the vaccination particularly stands out in my memory. But what I have learned, not just from reading organisational demographic reports but from my own daily life, is that we Greenpeacers are a varied bunch of human beings united by especially wonderful common threads: a sense of personal commitment to seeing an earth capable of nurturing life in all of its magnificent diversity, and a shared conviction that together we have the power to secure this future, whatever the odds. That’s Greenpeace.
So, to pick one recent example, I was on the road with a colleague, and we stopped in at a pub to grab a counter meal at the end of a long day. It was a fairly typical country hotel…some football playing on a big screen somewhere at the back, people tucking into their parmies and chips.
We found a table, and I went up to place our orders, accompanied by a bit of a chat with the person pulling the drinks. In the course of a polite conversation about the World Cup I mentioned in passing that I had South American work colleagues. The bartender then asked where I worked, to which I responded “Greenpeace”.
And then there was the moment.
‘Greenpeace! I get the emails and sign everything! I love the oceans. It started for me when I was travelling around the world and I realised how much damage was being done. I had to do something.’
These occasions carry an enormous significance to me, and to all of us at Greenpeace. On a personal level, they activate something profound and primal: a rush of belonging and sense of kinship and gratitude. I know, as a matter of intellect, that there are millions of people who support Greenpeace all over the world. But there is nothing like the experience of being told by a stranger, “I am part of Greenpeace too”, to viscerally reinforce that powerful, wonderful reality.
It is only this community of ‘strangers who are friends’ that enables Greenpeace to exist at all. Just to think on this for a moment, Greenpeace has run massive campaigns, taking on the most powerful vested interests in the world, for more than fifty years. Yet in that whole time, we haven’t taken funding from any government or business. We exist only because of people who believe in our mission and our method and give of themselves—their time, money, name, skill, energy, trust, talent, passion and perseverance. It is a miracle of collaborative action that we make possible every day, together.
So, with this in mind, I smile at the bartender and say a version of what I always do in these circumstances:
‘Thank you, thank you. Greenpeace only exists because of you, and me, and all of us. So, deeply and sincerely, thank you.’
And it is such a privilege to have the opportunity to say those words, on behalf of an organisation that I have loved since I was a kid, and for a mission that is my vocation, for all life on earth.
I don’t know what Mrs Choules would have made of Greenpeace—a bit naughty maybe—but I remember her as someone who loved nature, and she encouraged that love in her pupils. I like to think she would have recognised our common bonds, and been delighted at their regular discovery in these idiosyncratic encounters.
To meet someone who is part of Greenpeace is to know a friend. Another spirit who has found belonging, purpose, meaning and impact in our shared ideal. The truth is, you never know who, you never know where, but if you sail with Greenpeace, you have mates. You will never face the world alone.
Whatever is here now, whatever is to come, we will see it through together. We have agency on this earth. Across our many languages and lives, we will continue to dream a universal dream of a flourishing planet, and make good on our common conviction that together we have the power to make it so.
With Love,
David
Q & A
A question I was asked this week—and quite often get asked—is, what is the relationship between Greenpeace and other well known environmental organisations like the Wilderness Society, Australian Conservation Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund, Bird Life, Australian Marine Conservation Society and others?
Greenpeace is independent, but we are also deeply collaborative, and so often work closely with our good mates at these organisations and others. For example, a number of those organisations I have mentioned above are involved in opposing Woodside’s threat to Scott Reef, and we are all conscious that we have the greatest impact when we work together.
That said, organisations have varying strengths, histories, organisational and institutional realities, so we can often play different and complimentary roles, depending on our capabilities. On a personal level, I’ve always been very grateful for collegiate, trusting and frank relationships with colleagues and friends within the environmental movement (here’s my note of appreciation for Kelly O’Shanassy, on the occasion of her leaving ACF last year, for example). In that sense too, we are stronger together, and strongest when we each play our own part well
-
Greenhouse Gases11 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change11 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Renewable Energy9 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Greenhouse Gases12 months ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测