President Trump announced plans to loosen methane regulations for the oil and gas sector during a rally in Lubbock, Texas, on Tuesday night. Because nothing says 'energy independence' like letting more of a planet-warming gas into the air, Trump told supporters he was “officially terminating Biden’s expensive and unnecessary methane regulations.” The crowd presumably cheered, as crowds do when someone promises to save them money at the expense of the atmosphere.

The announcement came during the president’s second campaign stop of the day in Texas, where he was stumping for Republican Ken Paxton, the state attorney general, in his Senate campaign. Trump said the rollback has been in the works for a “long time” with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, who apparently had nothing better to do than figure out how to make methane great again.

The changes are expected to significantly loosen rules governing how the oil and gas industry handles methane, a gas about 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide when it comes to warming the planet. Among the proposals: looser rules for marginal oil and gas wells - those low-producing wells that, inconveniently for the industry, are estimated to represent about half of the sector’s methane emissions. The administration also plans to ease Biden-era restrictions on flaring, the burning of excess gas during oil production, and to eliminate the Biden administration’s Super Emitter Program, which required energy companies to respond to credible reports of major methane leaks. Because who needs to fix leaks when you can just pretend they don’t exist?

Overall, the moves are expected to exacerbate climate change but save the industry money. The administration claims it could save the oil and gas sector $45 billion. An official also said the rollback would enable an additional 210 million barrels of oil production and 1.41 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from 2027 to 2050. For context, the U.S. consumes about 21 million barrels of oil and 92 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day - so that’s roughly 10 days’ worth of oil and 15 days’ worth of gas. A whole extra fortnight of fossil fuels, everyone. Truly a legacy.

When the Biden administration tightened methane regulations in 2023, it said doing so would prevent 58 million tons of methane from entering the atmosphere between 2024 and 2038 - the climate equivalent of taking 28 million gas-powered cars off the road for a year. Trump’s plan, by contrast, is the climate equivalent of putting them all back on, but with a tax break.