Inaugural addresses by politicians usually aren’t marked in history books because they are filled with promises seldom kept.

But I’m afraid the introduction Jeff Landry made as Louisiana’s new governor this month will be an exception.

I’m afraid because if Landry keeps several of his promises, it could spell disaster for the state’s coastal zone as well as any hope of removing Louisiana from its position atop the U.S. News and World Report list of most polluted states.

Those outcomes were outlined in this passage:

“As we shape policy and seek solutions to the challenges of energy, exploration, production, conservation practices and the protection of our precious environment, we shall seek and we shall heed, all [emphasis his] of the science, not just the selective slices spoon-fed to us by those seeking to profit, in many cases, from the taxpayer-funded subsidies that disregard the health, the safety and the employment security of our citizens, hiding the truth about the real environmental footprints created by the lust for wealth by a chosen few and their reckless proposals.”

Landry was talking about the science behind federal environmental regulations he spent eight years as Louisiana’s attorney general fighting in court. Indeed, he has called climate change a hoax, presumably because he believes he knows more about the topic than the scientists involved.

But the science behind climate change is not complicated. The short version: Emissions from fossil fuels humans have been pumping into the sky since the 1850s have caused dramatic warming of the atmosphere, resulting in cascading weather-related crises including rising seas and record hurricanes floods, droughts and fires.

Because the evidence provided by those impacts is now so overwhelming, it’s pretty simple to understand — unless you love the oil and gas industry which makes the products that result in emissions. As the novelist Upton Sinclair said in the previous millennium, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Landry has bragged he “grew up loving the oil and gas industry,” was in the oil business with a friend, used our tax dollars fighting regulations on the industry and its products and then surfed a storm surge of oil and gas money into the Governor’s Mansion.

Louisiana residents must take seriously his declaration of war on climate science because the only hope for a sustainable future in its bottom third rests on the $50 billion Coastal Master Plan — and that plan is based on the science Landry denies.

It would be easy — indeed kind — to dismiss Landry as ignorant of the facts or cognitively unable to understand them, like people who insist there’s no way of knowing the Earth is not flat or the refrigerator light goes off when the door closes.

He’s certainly neither of those.

Instead, Landry’s a calculating politician hoping to protect his interests by projecting facts as part of a dark conspiracy from unnamed “others.” That message is outlined in the passage from his speech quoted above. It’s right out of the demagogue’s playbook, warning citizens to be fearful of threats from the outside, from those “others” who want to take away their jobs and their lifestyles, a cabal out to steal their freedom.

He compiles an amorphous list of enemies of the people — but, true to the genre, he doesn’t name names. That way there can be no debate.

So, I requested some clarifications from his office:

Which are the “selective slices of science spoon-fed to us?”

Who are “those seeking to profit?”

Which are the “the taxpayer-funded subsidies that disregard the health, the safety and the employment security of our citizens” and how do they do that?

What is “the truth about the real environmental footprints?”

Who are “the chosen few” lusting for wealth, what are their “reckless proposals” and how are they reckless?

So far, there has been no response.

Instead, you can expect Landry to be that rare politician to keep one of his inaugural promises: War on the science and facts that harm the oil industry — even if that harms his state.

Bob Marshall, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Louisiana environmental journalist, can be reached at bmarshallenviro@gmail.com, and followed on X @BMarshallEnviro.