Trump’s return and its impact on climate policy

He is once again the most powerful man on the planet, who (does not) talk about the most important issue the planet has ever faced. His four-year term comes precisely at a time when Earth most needs to accelerate efforts to curb climate change

The latest U.S. election cycle had pushed climate change discussions to the backburner. While Americans went to the polls, attention meandered to issues apparently more immediate, such as immigration, and left the climate crisis largely unaddressed.

It was in 2020 that Kamala Harris, who has just concluded the last four years as vice president under Joe Biden, led the charge of the Democratic Party on climate policies while then-president Donald Trump dismissed the issue as a “hoax.”

Now, in 2024, Trump has declared victory again, exclaiming, “We made history!”. Everything from abortion rights and immigration to LGBTQ+ issues is likely to carry the mark of a second Trump term, but perhaps most noticeably, climate policy.

Trump’s White House reprise and what it means for the flimate

A Trump presidency could drastically hold back efforts to fight the climate crisis. In his first term, Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement, which stalled international progress on the issue. Now, climate experts and environmental advocates are increasingly worried about what the future will look like.

At the center of Trump’s plans is Project 2025, a conservative agenda devised by The Heritage Foundation, in which it lays out, among many other things, various ways his administration could undermine environmental protections by boosting fossil fuels, even dismantling NOAA, which monitors the global temperature rise.

Trump, who has called climate change “one of the biggest hoaxes of all time,” has pledged to “drill, baby, drill” and abolish Biden’s ban on new liquefied natural gas export terminals.

In one striking interview, he laid out his thinking on climate science:

“You know, when I hear these poor fools talk about global warming-they don’t call it that anymore; now they call it climate change because, you know, parts of the planet are cooling and warming, and it didn’t work out. So they finally figured it out; they call it climate change. They used to call it global warming. You know, years ago they called it global cooling. In the ’20s they thought the planet was going to freeze. Now they think it’s going to burn up. And we’re still waiting for the 12 years, you know. We’re almost at the end of that period.”

Project 2025 and the future of fossil fuels

While Trump has officially retreated from Project 2025, the plan is designed by officials formerly in his administration. It is therefore sure to impact his policy directions to a fair degree. Many of the lists included in the agenda have several noticeable ones, such as blocking or rolling back electric vehicle production in Detroit, cutting renewable energy tax credits, and reversing the 2009 EPA finding that labeled carbon dioxide as a harmful pollutant. More recently, Trump proposed shutting down NOAA for “being a driving force behind climate alarmism.

“Drill, baby, drill“, he says-a mantra with serious consequences. Trump has signaled he will seek to exploit still more oil, reportedly asking oil companies for several millions in campaign contributions in return.

Renewable energy setbacks in the U.S. and abroad

While he is unlikely to completely halt the U.S. momentum toward renewable energy-once again, Texas is a good example of how clean energy remains an economic powerhouse-he can delay it. The Biden Administration made green energy projects a priority, with top-level officials pushing to expedite projects in ways that might dissipate under a new administration dead set on pulling back federal support for renewables.

Internationally, too, a renewed Trump presidency may yield similar results. His pullout from the Paris Climate Agreement sapped global momentum, and he has promised to lift Biden’s moratorium on new natural gas terminals designed to ship vast quantities of U.S. gas to Asia, where it could impede the region’s transition to renewable sources.

This represents, per The Guardian, the final significant growth strategy of the fossil fuel industry, carrying with it a potentially grave greenhouse gas threat to Earth.