Climate scientists have expressed concern over the impact Donald Trump’s recent election could have on the climate and the planet, as well as the United States’s commitment to climate action.
Scientists and experts say another Trump presidency will lead to rollbacks on environmental protection laws that were put in place during President Joe Biden’s tenure, combined with no additional action needed to stop future and current effects of climate change. Trump’s actions would build on his first term, during which he pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement, a global international climate agreement, weakened national standards such as the Clean Water Act, which regulates the pollutants in water, and rewrote the Environmental Protection Agency’s pollution control policies.
According to an analysis by Harvard and Columbia Law School, Trump’s first administration rolled back over 100 policies, affecting protected lands, allowing oil and gas exploration, threatening wildlife, loosening energy efficiency regulations, and weakening Obama-era emission limits. Though Biden was able to restore some protections, scientists say Trump’s upcoming tenure would return and build on his anti-regulation and anti-environmental stances.
Project 2025, a blueprint for an ultraconservative presidency written by key Trump advisers, put forward multiple plans to repeal previous environmental initiatives. Project 2025 advocates for the U.S. to pull out of all international climate policies and foreign aid agreements helping countries protect themselves from climate disasters, like the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE), a climate adaptation plan developed by Biden. The plan also calls for defunding developing technology that would alert people of storms and environmental disasters earlier.
Project 2025 also plans to rescind any emission reduction acts passed by President Joe Biden and his predecessors. The anti-climate action agenda in Project 2025 would set the U.S. back when it comes to preparedness and security.
Researchers at Carbon Brief, a United Kingdom-based educational website focusing on climate science, wrote that a second Trump presidency would kill the hopes of keeping the climate from warming 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030 and cause the 52 percent reduction of emissions goal to fall short.
“If Trump is able to remove all of Biden’s key climate policies, then the US is all but guaranteed to miss its targets by a wide margin,” the authors wrote.
The news of another Trump presidency caused anxiety at COP 29, the annual United Nations climate conference that convened immediately after his election, since Trump would likely reduce or entirely remove international funding pledges.
Trump continuously showed support for increasing fossil fuel production, using the slogan “drill, baby, drill” on the campaign trail referring to oil exploration and the use of fossil fuels. He has said he wants to capitalize on the U.S.’s natural oil resources and boost fossil fuel production.
“We have more liquid gold, oil and gas. We have more liquid gold than any country in the world. More than Saudi Arabia. We have more than Russia,” Trump said at his victory speech on Nov. 6.
Trump also received $75 million in campaign donations from big oil and gas companies.
The American Petroleum Institute (API), a trade association for oil and gas companies, released a “policy roadmap” for Trump outlining their greatest wishes for the upcoming presidency, including looser regulations on tailpipe emissions and lower fuel economy standards, both of which aim to reduce emissions from vehicles. API also suggested Trump to allow offshore oil drilling, repealing rules Biden had put in place.
During his campaign this year, Trump promised to repeal all of Biden’s climate policies over the last four years, including the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Biden’s landmark law that included climate protection and funding toward a more sustainable future.
Trump also vowed to terminate funding for what he calls the “Green New Deal,” referring to the Inflation Reduction Act Biden signed into law. If he was successful, it could cancel wind and solar subsidies for businesses, leaving projects unfinished and destroying jobs.
“My plan will terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam,” Trump said in a Sept. 5 speech at the Economic Club of New York. “The greatest scam in history, probably. We will rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed ‘Inflation Reduction Act.’”
The EPA predicts that another Trump term could lead to an additional 4 billion tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere by 2030 and cause $900 billion worth of damage.
Trump’s actions are still limited, as the Biden Administration has already allocated about 80% of the funds the IRA designated for investment in projects helping to reduce greenhouse gases, and it would be difficult for Trump to recall that money.
Trump also faces private sector momentum toward clean energy, which a report from the Rhodium Group, an independent research group, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said totaled $493 billion from mid-2022 to mid-2023.
Ben Jealous, the executive director of the Sierra Club, a national conservation organization, said Trump’s presidency threatens the environment and climate progress due to his focus on personal profit over collective security.
“Donald Trump was a disaster for climate progress during his first term, and everything he’s said and done since suggests he’s eager to do even more damage this time,” Jealous said in a statement. “Trump has put profits over people time and again, prioritizing the bottom line of the Big Oil CEOs who bought and paid for his campaign above communities across the country who face the threat of pollution and the devastating impacts of the climate crisis.”
Li Shou, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, a think tank focusing on Asian international relations, said Trump’s climate consequences will be severe, spread into the rest of the world.
“Trump’s win is no doubt bad news for US climate action,” Shou wrote for Carbon Brief. “It will also have a spillover effect for global climate politics, casting a shadow over COP29. Other countries will need to step up to fill the leadership gap. The EU and China will need to be critical partners in this endeavour.”