Can a New U.S. President Really Wreck the Climate?
This is a click-bait headline: The actual dismantling of US climate-stabilization initiatives under a Trump 2.0 administration will be undertaken by a (literally) well-oiled and extensive team, following through on a series of policy aspirations under development for many years. This previous post explored how the Trump 1.0 team rolled back many U.S. environmental regulations, only to see their efforts thrown out or slowed by the courts and reversed by the Biden administration. With lessons learned, Trump 2.0 appointees will be more savvy and successful, and will also have the backing of more than 200 Trump-appointed federal judges, as well as three Trump-appointed Supreme Court nominees. This post explores just how far the Trump 2.0 team could go.
Derailing Climate Regulations
The greatest success of Trump 1.0 administration on regulatory rollbacks in fact came after Trump left office during the Biden Presidency, via Supreme Court decisions. The first significant Court case deeply restricted EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gasses at existing coal and natural gas plants. The second even more sweeping ruling overturned several decades of precedent in which federal judges were told to defer to agency expertise when it came to setting regulatory requirements. In overturning the Chevron decision, the court opened up existing and all new regulations proposed by the EPA to endless lawsuits over technical decisions. Together, these Court rulings tightly constrained what the EPA can do about climate using existing legislative authority, mostly under the 1970 Clean Air Act.
The new friendliness of the Federal and Supreme Court to deregulatory initiatives means such changes are much more likely to stick. Also, with the experience of the first Trump term, team 2.0 will be able to move more quickly and deeply to undo climate rules. In a second term, Trump will of course be able to appoint still more judges opposed to action on climate change. And another long-lasting impact of a second term could be the wholesale replacement of EPA staff envisioned by the so-called Project 2025—a well-known, potential blue-print for a Trump second term. Staff replacements at this level would make it much harder for a subsequent Democratic administration to roll-back the Trump roll-backs as the Biden EPA was able to do.
Finally, on the regulatory front, a Trump administration will try and strip California of their unique federal statutory authority to issue their own climate regulations, particularly on vehicles. Because other states can follow California’s vehicle policies, going after California’s independent policy will be critical for Trump to slow the U.S. Electric Vehicle revolution.
Undoing Industrial Policy?
An area of greater uncertainty are the billions of dollars in tax incentives for clean energy embedded in the Biden era Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. Actually repealing those bills would require substantial majorities in the House and Senate. This is particularly true since the legislation was designed to encourage, and has in fact led to major investments in battery and EV plants in red states. Nevertheless, short of repeal, a Trump administration could throw significant sand in the gears of the legislation, and otherwise discourage clean energy development; for example, by refusing permits for offshore wind development.
Another critical area where Trump could set back climate action would be at the international level. With the U.S. absent from the Paris process—and we are still the second largest source of global warming pollution— other major emitters like China and India are likely to scale back their own commitments.
Long Run Impacts
Perhaps the biggest impact on the climate would come if Trump 2.0 led to a permanent weakening of American democratic institutions, and the subversion of election outcomes to ensure several subsequent terms of Trump-like climate policies: deregulation at the EPA, delaying the clean energy revolution in the U.S., building out long-lived fossil fuel infrastructure, and disincentivizing other polluting nations from taking action as well.
To put a number on all this, in this post I suggest that two successful terms of Trump opposition to climate action and fossil fuel promotion would lead to a long-run global increase in temperature of around 1/20th of a degree F above what we have already experienced. This may not sound like much, but it’s about a 2% further increase in the temperature of the entire planet. Extreme storms, fires, floods, all made worse by 2% more heat for the next 100 years to come.
All in, one election outcome, in one country, could usher in a profound decade of climate wrecking, when the time for climate action is fast running out.
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