How much damage could he cause?
By RODDY SCHEER
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For years former President Trump has repeatedly made false claims that climate change is a hoax.
His efforts to
negate progressive climate change policies were evident in his first term, when
he pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, rolled back
environmental regulation, and relaxed regulations on oil and gas drilling.
According to Trump’s allies and advisors, a
second term for Trump would mean even more extreme environmental policies.
While efforts to fight climate change are stronger now than when Trump first
attacked them, he can still do substantial damage.
Trump has said that should he become
president again, boosting fossil fuels would be one of his top priorities.
Trump’s allies have said that Trump plans to drive forward fossil fuel
production, which would overturn rules made to curb planet-heating emissions.
The Trump campaign has also promised to once again pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement, an act that Biden had reversed earlier in his presidency. Reversing executive orders is surprisingly easy for a newly instated president.
On Biden’s first day of his presidency, he
canceled 11 of Trump’s climate-related orders. Trump will certainly move to do
the same and undo Biden’s climate-related executive orders.
In 2023, Kevin Robert, president of the
Conservative Heritage Foundation, released a series of policy initiatives
called Project 2025 that Trump could take if he wins the presidency again,
including reversing climate actions taken by the Biden administration.
The project calls for the president to use
an executive order to “reshape the U.S. Global Change Research Program and
related climate change research programs.” The Global Change Research Program
was established by Congress in 1990 to coordinate federal research and spending
to better understand climate change.
The Trump administration already moved to
tamper with the Research Program during his first term, and a second term will
surely mean further manipulation.
The damage that Trump could do to climate
change policy would set the U.S. back years. He believes that climate change
should not be a priority and isn’t something we should be worried about. He
wants to boost the U.S. economy by boosting fossil fuels, when we should be
looking for other, clean alternatives.
If Trump is awarded a second term his
climate-related policies could add an additional four billion tons of U.S.
greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere by 2030, compared to the Biden
administration’s existing plans.
We would also likely miss our global
climate pledge under the Paris agreement by a wide margin. The U.S. should be a
leader in climate change policy and we are taking steps toward that goal, but
if Trump is elected to a second term, all that work could be flushed down the
drain.
CONTACTS: ‘Reversed and scrubbed.’ How a
second Trump term could gut climate research, https://www.eenews.net/articles/reversed-and-scrubbed-how-a-second-trump-term-could-gut-climate-research/; A Second Trump Presidency Would Be a Nightmare for the Climate, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-02-22/climate-change-trump-s-plans-for-a-second-term-could-be-disastrous; Trump election win could add 4bn tonnes to US emissions by 2030, https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-trump-election-win-could-add-4bn-tonnes-to-us-emissions-by-2030/.
EarthTalk® is
produced by Roddy Scheer & Doug Moss for the 501(c)3 nonprofit EarthTalk. See more at https://emagazine.com.
Roddy Scheer is a journalist and photographer
specializing in environmental issues, the outdoors and travel. Roddy runs
EarthTalk, the non-profit publisher of the syndicated EarthTalk Q&A column
and the Emagazine.com website. The organization’s weekly environmental Q&As
reach some six million readers via a syndication network numbering more than
600 media outlets across North America. A collection of Earth Action Network’s
“Earth Talk” answers was published in book form — EarthTalk: Expert Answers to
Everyday Questions About the Environment — by Plume.