https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/28/donald-trump-climate-change-environment
The climate crisis may appear peripheral in the US presidential election but a victory for Donald Trump will, more than any other issue, have profound consequences for people around a rapidly heating world, experts have warned.
During his push for the White House, Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and “one of the great scams of all time” while vowing to delete spending on clean energy, abolish “insane” incentives for Americans to drive electric cars, scrap various environmental rules and unleash a “drill, baby, drill” wave of new oil and gas.
Such an agenda would be carried out over a four year-period that nearly rounds out a crucial decade in which scientists say the US, and the world, must slash planet-heating pollution in half to avoid disastrous climate breakdown.
Already, major emitters such as the US are lagging badly in commitments to cut emissions enough to avoid a 1.5C (2.7F) rise in global temperature above the pre-industrial era.
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“We’ve got to get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s hard to see that happening in the event of a Trump victory.” Mann added that “a second Trump presidency is game over for meaningful climate action this decade, and stabilizing warming below 1.5C probably becomes impossible”.
So what would a Trump election triumph mean for the environment?
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1. A dangerous and uncertain future
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There is enough momentum behind the record growth of clean energy that it won’t be utterly derailed by a Trump presidency. But a Trump White House would still have a tangible impact, adding, by some estimates, several billion tonnes of heat-trapping gases that wouldn’t otherwise be in the atmosphere, gumming up the international response, subjecting more people to flood or fire or toxic air. It would help prod societies ever closer to the brink of an unlivable climate.
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2. Climate denialism would return to the Oval Office
A new Trump administration would bring a jarring rhetorical shift. Unlike almost every other world leader – such as Joe Biden, who has called the climate crisis an “existential threat” – Trump dismisses and even mocks the threat of global heating.
In recent weeks, the former president has said that climate change is “one of the great scams of all time, people aren’t buying it any more” and has falsely claimed the planet “has actually got a bit cooler recently”, that rising sea levels will create “more oceanfront property”, that wind energy is “bullshit, it’s horrible” and even that cows and windows will be banned by Democrats if he loses.
Trump has coupled this with demands for unfettered oil and gas production in all corners of the US and has actively courted industry executives for donations. “He wholeheartedly believes we should produce our own energy sources here in the US, there’s no grey area there,” said Thomas Pyle, president of American Energy Alliance, a free market group.
“President Trump marches to the beat of his own drum, he’s his own man. He is instinctively in the right place on these issues – he wants to see more energy production across the board and less government intervention in the cars we drive and the stoves we have.”
Others see signs a second Trump presidency will be even more extreme on climate than the first iteration. “The style, the indifference to empirical evidence and the bold sweeping gestures are familiar,” said Barry Rabe, an energy policy expert at the University of Michigan. “But this sequel will be an aggressive, revenge-based repudiation of anyone who has challenged him in the past.
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3. Clean energy policies unpicked
A primary target for a new Trump administration would be the landmark climate bill signed by Biden that is pushing hundreds of billions of dollars to renewable energy deployment, electric car production and battery manufacturing.
Trump has promised to “terminate Kamala Harris’s green new scam and rescind all of the unspent funds”.
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4. A purge of science
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Scientists, who remember research being buried and Trump publicly changing an official hurricane forecast map with a Sharpie pen during his first term, fear a reprise. “The United States will become an unsafe place for scientists, intellectuals and anyone who doesn’t fit” with the Republican agenda, Mann said.
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5. International relations shaken
As president, Trump took several months to decide to remove the US from the Paris climate agreement. “This time I think he would do that on the very first day, likely with a lot of dramatic flourish,” said Rabe.
With the US, again, out of the international climate effort, American aid to developing countries vulnerable to floods, droughts and other disasters would also be slashed, along with cooperation with nations on other initiatives, such as cutting methane and curbing deforestation.
