Former President Trump’s recent re-election has been making shockwaves felt across both the US and the globe. But what will the environmental implications be of his return to the White House?
During his campaign for the recent election, Trump said that he would once again pull the US out of the global Paris climate agreement. He had done so during his first term of presidency, but the Biden administration had reversed this decision by rejoining the accord.
Pulling out of the Paris climate agreement – which seeks to half carbon emissions by 2030 compared to 2005 levels – is not the only thing environmentalists fear from a re-elected Trump presidency.
In his first term, Trump and his administration initiated the undoing of more than 100 environmental rules. This included weakening the limits established under Obama on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, cars and trucks, removing protections from more than half of the US’s wetlands, and weakening the controls over mercury emissions from power plants.
“This administration is leaving a truly unprecedented legacy,” says Hana Vizcarra, a staff attorney at Harvard’s Environmental and Energy Law Program, regarding the undoing of these environmental protections. She has tracked these policy changes since 2018.
Trump’s Interior Department allowed more land for oil and gas to be leased. In doing so, they limited wildlife protections and weakened environment requirements for projects. The Department of Energy under Trump also decreased efficiency standards for a wide range of projects.
The impacts of Trump’s climate policy changes are not to be understated. Research shows that there was a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions, and thousands of premature deaths due to poor air quality.
His return to presidency brings with it an expectation of returning to these anti-environment decisions, considering Trump’s frequent undermining of the issue of climate change.
One of the biggest anxieties surrounding Trump’s potential climate decisions is the expectation that he will undo the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), put in place under the Biden administration. This significant climate law included billions of dollars in tax credits for renewable energy, programs putting money into climate projects around the nation, and fees on methane emissions from oil and gas production.
Considering that domestic oil and gas production reached record highs under President Biden, this law was a step in the right direction for a greener planet. However, since Trump pledged to boost US oil and gas production, people fear he will undo the IRA and other Biden regulations on environmental rules.
Despite this pledge, presidential policy may make little difference in the short-term regarding US fossil fuel production. Drilling decisions are made by private companies and fit their own economic interests. For the long-term, the impact of changing US policy on domestic fossil fuel production is less clear.
“Production is pretty much independent from whoever sits in the White House,” says Claudio Galimberti, chief economist and global director for market analysis at Rystad Energy. “It’s much more dependent on oil prices and decisions that were made long ago.”
However, he acknowledged that “A Trump administration could end up with more oil produced in the United States because they would, for instance, free up land for drilling.”
Even previous officials of the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) fear that Trump’s re-election will result in more pollution and worse climate outcomes. Stan Meiburg, who served as career official at the EPA and political official under the Obama administration, says:
“I’m very worried that you will end up with an EPA that is far less capable of doing basic things, getting Superfund sites cleaned up, responding to emergencies, whether they’re hurricanes like Helene or explosions like the one in Texas which spewed out a big pile of flame out of a ruptured gas pipeline.”
The future of the US’s environmental policies following Trump’s victory remain uncertain as the world waits to see how the 47th US president will approach his second term.
Featured image: Darren Halstead via Unsplash