With less than a week before the US election, the presidential candidates Donald Trump AND Kamala Harris are voting within two points of each other, and the race remains on a knife’s edge.
And while Harris is expected to continue the climate policies led by the charge President Joe BidenTrump is likely to take steps to scrap green legislation introduced by his predecessor and increase investment in fossil fuels.
At a time when the climate crisis is escalating at a rapid pace, here’s what you need to know about Trump’s environmental policies.
Republicans are the “anti-climate party”
Dr Jared Finnegan, director of University College London’s MSc in politics and policy, told Yahoo News that the Republican party has been skeptical about climate change since the early 1990s.
“Since then, it’s gotten more intense,” he said. “They’ve always been kind of an anti-climatic party.”
Climate discourse is considered to be an “extremely divisive issue” in the US. “It’s very polarizing,” he added.
The Republican manifesto mentions nothing to do with the environment — except for increasing American domestic energy.
“Increasing domestic energy means increasing fossil fuels. That means finding ways, subsidies and cutting regulations to increase U.S. oil and gas production,” Finnegan said.
Katie Pruszynski, a Trump specialist and doctoral candidate in the Department of Politics and International Relations at University of Sheffieldechoes this.
“The Republican Party advocates for increased domestic production of oil and gas and coal — all those things that we’ve been trying for decades now to rid ourselves of,” she told Yahoo News.
One of the driving factors behind this decision, Finnegan believes, is Republican party donors.
“The Republican Party receives a large amount of contributions from the oil and gas and polluting industries. Trump? I don’t know if there is an ideology,” he said.
Choosing Joe Biden’s climate legacy
Unveiling a series of ambitious climate packages has been a point of pride for current President Biden.
Part of that climate and energy legacy was the $391bn (£301bn) Inflation Reduction Act, part of which invested in domestic clean energy production, setting up factories such as battery factories for electric vehicle makers in industrial cities.
However, Trump has warned that these measures will be the first to be implemented.
“The party platform is cutting back and getting rid of the climate change policies that Biden has put in place. Trump himself goes even further,” Finnegan said.
“If Trump decides to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act in its entirety, it would mean getting rid of almost everything the U.S. does when it comes to climate change.”
But repealing the legislation would be quite a challenge. It is more likely that the act will weaken and be removed over time.
Even among Trump’s mainstream voter base, according to Andy Garraway, former UK Cabinet Office adviser to former energy secretary Alok Sharma and head of climate policy at sustainability intelligence company Resilience, the legislation is proving be very popular.
“One of the really smart things that Biden managed to do as part of the Inflation Reduction Act was really focus the growth of climate work on industrial districts — districts that are most likely to see job losses from a transition green,” Garraway told Yahoo News. .
Because of this, his revocation could mean Trump has a war on his hands.
“The reason why those jobs were created has been ignored. They don’t really care that it’s a climate bill that provides this funding,” Garraway said.
The Paris Agreement
Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement during his first term in office sent shock waves around the world.
The international climate change treaty, signed by 196 countries, aims to keep global temperature rises this century below 2C above pre-industrial levels, ideally to 1.5C.
On top of this rise in temperature, experts warn that the world could plunge into economic, environmental and social collapse, resulting in extreme weather becoming the norm, widespread crop failure bringing famine and rising sea levels eroding coastlines.
On January 20, 2021 – his first day in office – Biden took the US back to the Paris Agreement.
But in November, a Trump campaign spokesman said POLITICAL that if he returned to power he would once again withdraw from the agreement.
“If Trump wants to pull out of the Paris Agreement again and try to blow up the negotiation process, they can do it in a number of ways and create a headache for other developed countries,” Finnegan said. “High-income countries tend to negotiate as a bloc.
The results could have ramifications for other major powers that are under pressure to reduce their emissions.
“If America doesn’t stick to its climate goals, you’re going to have countries like China, potentially India, saying, ‘Well if they don’t stick to climate goals, we’re not sticking to climate goals now.’ “, said Pruszynski.
Finnegan added: “If Trump doesn’t cut emissions, climate change will be worse as a result for all of us.”
Without the US presence at COP30 – the first climate conference where each country is supposed to come back and submit an updated nationally determined contribution and raise the level of ambition to reduce emissions – the absence of a US presence could be extremely harmful.
As the US now accounts for around 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, it is a key player in limiting the damage of the climate crisis.
“The US still plays such a critical role in any kind of international negotiation. It’s also a good opportunity, I think, for the U.S. to hear the voices that aren’t usually heard in this kind of conversation,” Garraway said.
“Small island states, those directly affected, are given, at least on paper, equal weight in terms of opportunities to speak.
“Having someone tell you that their house will be under water in 20 years is a very powerful and impactful thing to hear.”
Increased emissions
While Trump may want to divest from fossil fuels and back away from the global climate agenda, Garraway warns that the realities of climate change are already being felt — and that the public mandate may have some impact.
“Just the other day the US faced Hurricane Helene, the impacts of which were exacerbated by climate change,” he said.
“Climate disasters like this are affecting states like Florida that vote mostly Republican. They are seeing the impacts on their doorstep. Whether they fundamentally accept the science or not, their homes are flooding.”
Finnegan believes that if Trump wins, climate progress will be beset with “more delays and more obstacles.”
“The progress we’ve made over the last few years, the clock just turns back,” he said. “U.S. emissions likely won’t rise any further, they just won’t come down as fast.
While Trump is unlikely to double US emissions in four years, Finnegan warns that it is important that he actively reduce them.
“I think it’s more that the policy process has deteriorated, so it takes another decade for things to get going again. And we don’t have that time.”
That said, there are other market forces at play.
“We will not build new coal-fired power plants in the US. It’s just not economically feasible. Solar and wind are also becoming cheaper. So even without politics, you get this point, point, point of change,” he said.
“But that’s not fast enough.”