Trump Is Leading an ‘All-Out Assault' on the Climate
It's no secret that Donald Trump has zero interest in fighting climate change and enthusiastically supports the fossil fuel industry. Trump's 2024 victory was expected to set the climate fight back, but in less than two months, his administration has already done irreparable harm to efforts to address climate change. This can primarily be seen in key agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
For example, the EPA is currently working on rewriting its finding from 2009 that has been critical for regulating greenhouse gases. This was initiated by an executive order Trump issued on his first day in office. The so-called 'Endangerment Finding,' which has been unsuccessfully challenged in court multiple times, says that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. It allows the EPA, under the Clean Air Act, to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. If the finding were to be watered down or essentially done away with, that would largely take the EPA out of the climate fight.
'Revisiting and potentially reversing the Endangerment Finding could be the most drastic step that the Trump Administration will take on climate,' says Barry Rabe, a professor emeritus of environmental policy at the University of Michigan. 'It would upend a consensus running across prior presidencies and the courts, underpinning a range of domestic policy steps and global ones.'
Michael Gerrard, a climate law professor at Columbia University, tells Rolling Stone that rewriting the Endangerment Finding would mean that the EPA would no longer be able to regulate emissions from power plants or motor vehicles. He says the finding is the 'legal basis for most of what the EPA does under the Clean Air Act to regulate climate change.'
At the NOAA, the Trump administration is firing hundreds of workers and looks intent on closing some of its most important offices. The NOAA does critical work on climate science and weather monitoring, which is needed when extreme weather events hit. Its weather forecasting models are also what power everyone's weather apps, so the private sector can't just easily step in and pick up the slack. Gerrard says the agency is being 'decimated' with these firings.
'He's undermining the science at NOAA — weather forecasting, climate modeling, etc. — by just cutting staff,' says Ann Carlson, a professor of environmental law at UCLA.
Beyond what's happening with the Endangerment Finding and staff cuts at agencies, Carlson says there are multiple other actions the administration has taken that threaten efforts to address climate change and will have ripple effects for the foreseeable future.
'Lee Zeldin is trying to weaponize the [Justice Department] against nonprofits that have received climate funding,' says Carlson.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has frozen over $20 billion in funds from President Biden's landmark climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, that were meant to go to nonprofits focused on climate change. Trump falsely claimed during his recent joint address to Congress that former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams received almost $2 billion from this fund.
Zeldin says he is working with the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate potential fraud — though no evidence of fraud has been provided. It's thought that this is actually simply a way to 'claw back' those funds so they can be used for other purposes. A senior federal prosecutor — working for Trump's interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, who's described his team as 'President Trump's lawyers' — has already reportedly resigned over a demand she help freeze the assets of an EPA grant initiative when there was not, she wrote, 'sufficient evidence' to do so.
Regarding the Inflation Reduction Act, Carlson says she worries the administration will repeal other parts of the signature climate law. You might think electric vehicles would be safe thanks to the presence of co-president Elon Musk, but Trump still doesn't have any love for EVs beyond those produced by Tesla.
'Trump has made it no secret that he wants to revoke the electric vehicle tax credit in the Inflation Reduction Act and maybe other provisions,' Carlson says. 'If he does that, that will dramatically undermine the effort to decarbonize.'
Elon Musk has previously claimed, on different occasions, that eliminating the tax credit could help Tesla. It's thought that eliminating it would hurt other car companies significantly more than Tesla, which means it could be a net benefit for the company.
The transportation sector is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the U.S., so hobbling the adoption of electric vehicles would have a substantial impact on climate efforts. It may also cause car companies to reconsider their focus on rolling out more EVs if consumer interest decreases.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy published a memo shortly after he was confirmed by the Senate focused on the possibility of rolling back fuel economy standards for motor vehicles, which would do further harm to the climate. The Trump administration has also canceled efforts to repair broken electric vehicle chargers around the country. The Department of Energy is now going after appliance energy efficiency standards, which would make sure home appliances use less energy.
'It's an all-out assault on the federal government being involved in tackling climate change,' says Carlson.
There are many more examples that could be listed, but the consensus seems to be that the Trump administration is doing everything it can to make climate change worse and make Americans reliant on dirty energy for years to come. That's not exactly surprising, considering the fact he told the fossil fuel industry during the election that he'd do basically whatever they wanted if they gave him $1 billion.
All of this is happening despite the fact that renewable energy is now generally cheaper than energy derived from fossil fuels. That being said, the federal government isn't the only space where we see the climate fight taking place, and some level of climate action will continue within the United States during Trump's term.
Carrie Jenks, executive director of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School, says a federal response to climate change can't be replaced. However, she says all is not lost if the federal government isn't doing what it should be doing to address this crisis.
'In the absence of federal involvement, I think you'll still see states and the industry moving forward to address climate change and make investments,' says Jenks. 'I think there's an opportunity for states to continue to make progress and to test things out.'
The catastrophic effects of climate change are becoming more apparent every year, and the world doesn't have infinite time to win this fight. While Trump remains in office, the federal government will certainly be working against efforts to solve this immense problem. Perhaps other western nations will step up as the U.S. falters.
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