Why a second term for Donald Trump would be a disaster for the fight against global warming

Abandoning subsidies for renewable energy, incentives to develop new oil drilling… Donald Trump talks little about the climate, but when he does mention it, everything suggests that a second term would not do the planet any good.

“I’m going to do two things on day one: ‘drill, baby, drill’ and close the borders.” Despite the deadly heatwave that is crushing the western United States, candidate Donald Trump, officially sworn in on the night of July 18-19 at the Republican convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, does not intend to tackle climate change. By taking up the slogan “drill, baby, drill” In his closing speech, the billionaire instead promised bright days for fossil fuels, whose greenhouse gas emissions make the United States the primary historical cause of the global environmental crisis (and the second largest current emitter, behind China).

More than two-thirds of Americans acknowledge the reality of climate change, according to a Yale University survey released Tuesday. But tLike his young running mate JD Vance, 39, the conservative is known for downplaying the seriousness of the environmental crisis, when he does not reject it outright. Which suggests a possible second term that will be devastating for the climate.

A program that does not mention the climate crisis…

Republicans on Monday adopted the program that Donald Trump and JD Vance will defend in the hope of reconquering the White House. The document, dedicated to “America’s Forgotten Men and Women,” does not mention the environment. As for the section on energy policy, it ignores any form of renewable energy. On the contrary, the program calls for an end to the measures “green”qualified as “socialists”.

Donald Trump himself is opposed to wind energy, convinced that “it kills all the birds”, he had notably launched during a debate with Joe Biden on the American channel CBS, during the 2020 presidential campaign.. “President Trump is committed to unleashing American energy sources like coal, oil and gas to ensure affordability for families and security around the world, making us a more self-sufficient nation,” summarized Donald Trump’s adviser Brian Hughes, asked by public radio NPR in June.

…if not to minimize its effects

As for his party’s unofficial platform drafted by his allies, Project 2025, it only addresses climate to announce the unraveling of environmental measures taken over the past three years by the Biden administration. In particular, it intends to repeal federal programs to combat climate change and laws providing funding and tax incentives for renewable energy. As for agriculture, which represents 10% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), this ultraconservative roadmap estimates that the sector “should not give priority to secondary issues, such as environmental issues, to the detriment of agricultural production.”

The agency itself is in the conservatives’ sights. The EPA as it operates today, according to this plan, “a false image of the state of our environment and the real dangers of climate change (…) in order to scare Americans into accepting their unnecessary and costly regulations.” If Donald Trump is re-elected, the agency’s mission would be redefined. As for NOAA, the federal agency that monitors hurricanes (often destructive when they hit the American coast), it is doomed to disappear, underlines the specialized magazine on the economy Forbes. Too anxiety-provoking in the eyes of the conservative ideologues who whisper in Donald Trump’s ear.

A candidate dependent on oil

The powerful fossil fuel sector in the United States did not wait for Donald Trump to try to influence the country’s economic policies. But it has been particularly generous with the candidate and his running mate. In early May, the American press revealed that the businessman had asked a handful of oil magnates, invited to dinner at his Mar-a-Lago villa in Florida, for the sum of one billion dollars, in exchange for the promise that his administration would only pass laws “pro-business” And “anti-regulation”reported the media outlet Politico and the newspaper The Washington Post.

Blaming Donald Trump for using these campaign donations “as a slush fund to pay his legal fees”the Democratic senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Ron Wyden launched a commission of inquiry on May 23 to question “the big oil companies“, accused of “lobby to protect and increase their profits at the expense of the American taxpayer.” The very next day, Reuters revealed that Donald Trump had amassed tens of millions of dollars from Texas businessmen in the oil sector. According to Mark Carr, one of the participants quoted by Reuters, the candidate even “got a standing ovation when he promised to build more gas pipelines”.

Finally, Politico revealed in May that the oil lobby had already drafted legislation, ready for Donald Trump’s signature. The objectives? To avoid the pitfalls of his first term, when the Republican president’s diplomatic positions or imprecisions on the form had prevented the full accomplishment of Trump’s energy agenda. Then, the other obvious ambition: to unravel the few measures wrested from the sector by Joe Biden.

As for JD Vance, he has in the past accused Democrats of stoking fears about “the environmental crisis” for electoral purposes. The young elected official from Ohio has even repeatedly expressed doubts about the human origin – scientifically uncontested – of global warming, underlines the New York Timeswhich published an inventory of the new running mate’s climate-sceptic remarks on Monday.

A record that speaks for itself

Finally, it is worth recalling how Donald Trump, president from 2017 to 2021, handled the climate issue. Shortly after his election, he withdrew from the Paris Agreement signed in 2015, ejecting Washington from the diplomatic process aimed at keeping the average global temperature increase below 1.5°C.

At the national level, the Trump administration had taken, in four years, 163 regulatory measures and other laws weakening the environmental and climate policy of the United States, calculated in 2021 the “Climate Deregulation Tracker” developed by Columbia University. While according to the latest IPCC synthesis report, the climate emergency implies an acceleration of the measures promised by the signatory states of the Paris agreement. “It is difficult to assess the extent of the potential damage that another decade of confusion and disorganization could cause,” said Professor Solomon Hsiang of the University of California, quoted by NPR radio.

A “glimmer of hope” remains, according to Ian Bremmer, chairman and founder of Eurasia Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy. “Texas, a state that is now a Republican, is the leader in renewable energy production in the United States. This was not true when Trump was president,” he qualified during a conversation with the former UN climate envoy, Christiana Figueres, in the podcast Outrage + Optimismin June.

Pointing to the jobs created by the renewable energy sector, particularly in conservative states, as well as the drop in production costs, he sees here “real economic prospects for the United States that Trump cannot ignore.” “In this respect, as president, he would probably be less disastrous for the climate in a second term if he were to win, than in his first term,” he reported.