Yesterday I wrote an article for CleanTechnica titled, “Be Wary What You Wish For: Trump 2.0 Will Retract Climate Laws.” That was only the beginning of the ways that a second Trump administration would deconstruct the administrative state, which would have catastrophic effects on the environment.
The editorial board of the New York Times stated this week oh-so-succinctly the failures that Trump would bring to the executive office. “He is dangerous in word, deed, and action. He puts self over country.
He loathes the laws we live by. “ Here’s another list which continues to chronicle the treacherous shifts in climate policy that Trump would implement, as it’s now known, to “deconstruct the administrative state.” Trump : In a post on his social media platform Friday, Trump claimed he knows “nothing about Project 2025” and has “no idea who is behind it.
” The lie is evident, as several of his once-and-future advisors helped to write the platform, which lays out how Trump as president would seize direct control of independent agencies in order to “deconstruct the administrative state.” That means any and all federal agencies that help to regulate business practices to promote a cleaner environment and healthy planet for US residents would be removed asap. The reality: The Project 2025 platform and all its intentions to unravel democracy would close the doors on federal agencies like the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Peer-reviewed science would be sidelined, and polluters’ economic interests would be prioritized in government decision-making. You need to become familiar with Project 2025, which is available for view online in pdf form as part of the Heritage Foundation’s “ Mandate for Leadership ” series, or you can use a rainy afternoon to read the 922-page book . Trump: Let us never forget that Trump has recommitted to ending the US international consensus to limit carbon emissions, saying, “We will again get out of Paris.
” The Trump campaign has consistently described how, “On his first day in office, Joe Biden rejoined the horrendously unfair, pro-China Paris Climate Agreement.” The reality: The US was instrumental to the Paris Agreement reached in 2015 with the aspirational target of holding global warming to 1.5° Celsius (2.
7° Fahrenheit) and a harder target of 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit), securing broad consensus and ambitious commitments from both developed and developing countries. Yes, one of President Biden’s first actions was to rejoin the Paris Agreement, signaling a renewed commitment to international climate cooperation.
Trump: Trump repealed “ridiculous Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan.” In 2019 the Trump administration published its “Affordable Clean Energy” (ACE) rule to replace it. The rule effectively implemented the legal argument against the CPP by applying EPA regulations only to within the fence lines of individual power plants.
It’s a tangent of the mission to deconstruct the administrative state, as Project 2025 calls it. The reality: In April the EPA announced a suite of final rules to reduce pollution from fossil fuel-fired power plants in order to protect all communities from pollution and improve public health without disrupting the delivery of reliable electricity. These rules, finalized under separate authorities including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
Trump: “This will be the place where the cost of energy is lower than anyplace else on Earth,” Trump fibs. The reality: Energy independence is really just a “political slogan,” argues Andrew Campbell, executive director of the Energy Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. “That really doesn’t translate to anything that really matters to our economy in any direct way.
” What does matter, though, is independence from global oil markets through the expansion of clean energy, which is not vulnerable to global price shocks. Trump: “Get those proposals ready now, because we are going to put thousands of Americans to work building the power plants, pipelines, grids, ports, refineries, and shipping terminals of tomorrow,” Trump has promised. That includes expanding oil and gas drilling on his first day in office.
He told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he wouldn’t be a dictator “other than day one” with “drilling, drilling, drilling.” Trump also explained a quid-pro-quo to a group of oil executives and lobbyists gathered at a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort earlier this year that they should donate $1 billion to his presidential campaign because, if elected, he would roll back environmental rules that he said hampered their industry. The (sad) reality: A real low point of the Biden-Harris administration has been its failure to turn its back on Big Oil.
Reuters writes , “Almost no matter the metric, the US oil and gas industry has flourished under President Joe Biden, even though his administration has pushed hard to transition the US economy toward a carbon-free future to fight climate change.” Trump: Trump “will provide tax relief from Biden’s suffocating tax hikes on America’s oil, gas, and coal producers.” The reality: One prominent feature of President Biden‘s agenda on the environment is to target US fossil fuel (e.
g., oil, gas, and coal) producers and production with nearly $97 billion in tax increases over the next decade. It’s not just fossil fuel barrons, either.
The Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act funded an initiative to pursue high-income, high-wealth individuals who have an income of more than $1 million and owe more than $250,000 to the IRS — and announced Thursday that it had recovered $1 billion in unpaid taxes from wealthy individuals. Stopping the IRS from cracking down on wealthy tax cheats, said Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy for the Center for American Progress, “is THE biggest GOP priority.” Trump: “I will end Joe Biden’s war on American energy, cancel his ban on exporting American natural gas, beautiful, clean natural gas,” Trump purred lovingly.
He granted more than 20 new long-term approvals for LNG exports to non-free trade agreement countries. The reality: Many of the world’s biggest oil companies agreed at the COP 28 Climate Conference late last year that they would slash methane emissions from their wells and drilling by more than 80% by 2030 , an ambitious plan that could help curb runaway global warming. EPA Administrator Michael Regan set forth final standards to limit methane at US oil and gas wells.
The agency said it would impose stricter requirements for preventing and stopping leaks on about 900,000 new and existing wells, a move the oil industry once fought for years but which now many leading companies accept. Trump: Trump repealed Obama’s Federal Coal Leasing Moratorium, which prohibits coal leasing on Federal lands. The reality: The shift away from coal to renewable energy for electricity generation is producing environmental benefits during the climate crisis but also poses uncertainty for coal producers and others along the coal supply chain.
Tensions between coal companies and renewable energy proponents are exacerbated by controlled coal messaging. Coal propaganda evokes images of a noble and reasonable energy source and places coal within a positive framework that enhances local knowledge, protection, and economic security. The Biden-Harris administration contrasted that misinformation with $450 million available for solar farms and other clean energy projects at the site of current or former coal mines, part of efforts to combat climate change.
Trump: A Trump staffer told Fortune that Trump would gut the Inflation Reduction Act (including EV tax credits) if he gets back into the White House. It would be quite easy for a newly re-minted President Trump to simply fire the people implementing the IRA and NEVI provisions and order their new sycophants to halt implementation of the law as part of the effort to “deconstruct the administrative state.” The reality: As part of the Investing in America initiative, Biden’s commitment to reinvest and revitalize – “ and never give up on ” – the manufacturing communities and the workers who have helped build the US middle class is strong.
The administration continues to create and retain thousands of good-paying union jobs and support the American auto communities that have driven the US economy for generations. The EV and battery industries got a big boost from two pieces of Democratic-led legislation that passed under Biden: the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Each of these provided billions of dollars so states could significantly expand their EV charging infrastructure, expanded tax credits for consumer new or used EV purchases, and federal loans and subsidies to transform automotive manufacturing plants and retrain workers.
Trump: Trump signed legislation repealing the “harmful Stream Protection Rule.” Coal mining operations were having adverse impacts on streams, fish, and wildlife. The stream protection rule would have addressed these impacts by preserving the quality and quantity of both surface water and groundwater for future generations when the coal is gone.
The reality: In 2023 the EPA and the US Army Corps of Engineers published a final rule re-defining the term “waters of the United States” (“WOTUS”) under the Clean Water Act. The Final Rule modifies the scope of waterbodies subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act, and it reverses many of the regulatory changes made during the Trump Administration that had narrowed the scope of waters subject to regulation. The WOTUS definition establishes the geographic scope for jurisdiction under the CWA, which impacts a myriad of regulatory issues, including the applicability of water quality standards; impaired waters and total maximum daily loads; oil spill prevention, preparedness, and response programs; state and tribal water quality certification programs; National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit requirements; and dredge and fill permit requirements.
If you’ve read this far in the article, kudos to you! Unfortunately, the distinctions between a second Biden-Harris administration and Trump 2.0 are so enormous that they take up a lot of words. While this second article isn’t a finite list of how climate actions have taken center stage in the last 4 years due to a lot of behind-the-scenes Democratic party negotiations, it gives a solid overview and shows their far-reaching importance for the US and our world.
Keep finding those distinctions on your own, and stay aware of the ways that Project 2025 intends to deconstruct the administrative state. It’s crucial to our world. CleanTechnica's Comment Policy LinkedIn WhatsApp Facebook X Email Mastodon Reddit.
