Trump's return would derail American climate progress in crucial decade

America may no longer be the world’s undisputed superpower, but its elections are still the most important moment on the global democratic calendar. They have the power to shape global outcomes on everything from trade to foreign policy, and that’s especially true when one of the presidential nominees is Donald Trump. But for all the attention rightly being paid to his nakedly fascist impulses and his pledge to deport American citizens, abandon international alliances and embrace 1930s-style protectionism, we risk missing the biggest impact his re-election could have: an irreversible climate catastrophe. 

With all due respect to Al Gore, 2024 is the most important climate election in human history. We’re at a crucial tipping point in the fight against climate change, one that will be determined in large part by the outcome of next week’s vote. If the Democrats hold onto the White House, they’ll buy time for renewable energy technologies to continue spreading across the country — and throughout the US economy. If they win the House of Representatives and the Senate, they’ll be able to accelerate that process. But if Donald Trump is returned to power, all of that disappears — and with it, the hope of avoiding the worst-case outcomes outlined in (and targeted by) the Paris Accord. 

Trump, after all, has called climate change a “hoax” and “one of the great scams of all time,” and he’s increasingly surrounded by people who feel the same way. Take, for example, Tim Dunn, the Texas pastor and fracking billionaire who is one of Trump’s biggest donors, having funneled $5 million of his company's cash into a Super PAC called “Make America Great Again.” He’s also a director of a non-profit called “The Convention of States” that wants to see the federal government’s powers severely curtailed — largely, it seems, in order to advance the fossil fuel industry’s interests. “Among its priorities is to ‘resist top down planning by our federal government’ when it comes to limiting the fossil fuels at the heart of the climate emergency,” DeSmog’s Geoff Dembicki writes. “It describes global heating as a ‘hoax,’ erroneously stating on its website that ‘the claim that 97% of scientists agree that climate change is man-made is patently false.’” 

Project 2025, the detailed blueprint for a second Trump term that Trump has tried to pretend he’s never seen, would also actively interfere with the installation of clean energy technology. That would come at a significant cost to Americans who don’t work in the fossil fuel sector, according to analysis done by Energy Innovation, a San Francisco-based NGO. 

“The Project 2025 scenario reduces deployment of clean energy technologies and expansion of clean energy industries, significantly reducing job growth,” the analysis found. America’s GDP would also contract by $320 billion per year by 2030 and $150 billion per year in 2050. Oh, and although it goes without saying, greenhouse gas emissions would indeed skyrocket compared to the current trajectory they’re on. 

The Harris campaign has been very quiet about its own climate policies and objectives, but it’s a safe bet that it would at least continue with the momentum that Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act has created. Harris passed the deciding vote that made it law, after all, and over the ensuing two years its combination of fiscal stimulus and regulatory incentives have helped key parts of the economy start to decarbonize. With another four years, America could become a genuine leader — and manufacturing powerhouse — in the transition to clean energy. 

Among the ideas and items being contemplated for a so-called “IRA 2.0” are expanded rebates for heat pumps, a Clean Electricity Performance Program that would reward emission-free power generation and punish higher emitting sources, and perhaps even border carbon adjustments like the ones Europe is slowly implementing on imported goods. And with four more years of a federal government that isn’t actively interfering in the installation of clean energy technology, the spread of wind and solar — including in red states like Florida, Texas, and Georgia — would become irreversible. So too would the economic gains and jobs associated with them. 

So why hasn’t the Harris campaign put out a detailed climate plan in this most important of climate elections? Because American voters just don’t care about it right now. That’s understandable on some level, given the worries on the left about Trump’s fascism-curious campaign and the non-stop firehose of misinformation about climate change that’s been coming from the danker corners of the far-right ecosystem. According to Pew data from early September, climate is actually at the bottom of a list of ten key issues for American voters. It’s just fifth among Democrats, with healthcare, the economy, abortion, and Supreme Court appointments all rated as higher priorities. 

It’s possible that the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Helene and Milton changed that political calculus for some voters. Then again, given that Republicans — including elected officials like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump — responded to it by spreading wild conspiracy theories about FEMA diverting disaster relief money to migrants, the government seizing land in North Carolina for future lithium mining and even controlling hurricanes with“weather machines,” maybe that’s hoping for too much. 

But make no mistake: in an election filled with high stakes, the highest of all may revolve around the direction of climate policy in the United States. In time, and depending on the outcome, future generations may wonder why it was never talked about that way.