President-elect Donald Trump is set to launch an all-out attack on federal regulations, including those that protect public health and safety, environmental quality and climate stability.
So, in a repeat of 2016, America will depend on states, cities, businesses, corporations and families to confront climate change voluntarily, aggressively and at scale. Because the U.S. is the world's largest oil and gas producer and Trump plans to produce more, the subnational and private-sector response will have worldwide as well as national implications.
Some analysts think the U.S. can decarbonize despite Trump's sell-out to Big Oil. The Rhodium Group, an independent research organization, took stock of America's progress last July. It reported that greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 were 18 percent lower than in 2005. With its existing policies, the U.S. is on a path to cut its emissions 38percent to 56 percent below 2005 levels by 2035, Rhodium said.
The upper end of that estimate approaches the goal just announced by President Biden — emission cuts of 61 percent to 66 percent by 2035 — to keep America on track for net-zero carbon emissions by mid-century. Biden's top climate policy advisor, John Podesta, is optimistic. He cites $450 billion in clean energy investments already announced by the private sector.
In addition, states and localities have significant authority to address global warming, from building codes to transportation planning and urban designs. Businesses can have substantial impacts by limiting emissions in their operations and supply chains.
Unfortunately, Trump's plans mean the national policies in place this year won't be in place over the next four. He rolled back or killed over 100 environmental regulations during his first presidency. Biden restored many of them, but Trump will now kill them again, along with new rules the Environmental Protection Agency finalized during the last four years. They include a suite of regulations the EPA finalized last April to “significantly reduce climate, air, water, and land pollution from the power sector.” Trump also wants to repeal the most important policy, the Inflation Reduction Act, and its record financial incentives for clean energy.
Free-market conservatives are excited by Trump's deregulation plans. Many believe the free market should organize society and dictate public policies. However, a free market does not exist, especially in a nation that subsidizes private corporations such as oil, gas and coal producers. Nevertheless, excited by the myth, the Wall Street Journal published a column titled, “Let the Trump Deregulation Begin: The coming rollback will set the economy's animal spirits free.”
“On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised the ‘most aggressive regulatory reduction' in U.S. history,” columnist Suzanne Clark wrote in that piece. “His likely government efficiency czar, Elon Musk, said in October that ‘a bonfire of nonsense regulations would be epic.'”
It's the animal spirits we should worry about — the idea that unfettered greed is good, damn the consequences. Musk's bonfire threatens to burn many of greed's victims, especially the families and small businesses destroyed by extreme weather.
Not long ago, the market's animal spirits caused the multiple environmental crises of the 1960s and 1970s, which gave rise to many current regulations. The difference now is that ecological crises are global as well as local. For the first time in the Earth's history, human hubris is threatening the planet's ability to support life. Scientists have determined that civilization has exceeded safe limits in six of the Earth's nine vital life-support systems.
We should be concerned about how much we allow conservative bombast to skew our judgment in the U.S. Yes, government rules can be burdensome and overreach. However, the rulemaking process is arduous and filled with guardrails.
Agencies develop regulations to carry out Congress's laws. Federal agencies formulate the rules, publish them in the Federal Register for public comment, evaluate the comments, and explain how they responded to each. (In 2017, for example, when the EPA proposed limits on carbon dioxide pollution from existing power plants, it received and responded to more than 4.3 million public comments.) Next, the agency either withdraws the rule or finalizes it, and submits it to Congress, which can overturn it. The entire process often takes two or three years.
EPA calculates that in its first 20 years of existence, the Clean Air Act prevented 205,000 premature deaths, 672,000 cases of chronic bronchitis, 21,000 cases of heart diseases, 843,000 asthma attacks, 18 million child respiratory illnesses, and more than 10 million lost IQ points among children exposed to lead. Over its first 50 years, the Clean Water Act kept 700 billion pounds of pollution out of the nation's rivers.
If industries controlled their “animal spirits,” the government would not need to do this. Instead, the oil and gas industry has responded to climate change with obfuscation, deceit, greenwashing and unlimited infusions of money into political campaigns. It gave nearly $23 million to Trump's campaign and outside support groups last October. Influence Map, a think tank that advocates ambitious climate action, describes the villainous strategy the oil and gas industry has used since 1967 to keep the world dependent on its products.
Conservatives mock and even punish companies that adopt so-called ESG policies to protect the environment and society. Conservative lawmakers and business trade groups oppose a regulation requiring corporations to reveal their greenhouse gas pollution and climate risks to shareholders. Yet, climate change hurts businesses as well as people.
Inside Climate News reports that “economists now argue that the consequences of climate change are already imposing increased costs on businesses and governments around the world.” In the meantime, clean energy is the world's biggest market opportunity. The conservative response is to run from the opportunity rather than capture it.
The good news is that since Trump's victory last month, a coalition of 2,942 businesses, 170 investors, 11 states, 353 cities and hundreds of faith groups, universities, tribal nations and cultural organizations have joined a coalition called “America is All In” to help the U.S. fulfill its Paris Agreement.”
That's the way to avoid government intervention.
William S. Becker is a former regional director at the U.S. Department of Energy and author of several books on climate change and national disaster policies, including the “100-Day Action Plan to Save the Planet” and “The Creeks Will Rise: People Co-Existing with Floods.”
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