What are Donald Trump's policies on climate change and other environmental issues?
Donald Trump has:
- withdrawn the US from the Paris international climate agreement
- taken steps to cut back the US Environmental Protection Agency
- said, on record, that global warming is a hoax invented by the Chinese to attack US manufacturing.
The growing impacts of climate chaos are extremely serious and require urgent action. Yet the person at the helm of the world’s largest economy is ignoring the science – and at times preferring to pass the whole thing off as a foreign conspiracy.
The latest UN climate change report shows that the effects triggered by just half a degree of warming are jaw dropping. And the window for stopping climate breakdown is closing.
If you do one thing, please sign our petition to make sure the UK does its bit to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Trump has a Republican Senate who have been heavily supported by industries that exploit coal, oil and gas – fuels we can't keep digging up if we want to avoid climate breakdown.
He has also surrounded himself with advisers linked to the dirty-energy industry, and filled his cabinet with climate change deniers.
Here’s what we can tell so far about Donald Trump’s position on the climate emergency, energy, the Paris Agreement and trade.
What is Donald Trump’s policy on climate change?
Trump has changed his mind a number of times on climate change.
In 2009 he was part of a business coalition pressuring President Obama to act swiftly.
If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.
Business coalition, featuring Donald Trump, 2009
But by 2012 he was calling climate change a "Chinese hoax."
During the 2016 election campaign he went further and threatened to pull out of all climate negotiations and treaties.
He appeared to have a slight change of heart, agreeing “there is some connectivity” between human activity and climate change, but regressed once more to claim he can't be sure if climate change is man-made. What's more, he thinks "it'll change back again" without any need for interventions.
Regardless of his inconsistent opinions, it's clear Trump has no intention of taking climate change seriously. He's appointed a cabinet full of climate deniers and fossil fuel hangers-on, and he's choosing to ignore the importance of the UN scientists' recent climate change report.
And in 2017 he followed through with an election-campaign threat, announcing that he would pull the US out of the Paris Agreement. The world's second largest emitter of climate-changing carbon dioxide gas is no longer part of a deal to limit global temperature rise, and the extreme weather and sea rises that come with it.
Donald Trump and the fossil fuel industry
Trump’s closest energy advisors all have very strong links to either the fossil fuel industry or climate denial outfits.
Trump nominated long-time climate denier Rick Perry for Energy Secretary, and the CEO of ExxonMobil Rex Tillerson as his top diplomat, in the Secretary of State role. Tillerson, who urged Trump not to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, was soon replaced with former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who opposed the US ever joining the Paris Agreement in the first place. Pompeo has accepted well over a million dollars from oil and gas industries in campaign contributions since 2009.
Trump's original administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Scott Pruitt had previously fought against the agency's clean air regulations and sued it to overturn President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. One EPA scientist is reported to have called Pruitt's appointment an “unprecedented disaster” for the natural world and public health. A judge told the EPA to release the evidence behind Pruitt’s claims that climate change has nothing to do with human activity. Pruitt resigned in July 2018.
While current administrator for the EPA, Andrew Wheeler, might be more tactful than his predecessor, one thing's for sure: he's not committed to protecting the environment. Wheeler has previously worked as a coal lobbyist on behalf of polluters and climate deniers to make sure government policies don't harm their climate-wrecking businesses. And although he isn't an outspoken climate denier like Pruitt, he has refused to agree that climate change is caused by humans.
Other top EPA officials have strong links to the fossil fuel industry, such as William Wehrum.
Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, until April 2019, was Ryan Zinke. He is a big advocate of coal who has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from the industry. His successor, David Bernhardtt is a lobbyist for the oil industry.
What is Donald Trump’s policy on the Paris Agreement?
In 2017 Trump announced he'd pull the US out of the United Nations Paris Climate Agreement. The agreement, originally signed by 195 parties – including the US, EU and China – aims to limit global warming to 1.5°C. We've already had over 1°C of warming which has led to millions of people fleeing their homes.
In November 2020, one day after the US election and while votes were still being counted, the withdrawal was made official.
Mr Trump remains the sole head of a major economic state who denies the reality of climate change. Other nations will need to lead the way and use every diplomatic and economic tool at their disposal to compel the US to act.
The world must unify in treating Trump as a pariah and not as an excuse for inaction.
Erich Pica, Friends of the Earth US
What is Donald Trump’s policy on energy?
The theme of Donald Trump’s energy policy mirrors that of the Republican Party – energy independence and energy security based on fossil fuels.
That means using American fossil fuel energy resources to the full. The priority is clear: “America is sitting on a treasure trove of untapped energy. In fact, America possesses more combined coal, oil, and natural gas resources than any other nation on Earth.”
Unfortunately this type of thinking is an express ticket to deadly rises in global temperature. Tackling climate change means keeping 80% of proven coal, oil and gas reserves in the ground.
There are 3 main proposals so far to realise Trump's catastrophic vision.
First, ending the current moratorium on coal mining leases. Second, fast-tracking new fossil fuel proposals and supporting new fossil fuel infrastructure. And third, scrapping regulations including President Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
What is Donald Trump’s policy on renewable energy?
Trump has long stated his opposition to renewables. His administration’s budget for 2018 saw funding for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy cut by 72%.
One bizarre piece of support for renewables though was his announcement that his fabled Mexico Wall could be covered in solar panels – as a way to generate energy and make the wall pay for itself.
Fortunately, much of the progress that has taken place in renewable energy is happening in the private market and is not dependent on support from the federal government.
Even without subsidies or a price on carbon, renewable energy is cheaper than coal and cost-competitive with natural gas in the US.
This means that renewable technologies will continue to thrive – they are a huge growth sector. However, the US invests only a third of the amount that China spends on renewables, so it risks missing out on that growth.
What is Donald Trump’s policy on fracking and other fossil fuels?
Trump is pro-fracking, just as he is pro-coal. At least, his advisers are.
Trump has now started auctioning off large amounts of land for fracking and opening up almost all US waters for oil and gas drilling, while simultaneously weakening environmental regulations. It's clear that he's stopping at nothing to prop up climate-wrecking fossil-fuel companies.
But it will be difficult for him to bring back the jobs in coal country.
The economics of coal mean that the industry is in deep trouble – and in the US the growth of the fracking industry and renewable energy has been a major cause of its difficulties.
To get coal back on its feet, Trump would need to change the economics. Pro-coal Australian prime-minister Malcolm Turnbull has found that being pro-coal isn’t enough if the investors won’t put in their money. Ramping up the coal industry would require billions in subsidies from the federal government.
Last year, Trump produced a plan to do exactly that – use taxpayers’ money to keep coal power stations open. It was unanimously rejected by regulators. Now he is working on a new plan, claiming that coal must be subsidised in the interests of national security.
If we want to keep global warming below even 2°C above pre-industrial levels, we already have more coal, oil and gas in production globally than we can safely burn.
The President should move away from both fracking and coal, and focus on America’s even bigger renewable energy resources. There is greater potential for jobs and the manufacturing industry in renewables than in fossil fuels.
Where are we headed?
The details of Trump’s energy policy are still emerging, but the signals are not good.
So many fossil fuel lobbyists at the heart of his team bode badly for millions of Americans and billions of people worldwide. We need stronger action on climate from the world’s largest economy.
But it's not all bad news. The growth of renewable energy is now unstoppable. And millions of Americans are determined to fight all the way, together, for a clean, prosperous country safe from pollution and climate change. This last point is why ultimately the fossil fuel lobbyists will lose.
17 state leaders have already come together to uphold the objectives of the Paris Agreement in defiance of Trump's government. And over 2,000 businesses, nearly 300 cities and counties and 10 states have promised world leaders to do their bit to keep the US on track by signing the We Are Still In pledge.
And the facts of climate change are undeniable, meaning that Trump is seeing opposition to his climate-wrecking policies, even from his own side of Congress.
Join the millions around the world doing all they can to ensure that one man cannot wreck decades of work to stop the climate crisis. And what better place to start than at home. Please sign our petition to make sure the UK does its bit to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
What are Donald Trump’s policies on trade and the environment?
Headlines suggest that Donald Trump has declared war on US trade agreements.
And, indeed, it seems he is just doing just that.
Trump has pulled the US out of the recently-negotiated Trans Pacific Partnership deal and begun the renegotiation of the USA’s North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. He believes those deals are too generous to US trading partners and encourage the off-shoring of US manufacturing. These agreements also happen to threaten climate, environmental and other public interest regulations – but that's not why Trump is ditching them.
What Trump has said is that he wants to significantly increase US production and export of coal, oil and gas – as well as roll back public-interest regulation across the board. And his Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, has made it clear that a UK-US trade deal would require the UK's current environmental, food and farming standards to be lowered.
As such, it’s hard to envision a future Trumpian US trade policy built on anything other than jingoism, greed and ignorance of environmental and climate science.
Thus, the idea that any of Trump’s proposed trade deals – including any future deal with the UK – will be better for the environment, people and planet than those he is promising to tear up is almost certainly nonsense.
"We will campaign vigorously against any trade deal with the US. Why should they get to profit from trade with the UK, when their actions will result in more people dying from extreme weather around the world, contribute to ever more serious refugee crises, and cause increased flooding and disruption here in the UK?" Friends of the Earth CEO Craig Bennett.
First published 10 January 2017
