Air Date: Week of November 8, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump. (Photo: Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

The re-election of Donald Trump casts US climate action into doubt. President-elect Trump has vowed he will again pull the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement, cancel President Biden’s climate policies and unleash American fossil fuels. Inside Climate News Executive Editor Vernon Loeb and Reporter Marianne Lavelle join Hosts Steve Curwood and Jenni Doering for a roundtable discussion about what’s next for the climate, environmental policy and journalism.

Transcript

CURWOOD: From PRX and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios at the University of Massachusetts Boston, this is Living on Earth. I’m Steve Curwood.

DOERING: And I'm Jenni Doering.

CURWOOD: And we're here now to talk about what it means for the environment now that Donald Trump has won a second term in the White House.

DOERING: Yes, and with Republican control of the Senate as well, Steve.

CURWOOD: And we're joined now by our media partners from Inside Climate News. That's Vernon Loeb, he's Executive Editor, and Marianne Lavelle, who is the Washington bureau chief for them. Welcome back to Living on Earth, Marianne and Vernon.

LAVELLE: Thanks for having us.

LOEB: Thanks a lot. Great to be here.

CURWOOD: So, what's your view of how the world is gonna look at us that we have chosen a leader who denies climate change when we've been seeing temperatures going up and storms and such are getting worse and worse?

LOEB: Well, I think the world has seen this before. When Trump was in office the first time, one of the first things he did was take the country out of the Paris Agreement. Clearly, the world is expecting he'll do that again. Climate action didn't stop when he did that the first time. It won't stop this time. But I think clearly, world leaders feel like progress on climate is going to be a lot harder to achieve with Trump in office and with the US out of the official agreement. It's not a good moment for climate. Again, I don't think progress is going to grind to a halt, but it's not a good moment.

LAVELLE: Well, next week, climate negotiations begin in Azerbaijan and US negotiators, the Biden administration's negotiators, were going to go there and argue that more nations should be giving to the fund to address loss and damages in these developing countries that did so little to cause the climate crisis, but they are feeling the brunt of the climate crisis. It is going to be very hard for the US negotiators to have leverage or credibility when everyone there knows that policy is going to change completely on January 21 of next year. So, it just makes our role as a leader on these issues much smaller going forward as the rest of the world continues to grapple with climate change.

DOERING: So, President Biden was able to pass some pretty significant climate legislation with the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. But to what extent will Trump potentially roll back some of that legislation, given what he said about these laws?

LAVELLE: Well, President-elect Trump has made clear that he is going to roll back the regulations that are meant to get the auto industry to nudge it toward electric vehicles over the next decade. He says he is going to repeal that on day one, and that is going to make a big difference. My colleague and I have been working all year on writing about the politics of electric vehicles, and one of the analysts we've talked to says that there is going to be 40% less demand for EV batteries and EV technology under a Trump administration than there would have been under a Harris administration. So those kinds of changes in policy are bound to make a huge difference in how quickly we make the transition that's already going on all over the world to electric vehicles.

CURWOOD: Vernon, your reporter Bob Berwyn said on our air recently that if the US falls behind on developing electric vehicles, it'll be like we're a rusting locomotive on a sidetrack while the rest of the world, i.e. China and many others, proceed in this area. What are the risks and possibilities there? What are we up against if incoming President Trump does succeed in pushing back on progress for electric vehicles?

LOEB: Well, I think clearly, we'll fall even farther behind on EVs than we are already. China is starting to show world dominance on EVs. They're selling Chinese EVs in Mexico right now. And but for the Trump tariffs on Chinese EVs, they'd undoubtedly be flooding our market as well. So, with the Trump tariffs, which he's given every indication it is going to continue, we're not going to see Chinese EVs coming into our country, but what we're going to see is Chinese EVs all over the world, and we will fall farther and farther behind the Chinese and the electric vehicle market, as we're already behind them in the battery market and the solar market.

DOERING: I want to ask about Project 2025, which President-elect Trump has attempted to distance himself from, but it's broadly seen as a playbook of what might happen in terms of cuts at EPA, NOAA, Department of the Interior, when Trump comes back into the White House. So, what's your perspective, Marianne, on what might happen to agencies like EPA?

LAVELLE: I think the important thing to watch is who the President-elect appoints to these key agencies. In many cases, it may well be that some of the authors of Project 2025 are going to be top of the list to really take over those agencies, and that's because all of these folks who wrote Project 2025, they worked in the Trump administration, they know the agencies really deeply, and they know what programs they want to cut and that is very in line with what Trump has said he wants to do. He wants massive cutbacks in the agencies. And as much as he has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, they're right in line on what they see, which is a smaller role for the federal government, and that includes the environmental and science agencies.

LOEB: There's a long description in Project 2025, about how the EPA's enforcement capability should be pulled way back. And instead, the agency should move to something called compliance assistance, which is working more closely with corporations. The 2025 also talks about dismantling NOAA, which is the National Weather Service. It's the agency that tracks hurricanes and National Hurricane Center. Project 2025 even calls for the repeal of the EPA efficiency ratings for appliances, the ENERGY STAR efficiency ratings. So, Project 2025 could be a real disaster for environmental protection, if it is indeed the Trump blueprint.

CURWOOD: I guess we're about to find out, huh? What do you see coming up in terms of environmental justice now? The Biden administration set up a White House Advisory Council on Environmental Justice and wanted to set aside 40% of certain funds for environmental justice communities. What might we expect under the next Trump administration?

LAVELLE: It's interesting. One of the things Project 2025 says to do is to eliminate EPA's Office of Environmental Justice. It definitely is in the sights of the team that is around Trump to really redirect this initiative to address environmental justice. One thing I noticed is that House Republicans this week put out a report on environmental justice grants by the Biden administration, and they're very critical of those grants because they're going to groups that, for example, oppose the natural gas export terminals on the Gulf Coast. What this report does is kind of gives a blueprint for the incoming Trump administration on what grants to withdraw, and also kind of a basis for withdrawing the program altogether. So, I think that that report came out very much with an awareness that Trump is coming into the White House with an eye to cutting back the support for these communities that are overburdened with pollution and have been for a long time.

DOERING: Marianne, you mentioned natural gas exports. So, Vernon, I want to ask you, what do you think is going to happen now that the Trump administration is coming back in and has 20 something projects which it can potentially give the green light to?

LOEB: Yeah, the Biden administration put a hold on those projects as it considered the climate implications of them. And my hunch is that that will be one of the first things Trump does away with and basically gives those plants the green light as part of his, you know, energy dominance, "drill, baby, drill" approach. Of all the industries, none has fared better under Trump than the fossil fuel industry. So, I would expect a real explosion of LNG exports over the next four years under Trump too.

DOERING: And just remind us, why are climate activists so concerned about those terminals?

LOEB: You know, the terminals just lead to more fracking. We're already the leading oil and gas nation in the world, and if we can continue to frack and start exporting our natural gas as liquefied natural gas to Europe, which is still somewhat smarting from the loss of Russian natural gas, it just means more fracking. And when you've got more fracking, you've got more air pollution, more greenhouse gas emissions, more produced water piling up with no place to dispose of it. LNG exports means more fracking across the nation.

CURWOOD: And Vernon, I’ve seen some research that says that the actual climate footprint, carbon footprint, of exported natural gas can even exceed that of burning coal.

DOERING: So how do you both feel about this outcome? Marianne, and let's start with you, Vernon?

LOEB: I tend to look at climate change as a matter of fact in science and not as a partisan issue. And so, through that lens, I don't think the outcome is good here at all. We have a President-elect who's said that the first thing he's going to do is remove the nation from the Paris Agreement. Once again, that can't be good for the climate picture. Climate change comes down to cutting the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses, and we haven't, as a global community, succeeded in doing that since the Paris Accord was negotiated in 2015. There's more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now than any other point in human history. The planet is warming faster now than in any other point in human history. We have a President now coming in who says climate change is something of a hoax, and I'm not even going to be part of the global process to deal with it. I just don't see that as a good outcome.

LAVELLE: As somebody who's been writing about this for a long time, you know, I usually focus on the stories I'm telling and what I'm working on, not looking out at the big picture that much. This forces you to look at the big picture. And anyone who has, you know, young people in their lives, you think, you know, what kind of world are we leaving for them? And the way I deal with it is just kind of focus on the importance of the work we're doing, trying to explain the science, as Vernon said, and tell people really that there are things that can be done to address climate change, and we know what they are, and it's going to take all of us to do something about it.

CURWOOD: So, as we wrap up here, talk to me about what some people call the glimmer of hope, the states and localities. Vernon, can you start us on that?

LOEB: Yeah, so voters in Washington firmly rejected a measure on the ballot that would have overturned the state's signature climate law. In California, the voters approved a 10-billion-dollar bond fund to fund projects that that focus on resiliency and coastal adaptation and response to floods and wildfires. And similarly, in Honolulu, voters also approved a climate resiliency fund there. So, kind of a mixed result, right? While the national vote was going for Trump, who's someone who's sort of avowedly almost a climate denier, you've got majorities in these states clearly voting for climate change measures to fund things like adaptation and resiliency.

LAVELLE: And states always have been at the forefront of setting goals on clean energy that have been very effective over the years, and I am sure that environmental activists are going to be focusing on getting those goals strengthened and just continuing to go forward in the transition to renewable energy and policy at the states to make that happen.

CURWOOD: Well, you know, the founders of the United States did give states rights, and here's an interesting case where they will be employed.

DOERING: So, I think I hear both of you saying, you know, even with journalism at sort of this perilous time, you're not backing down, and you're going to follow these stories.

LOEB: You know, look, I think journalism is one of the most powerful civic forces in America. You know, without journalists, how would people know? So no, we're not backing down. If anything, I think our work is more essential than ever right now to tell the story of what I think is the most you know important story on the planet, which is climate change. For the rest of our lives, every other story is gonna play out on the stage of climate. And if anything, the reelection of Donald Trump sort of accentuates that fact.

CURWOOD: Jenni, we could just go on here, but I see that we're out of time. Let me thank Vernon Loeb, the Executive Editor of Inside Climate News.

LOEB: Great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

DOERING: And thank you so much, Marianne Lavelle, reporter for Inside Climate News.

LAVELLE: Thanks so much, good to be here with you.

 

Links

Inside Climate News | “Trump’s Win Casts Shadow over US Progress, Global Leadership”

Inside Climate News | “After Trump Win, World Says, ‘We’ve Been Here Before’”

Inside Climate News | “Climate Initiatives Fare Well Across the Country Despite National Political Climate"