Trump aggressively working to dismantle U.S. efforts to fight climate change

Geoff Bennett:

Among the many other big moves taken by the Trump administration, boosting fossil fuel development has been a priority.

In a series of actions, President Trump is following through on his promise not just to ramp up oil and gas production, but to sharply curtail any effort to deal with climate change.

William Brangham has been tracking this and joins us now.

So, William, we have already seen major action these first two weeks on the Trump administration's energy policy. What are the biggest moves so far?

William Brangham:

He has been going gangbusters, as my mom used to put it, on many fronts, myriad ways he's been doing this. He's been doing this through federal government agencies like the EPA, through his appointments, his Cabinet secretaries at Energy and Interior, and through executive orders.

A couple of examples. On day one, he declared an energy emergency, which basically tells every federal agency to do everything they can to ramp up oil and gas production on federal lands. Trump has also pulled out of the Paris climate accord, the global treaty to bring down emissions. He's backed out of that again. He's targeted Biden's push for electric vehicles.

I mean, the list goes on and on. There's just been a lot of efforts to go on this front.

Geoff Bennett:

And we know that, with President Trump, personnel is so often policy. Who are the people in his administration who are backing him up on this?

William Brangham:

That's right.

The argument that his Cabinet secretaries and that he has been making all along is that the Biden administration held back domestic energy production. And we should say, oil and gas production in America is at record highs right now. And it became so under the Biden administration.

But all of Trump's Cabinet picks argue that Biden didn't do enough on that front, and they promised to do differently. So that's Lee Zeldin at the EPA. That is Chris Wright at Energy. And that includes Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who described during his confirmation hearings how the Trump administration will do things differently.

Doug Burgum, U.S. Interior Secretary:

When energy production is restricted in America, it doesn't reduce demand. It just shifts productions to countries like Russia and Iran, whose autocratic leaders not only don't care at all about the environment, but they use their revenues from energy sales to fund wars against us and our allies.

President Trump's energy-dominance vision will end those wars abroad, will make life more affordable for every family in America by driving down inflation. And President Trump will achieve those goals while championing clean air, clean water, and protecting our beautiful lands.

Geoff Bennett:

So this raises the question, then, William, of what does this mean for President Biden's signature achievement on climate, the Inflation Reduction Act?

William Brangham:

President Trump, well, one of his first actions was to issue an executive order that dealt specifically with terminating the Green New Deal. That's how he refers to all of these kinds of efforts.

And that ordered all federal agencies to pause any of the money that was appropriated under the Inflation Reduction Act or the Infrastructure Act. They had to clarify later to say it was really only climate-related things, but that is still a large part of that bill.

So this order now means that a lot of those projects that were under way all over the country and the jobs connected to them are on hold. That could be things like big battery manufacturing plants to a $5 billion loan to clean up school buses and make them electric.

We talked to Julie McNamara. She's an analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Here's what she said this means.

Julie McNamara, Union of Concerned Scientists: We have seen projects have to be stopped. We have seen companies starting to reconsider whether or not they will move forward here. That is a terrible outcome for our country and it has these long-lasting ramifications. And so by having this coordinated effort to really — to send this chill that this is not a place that will be welcoming new investment. It's a deep concern.

William Brangham:

So there is some uncertainty as to how effective Trump will be at gutting that act, but this historic effort to ramp up batteries, wind, solar, nuclear to address climate change all of those things are in doubt.

Geoff Bennett:

And this is all unfolding as we're getting more warnings about the climate. Last month was the world's hottest January on record. Last year was the hottest year on record. Tell us more.

William Brangham:

That's right.

There's a new study out from climate scientist Jim Hansen. He was one of the first scientists to ring this alarm bell about climate back in the 1980s. He has a new paper out, which is a bit of an outlier, but he has been vindicated very often in the past.

His paper says that warming is accelerating faster than we anticipated, that the goal of the Paris accords to hold warming below two degrees Celsius compared to industrial times, that that is virtually out of reach, and that some of these more serious climate tipping points might be unavoidable.

Whether you dismiss his paper or not, his concern is affirmed by the vast majority of scientists, that our use of coal and oil and gas is changing this climate to a dangerous and unpredictable way.

We talked earlier with Chris Field at Stanford Woods Institute. Here's how he describes it.

Chris Field, Director, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment: The evidence is — for climate change and the human role in causing the warming that we have seen in recent decades is really overwhelmingly clear. There are no Democratic or Republican thermometers.

Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away. It just means we have a more serious problem to deal with by the time we finally get serious about addressing it.

William Brangham:

Of course, President Trump doesn't think we need to do this. He thinks all of these concerns about climate change are exaggerated and overblown.

And he is directing his administration and now the federal government to act accordingly.

Geoff Bennett:

William Brangham, our thanks to you, as always.

William Brangham:

Thanks, Geoff.