Category: Natural Resource Policy

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Implications of Trump 2.0

            This is a blog essay I have been dreading having to write, because I knew that writing it would be painful, if not downright depressing.  However, I also felt that it is a blog essay that I am obliged to write. 

Why Am I Obliged to Write This Essay?

Three reasons.  First, back in October 2016, as that year’s Election Day approached, I came out of my political closet (as a long-time bipartisan and moderate independent), and revealed my great concerns, indeed fears, of what a Trump presidency would mean – not just for environmental and climate change policy, but for a much larger set of issues with profound consequences domestically and internationally (This is Not a Time for Political Neutrality).  I wrote about “what a Trump presidency would mean for my country and for the world in realms ranging from economic progress to national security to personal liberty,” based on Trump’s “own words in a [2016] campaign in which he substituted impulse and pandering for thoughtful politics” … and “built his populist campaign on false allegations about others, personal insults of anyone who disagreed with him, and displays of breathtaking xenophobia, veiled racism, and unapologetic sexism.”

Second, just a week after Trump’s surprising win over Hilary Clinton, I turned my focus in this blog to considering carefully the implications of the (first) Trump administration for environmental, energy, and climate change policy and action (What Does the Trump Victory Mean for Climate Change Policy?).  I’m pleased to say that much (but not all) of what I feared that first Trump administration would bring did not occur, for four reasons, among others:  (a) the incompetence of the administration, particularly in regard to producing regulatory changes that would withstand legal challenges (Reflecting on Trump’s Record); (b) some Trump appointees provided guardrails protecting the country from the President’s worse instincts; (c) the (Democratic) Congress provided significant checks; and (d) dedicated, expert staff in the various departments and agencies (and even in the Executive Office of the President) were determined to resist the undoing of decades of sound public policy.

Third, in January 2021, just days before the inauguration of President Biden, I wrote in some detail about what I expected the consequences to be for domestic and international climate change policy of the then forthcoming Biden administration.  For better or for worse, much of what I anticipated, did indeed subsequently come to pass (Climate Change Policy & Action in the Biden Administration).

            So, now with Trump 2.0 two months away, I feel obliged to offer my thoughts about the forthcoming administration’s implications for climate change policy and action.  I need not point out that none of the four reasons I listed above to explain why much of what I feared from the first Trump administration did not occur, apply for the second Trump administration.

A Very Important Caveat Before Turning to Climate Change Policy

            I want to acknowledge that my major reactions to the Trump victory and my major concerns about the forthcoming Trump administration are not about climate change policy or even environmental policy more broadly, but about: the future of American democracy; global security (the future of NATO and the stability of the European Union); the real economic consequences of across-the-board tariffs (consumer costs, inflation); tax cuts for the rich; mass deportations; and leadership by uninformed demagogues – Matt Gaetz as Attorney General, RFK Jr as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Peter Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, Elon Musk on economic policy and business regulation, and so many others.  The four I name are not just bad appointments, but absolutely appalling ones, who share the one characteristic that apparently matters – blind loyalty to the authoritarian who has been elected President.

            But my expertise is not in the study of democratic institutions, international affairs, macroeconomics, or immigration policy, but in the study of environmental and climate change economics and policy.  So, I will turn to this now, and I will be brief, partly because we will learn much over the coming two months, as more cabinet-level and then lower-level nominations are announced.  My other reason for being brief is that, as I suggested at the outset, it is painful to write this essay, and so I want to finish writing as quickly as I can.  I apologize for that.

International Climate Change Policy

            In terms of the international dimensions of climate change policy, that is, cooperation with other countries in addressing a fundamentally global commons problem of massive magnitude, the focus needs to be on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Paris Agreement, and the annual Conferences of the Parties.  Having just returned from COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, my next blog essay will focus on that and will appear in a week or so, after COP29 has adjourned and the outcome has become clear.  So, for now, I will stick to some broad observations about the consequences of Trump 2.0 for the international domain.

            In short, it is 2016 all over again, when Trump stated during the campaign that he would withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, and then announced the “withdrawal” on June 1, 2017.  As I wrote at the time (Trump’s Paris Withdrawal: The Nail in the Coffin of U.S. Global Leadership?), the Paris Agreement itself specifies that the soonest any Party to the Agreement can initiate withdrawal is three years after the Agreement comes into force, followed by a one-year delay before withdrawal takes effect.  Hence, Trump’s announcement did not take effect until November of 2020!  For almost the entirety of Trump 1.0, the United States remained a Party to the Paris Agreement, and dedicated staff from the U.S. State Department continued to participate in the ongoing negotiations in meaningful ways.

Hence, the United States was out of the Paris Agreement for just a few months – from November 2020 until a month after Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021, when President Biden filed the paperwork for the U.S. to rejoin 30 days later.

            Now, however, the statutory three-year delay period has long since passed, and so assuming that Trump files the withdrawal papers on January 20, 2025 (which is likely, given the much more careful preparations his supporters have been making for the past year), one year later the U.S. will be alone among the community of nations as a non-Party of this fundamental and path-breaking Agreement (after some delay, Iran and Algeria ratified the Agreement).  Furthermore, it is much less likely that Civil Service staffers at the State Department, EPA, or the Department of Energy will be able to continue their work, as Trump 2.0 seems determined to purge the upper ranks of the Civil Service of anyone other than Trump loyalists (by making these positions require political appointment).

            A more drastic action would be to withdraw the United States not just from the Paris Agreement of 2015, but from the umbrella agreement, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, 1992).  Ironically, this requires only a one-year delay to become effective after filing paperwork.  During Trump 1.0, serious consideration was never given to this more significant move, perhaps because the UNFCCC was ratified (by voice vote with apparent unanimity) by the U.S. Senate in 1992 and signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush.

Now, some of the most passionate climate skeptics in Trump’s orbit want the U.S. to pull out of the UNFCCC as well.  A key question, which legal scholars will debate, is whether withdrawal requires Senate action, including a super-majority vote, which Democrats in the chamber could easily defeat.  There seems to be some uncertainty.  While Senate action is required to ratify treaties, Senate involvement in withdrawal is not mandated nor even mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.  But Presidents have previously withdrawn from treaties unilaterally.  That said, this apparently remains a debated issue in U.S. constitutional law.

In the meantime, a key question is what will the effect of U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement – or more broadly, the election results and the promise of Trump 2.0 – have on other countries’ climate stances and policies.  As of now, it seems that Trump’s election need not derail global climate action, but it is too soon to make firm predictions.  It does appear that Trump’s victory may have emboldened Saudi Arabia to be much more strident in its defense of fossil fuels at COP29 (more about this in my next blog essay).

Domestic U.S. Climate Change Policy

            It is already evident that the key appointments in the energy, environment, and climate change space in the new administration will be held by individuals with histories of strident opposition to climate policies and equally strong support for fossil fuels.  Examples include Trump’s choice for Secretary of Energy – Chris Wright, a fracking booster and climate skeptic, Lee Zeldin as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and a number of others.

            It also seems clear that the new administration will try to roll back many provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and perhaps some provisions of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.  Actual repeal of the statutes is unlikely, due to Senate filibuster rules (i.e., the necessity of 60 votes, more than Republicans will control).  In the face of this, the Biden administration is rushing to finalize regulations, and to get IRA money (explicit subsidies) out the door.  Beyond this, the White House has considerable latitude to defund elements of the IRA, since nearly all are explicit or implicit subsidies.  The methane fee will be a particular target.

On the other hand, the protectionist elements of the IRA, including domestic content standards, will be harder to roll back, because of bipartisan support.  Furthermore, fully 80% of investments in the first two years of IRA implementation went to Republican Congressional districts, whether locations for electric vehicle plants in Georgia, battery factories in South Carolina, or others.

It is also important to recognize that the tremendous reductions that have been experienced over recent years in U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were not due to government policies, but largely a result of exogenous technological change and market forces, namely the development of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking), which resulted in opening up new, low-cost, unconventional sources of both natural gas and oil.  This is what led to the massive substitution in U.S. electricity generation from major reliance on coal to major reliance on gas.  Added to this are the very significant decreases experienced over the past few years in the costs of renewable sources – both solar and wind.  None of this will go away.

Finally, the November election brought a small, but meaningful bit of positive climate policy news when Washington State voters decided not to repeal the state’s Cap-and-Invest (cap-and-trade) program.  Linkage discussions with California and Quebec will soon commence, if they have not already.  Overall, this is a reminder of the fact that the next four years (at least) will again be a period when sub-national climate policy is increasingly important in the USA.  For the time being, this is the best I can do at trying to offer a somewhat positive end to this essay.  I wish I could do better.

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A Rising Star Shares His Thoughts on Land Use & Climate Policy

In my podcast series, “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program,” I’ve had the pleasure of engaging in conversations with a significant number of outstanding economists, who have carried out important work relevant for environmental, energy, and resource policy, including by serving in important government positions.  That inevitably brings with it the reality that many of the people I’ve spoken with have been senior leaders in the profession, with the emphasis on the word “senior.”  I’m very pleased to say that in my most recent podcast, I’ve broken that mold with someone who is a young, rising star in the world of environmental economics, particularly in the realm of analyzing the causes and consequences of changes in land use.  I’m referring to my colleague, Charles Taylor, a relatively new Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.  You can listen to our complete conversation here.

Taylor’s research often uses satellite data to address policy questions associated with land use, and at the beginning of our conversation, he explains that he first got interested in land use issues during his time spent as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, following his undergraduate years at the University of Virginia.

“I got to go work abroad in Qatar, Brazil, and Europe, and get a lot of exposure to these big climate change and land-based initiatives that governments and the private sector were doing. And I got really excited by that, and also very quickly learned I didn’t want to be a consultant,” he says. “I felt that I wanted to get more either skin in the game at that time or more in depth into the issues, and that prompted my journey into more of the entrepreneurial world.”

Charles soon connected with David Tepper, a former banker who shared his passion for land use issues, and together they co-founded Earth Partners, a private company that provides land restoration and bio-energy services intended to help rebuild soils, habitats, and other critical ecosystems.

“How do we restore ecosystems to meet all the challenges we’re facing, from water to food security to pollution to climate change, and how do we do that at scale?  [The idea was to] start a company [dedicated to] next generation land management,” he remarks. “A lot of the challenges we’re facing as a society directly or relate to land management, and looking around, I didn’t really see any companies or organizations taking that head on.”

Charles notes that he decided to pivot from his entrepreneurial venture into academia once he realized the limits of what can be accomplished with capital alone.

“We had great small-scale investors who wanted to do good things, but you still had to get their money back in a few years and that limits the scope of what you can do if you really want transformational change,” he explains. “So, that made me say, okay, what if I went back to the research side and found some way I could contribute to these problems on the other side while keeping one foot or at least half my brain in this world of how this … on the ground world works?”

Much of Charles Taylor’s current academic research relates directly to environmental economics associated with land use decisions, and is intended to inform lawmakers and other stakeholders of the benefits of specific policy choices.

“Humans have touched nearly every acre of non-barren land on earth. We’ve transformed it. We farm it for our food. We take its water. We shape its rivers for reservoirs, for irrigation. We use the wood for forests. We build on it for housing… We get our energy out of it, increasingly for renewable energy. We need a lot of it for siting wind and solar. And then climate change interacts with all this,” he says. “So, there’s all these questions I am really curious about [and am interested in] quantifying and using some of the empirical tools we have [to do that].”

Taylor references a recent paper he co-authored with Caltech Assistant Professor Hannah Druckenmiller that examines land use regulation under the Clean Water Act.

“You might see this spurious relationship between where wetlands are lost and more flood damages, for example, to think of one of the benefits of wetlands. And that paper was just trying to find an empirical way to uncover that and give an estimate of the value of wetlands that then could be used by the EPA in measuring the cost and benefits of these types of regulations, which are super important and cover almost all land use decisions and where you’re going to build in the U.S.,” he explains.

For this and much more, please listen to my podcast conversation with Charles Taylor, the 62nd episode over the past five years of the Environmental Insights series, with future episodes scheduled to drop each month.  You can find a transcript of our conversation at the website of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.  Previous episodes have featured conversations with:

“Environmental Insights” is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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An Eminent Economist Talks About Climate Change

In my podcast series, “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program,” I’ve had the pleasure of engaging in conversations over the past four years with a significant number of truly outstanding economists who have carried out important work in the realm of environmental, energy, and resource economics, and have been real leaders in the profession.  In my most recent podcast, we topped that, because I was joined by someone who has made important contributions not just in the realm of environmental and resource economics, but has been a global leader in the discipline of economics broadly, across numerous sub-fields, and has ventured and published well beyond economics in seemingly disparate realms, ranging from contract bridge to Italian Rennaisance painting.  All in all, he is the author or editor of 14 books and more than 300 scholarly articles. 

I am, of course, referring to my Harvard colleague – and good friend – Richard Zeckhauser, the Frank Ramsey Professor of Political Economy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association, the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of Public Policy and Management, and the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis.  Beyond that, I want to acknowledge that he is celebrated at Harvard and beyond as a marvelous classroom teacher, and a valued mentor to generations of students and faculty colleagues.

Near the beginning of our conversation, Richard laments a phenomenon he terms “the pumped equilibrium,” in which people hold exaggerated expectations about confronting the challenge of climate change if we do not drastically increase our efforts.  

“People started at least three decades ago saying, ‘Climate change is a terrible problem, but we can control it by cutting back on our greenhouse gases, and this is the last decade that we can do that. If we don’t do it this decade, we’re dead.’ And then, the next decade they said … the same thing. And this decade they’re saying … the same thing. And they keep telling us that we’re going to be able to [limit the global temperature increase to] two degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels, or even more recently, 1.5 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels. I think that’s unrealistic.”

Richard maintains that instead a realistic assessment of the current state of climate change requires new approaches to make an impact.

“The United States has done a so-so job of cutting our emissions by about 10 percent over a number of years, but at the same time, China has increased its emissions by 13 percent, and you can expect that countries like India will be growing much faster in its emissions [levels],” he remarks. “So, I think that we should take a sober look at these problems and say, ‘What else can we do?’”

Climate adaptation, Zeckhauser states, holds the potential for greatly reducing the impacts of climate change. He cites one example in which scientists have proposed building a 100-foot-tall berm around a fjord in Greenland where warm water currently flows in and melts the ice sheets.

“This is very speculative. Will this work? I sure hope so. It’s within our realm of technological capability, but I think we should be looking for many solutions like this that could enable us to deal with … what I consider to be [the] catastrophic track that we’re on,” he says. Other potentially effective adaptation measures, he states, include increasing the alkalinity of the oceans and enforcing smarter logging policies to protect mature trees.

When I question Richard about the distributional implications of climate change, he remarks, “I think dealing with climate change and reducing its impact will automatically have very beneficial distributional consequences.  The places that are currently suffering the most from climate change are the hottest places in the world, which are both suffering under [rising] temperatures and having their weather patterns shifted. So, you would be doing God’s work in restoring or preserving the planet, and you’d be doing work that’s to the benefit of the most affected people in the world.”

He also refers in this context to the challenges posed by massive migrations of people who want to escape rising temperatures in the south by heading north.

“Those [migration patterns] are very uncomfortable for the people in both places – the people who have to do the migration, which is frequently very dangerous and expensive, the people who are still trapped in the old place because they don’t have enough resources, and the people whose areas are being affected by the new people who are coming.”

Zeckhauser says that ultimately, it is up to policymakers around the world to confront the climate change challenge.

“This is a political problem on a global scale. So, even if you didn’t want to worry about it, as a political actor, as the president of the United States has to be and our climate envoy has to be, and the UN has to be, you have to pay serious attention to it.”

My conversation with Richard Zeckhauser is the first episode of 2024 and the 57th episode over the past four years of the Environmental Insights series, with future episodes scheduled to drop each month.  You can find a transcript of our conversation at the website of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.  Previous episodes have featured conversations with:

“Environmental Insights” is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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