Tag: Trump Administration

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.

Share

The Path Ahead for U.S. Climate Change Policy

It is clear that the Biden Administration is devoting substantial attention to addressing climate change, certainly in comparison with the previous Trump administration, but there is a long road ahead for the development of substantive domestic policies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions. That is one of the messages that emerges most clearly from the most recent webinar in our series, Conversations on Climate Change and Energy Policy, sponsored by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements (HPCA).   A video recording (and transcript) of the entire webinar is available here.

As you know, in this webinar series we feature leading authorities on climate change policy, whether from academia, the private sector, NGOs, or government.  In this most recent Conversation, I was fortunate to engage with someone who has solid experience in at least three of these sectors – academia, government, and the NGO community.  I’m talking about Nathaniel (Nat) Keohane, my former student, co-author, and friend.

Nat Keohane is Senior Vice President for Climate at the Environmental Defense Fund.  In the Obama administration, from 2001 to 2012, he served as Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Environment, and before that, he was Chief Economist at EDF.  Going back a bit further, he was an Associate Professor at the Yale School of Management, and before that, he earned his PhD degree in Political Economy & Government at Harvard University, and his BA degree in History and Environmental Studies at Yale University.

Our wide-ranging conversation took place just one week after the Biden administration’s Earth Day Climate Summit (April 22-23), and so it was a very good time to talk about the newly-announced U.S. pledge – its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement – and about how the target in the NDC, a 50-52% percent reduction of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions below the 2005 level by the year 2030, might be accomplished. 

More broadly, Nat Keohane shares his insights on both the science and the politics affecting climate policy, and his hopes for the upcoming UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP-26), scheduled for November in Glasgow, Scotland.

“President Biden and his team hit the ground running immediately,” Keohane says, referring to the administration’s move to reenter the Paris Agreement on January 20th. “But there’s still a fair amount of skepticism in the rest of the world…and [there is] a need for the U.S. to demonstrate that it’s serious [about its commitment to climate policy].”

Keohane goes on to suggest that the ambitious new U.S. NDC will serve to incentivize other large emitters to increase the ambition of their pledges prior to the upcoming COP.  Both Canada and Japan have already done so, Keohane notes, and there are hopes that China, India, and Brazil may follow suit if US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry is successful in his climate diplomacy efforts with foreign leaders.

Here at home, Nat acknowledges that the Biden Administration faces an uphill battle passing significant climate legislation, but he argues that it can take very meaningful steps forward by regulating methane gas emissions, increasing investment in green technologies, and eventually building public support for a national carbon price, which would both stabilize GHG emissions and raise revenues.

“If we are going to really address climate change and reduce CO2 emissions at the scale and scope and pace that we need to, both to solve the climate problem and to meet the President’s [GHG reduction] target … the best way to do it would include some sort of limit and price on carbon pollution across the economy.”

Keohane is very aware that the “the politics of a carbon price on Capitol Hill are challenging,” but he believes that a carbon-pricing approach could be sold to the American people as a way to raise significant revenues, as much as a quarter of a trillion dollars a year. “That’s a lot of money, and there aren’t a lot of other sources of revenue that come up with 250 billion dollars,” he says.

A carbon border adjustment – an import fee levied by countries with ambitious climate policies on goods manufactured in countries with no or less ambitious climate policies – is a controversial proposal that many countries and regions, including the European Union, are seriously considering (and in the case of the EU, moving to implement).  Keohane calls it a “blunt force instrument … used to ideally help create incentives for other countries to act and to increase their ambition … but I don’t think we should think of it as a fine-tuned way to establish a carbon price that fairly addresses the carbon content of imported goods.”

As nations around the world prepare for COP-26 (assuming it does take place), Keohane expresses his hope that the U.S. will continue to leverage bilateral negotiations to encourage other large countries, particularly China, to increase their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) before arriving in Glasgow.  But, interestingly, Keohane also argues that climate leaders need to rethink the role of the COP moving forward.

“I don’t know exactly what that looks like. Maybe it involves more engagement among countries with best-practice sharing. Maybe it involves bringing in civil society or businesses to talk about implementation, but we need to think creatively,” he remarks. “Rather than have the object of every COP be some negotiated text in a world in which we’ve got the text … what we need is implementation.”

All of this and much more can be seen and heard in our full Conversation here.  I hope you will check it out.

Previous episodes in this series – Conversations on Climate Change and Energy Policy – have featured Meghan O’Sullivan’s thoughts on Geopolitics and Upheaval in Oil Markets, Jake Werksman’s assessment of the European Union’s Green New Deal, Rachel Kyte’s examination of “Using the Pandemic Recovery to Spur the Clean Transition,” Joseph Stiglitz’s reflections on “Carbon Pricing, the COVID-19 Pandemic, and Green Economic Recovery,” Joe Aldy describing “Lessons from Experience for Greening an Economic Stimulus,” Jason Bordoff commenting on “Prospects for Energy and Climate Change Policy under the New U.S. Administration,” and Ottmar Edenhofer talking about “The Future of European Climate Change Policy.”

Watch for an announcement about our next webinar. You will be able to register in advance for the event on the website of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements.  

Share

A New Day for U.S. Climate Change Policy?

There is certainly much enthusiasm and great expectations on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean regarding what can be expected from the new U.S. administration’s climate change policy.  I offered somewhat modest expectations in an essay posted at this blog in mid-January before the Biden-Harris team was inaugurated.  But now – in early April – major appointments have been made, executive orders announced, and new policies floated.  So, this is a good time take a preliminary look at what has been accomplished in the first 10 weeks or so of the administration.

For that purpose, an exceptionally qualified observer is my friend and colleague, and most recent podcast guest, Jody Freeman, the Archibald Cox Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where she founded both the Environmental and Energy Law Program and the School’s Emmett Environmental Law Clinic (which was directed for many years by Wendy Jacobs, who sadly passed away in February after a long illness).

Professor Freeman worked in the Obama administration, and before that she was closely involved in the Massachusetts vs. EPA court case that eventually led – via a U.S. Supreme Court decision – to EPA’s endangerment finding in the Obama years, which precipitated policy action on climate change under the authority of the Clean Air Act.  You won’t be surprised that she pulls no punches in her comments on the Trump administration’s moves in the environmental realm, nor in her judgments and hopes regarding the Biden administration.  You can hear our complete conversation in the Podcast here.

In these podcasts – “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program – I talk with well-informed people from academia, government, industry, and NGOs.  Jody Freeman very much belongs in this group, as one of the world’s leading authorities on environmental law, a former Federal government official, and a participant in deliberations in private industry.

Jody Freeman has this to say about the previous administration:

“The Trump Administration unraveled, weakened, or rescinded every climate regulation that the Obama Administration had put in place. And they went beyond that to weaken many other environmental rules too. And so, it’s an across-the-board effort to pull environmental protection back as much as possible and weaken the agencies that are responsible for putting rules in place to protect public health and to address climate change.  In environment, climate, energy, it’s really hard to think of a major policy that was left untouched.”

On the other hand, Professor Freeman commends the Biden Administration’s early actions to reverse much of the climate policy damage caused by the previous administration.

“The president signed two sweeping executive orders on climate change within the first month. And they encompass everything you could possibly do with the agencies of the federal government, from how the Treasury Department finances overseas projects to how the Agriculture Department sends money to farmers. The administration is on the hunt for all of the policies that any agency can use to support its clean energy agenda.”

However, looking ahead, she recognizes that the Biden administration probably does not have the necessary votes in the Senate to pass any meaningful legislation placing a price on carbon.  Short of that, she says there are many other actions the administration can take on climate and energy policy.

“Presidents like to use executive branch power. So, you can count on the Biden Administration to be trying to deploy all of the levers, all of the tools that it can use. And they include adopting new rules … for power plant emissions of CO2, adopting new rules for car and truck emissions, adopting sector by sector rules that EPA has the authority to do.  There are other agencies too, like the Department of Energy, which sets appliance efficiency standards. The Department of the Interior regulates extraction of oil and gas on public lands. You’ve already seen them freeze new leases on public lands, and they’re going to favor wind and solar siting on public lands.”

When I ask her about the negative perception of the fossil fuel industry among many climate policy advocates in the United States, Professor Freeman, who sits on the Board of Directors of ConocoPhillips, remarks that there are signs of progress on the horizon.

“I think the industry is in a moment of transition. I do see, for example, the European oil and gas companies are already making pledges and investments in alternative business models.  By no means are we down the road far enough or fast enough, but you can see that they’re starting to think about becoming different kinds of companies over time. And I think the U.S. companies are following suit.”

My complete conversation with Professor Freeman is the 22nd episode in 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.

Share