When the American people elected Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States earlier this month, a large portion of climate world went into a tailspin. In the groggy reckoning of Wednesday morning, MIT Technology Review deemed the outcome a “tragic loss for climate progress;” the next day, a Guardian columnist reminded readers that “Trump has pledged to wage war on planet Earth.” Arielle Samuelson, writing for Heated, reported that given the incoming administration’s history and intentions, the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels was “dead” (although to be fair, that has likely been the case for some time).
But to that segment of the population who approach issues of energy, the environment, and climate change from the right, the post-election mood ranged from cautiously optimistic to jubilant. “The biggest thing we’re excited about is the momentum around this next year and the next administration,” Stephen Perkins, a conservative strategist and the chief operating officer of the American Conservation Coalition, told me.
What Trump will or won’t do in office remains an open question (the picture is getting clearer by the day, however, and we’re tracking it closely here at Heatmap). But while Trump 1.0 rolled back more than a hundred environmental rules and regulations and Trump 2.0 could, by one estimate, add enough carbon dioxide equivalent to the atmosphere by 2030 that it would negate all the savings from clean energy over the past five years, many in the conservative climate sphere believe that regulations have hamstrung the clean energy economy and that an “all-of-the-above” approach could help to lower global emissions by transitioning coal-reliant countries to U.S.-produced liquified natural gas, which expels less greenhouse gas and other pollutants when it’s burned.
What is the first priority on the conservative climate wishlist for the Trump administration? Far and away, it’s clearing red tape. Perkins pointed out that one of Elon Musk’s first tweets when it became clear Republicans would take back the White House on election night was the promise that “soon, you will be free to build again.”
“I give it a 99% to 100% chance we’re going to see permitting reform,” Heather Reams, the president of the center-right group Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, told me from her hotel room at COP29.
Nick Loris, the vice president of public policy at C3 Solutions, a nonpartisan public policy group that advocates for free-market solutions to climate, environment, and energy problems, echoed that prediction. “I’m most excited about a renewed and more aggressive push for permitting reform,” he told me, explaining that the election “affords the opportunity for Republicans in both the House and the Senate to come together with even more ambitious plans to reduce red tape in all forms of energy — and I really hope it is for all forms of energy, not just for selected technologies and resources that Republicans tend to like.”
There was also consensus on the value of clearing the path for the export of LNG, which marks one of the more significant ideological breaks of the climate right with the climate left. “I think there’s going to be an immediate push [by the Trump administration] to reduce the pause on liquified natural gas exports,” Loris predicted. (The pause ended in July and the Department of Energy resumed issuing export permits in September, but Trump is expected to expedite the process.) Reams said she expects that during his first 100 days in office, Trump will reverse Biden’s methane emissions fee, which “some considered punitive,” and that she was looking for him to prioritize “protecting fracking, interstate pipelines, [and] exports of crude oil and other petroleum products.” As she explained, “displacing coal or dirtier forms of natural gas with higher life cycle emissions in place of using the U.S. LNG that has lower life cycle emissions” will ultimately help global emissions “go down.” (Others have argued that LNG is far worse over its lifespan than coal.)
Other items on the conservative climate wishlist include reforming regulations governing the mining of critical minerals to ensure a more reliable, less risky schedule for opening new mines and creating a domestic supply chain for the clean energy build-out; accelerating geothermal development and taking the baton from the Biden administration on nuclear energy; and a general streamlining of government programs. “Part of the near-term goal is going to be having an understanding from within the Department of Energy of what’s not working and why isn’t the money flowing out the door in a faster, in a more efficient way?” said Loris of C3 Solutions, citing what he perceived to be the DOE’s lack of urgency on the commercial high-assay, low-enriched uranium program, a key part of establishing a domestic nuclear supply chain.
Spending in the form of clean energy tax credits and incentives presents a thornier problem for the climate right to navigate. Reams told me that all the tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act will be “up for grabs” as the Trump administration readies its plan to preserve and extend its 2017 tax cuts, and that each must be defended on its merits. “The Trump tax credits expire at the end of 2025, so if you’re looking at one or the other, that’s really the value proposition: Do you want green tax credits, or do you want $2,000 more in your pocket each year per household?” Reams said. “It’s hard to say you want a tax credit for clean energy without understanding the benefits to your household.” Perkins of the ACC added that he doesn’t object to clean energy investments, per se — “red districts overwhelmingly stand to benefit” from such programs, he said — but rather the concern from the right relates “everything else that gets looped into those bills,” such as opposition to IRA provisions connected to prescription drug prices. No one made any promises against pruning.
On other issues, some Republican climate and energy groups break with the Trump administration entirely. “We are very much going to be pushing back on the extensive and aggressive use of tariffs that might come from this administration, which could not just run counter to the administration’s promise to reduce costs for families and businesses but also stymie the deployment of cleaner energy sources as well,” Loris told me of C3 Solution’s plans.
RepublicEN, an education- and communication-oriented group that positions itself as the “EcoRight” answer to the environmental Left, broke with the incoming administration more completely, publishing a series of tepid blog posts in the election’s aftermath. Bob Inglis, the group’s executive director and a former South Carolina Republican congressman, told me that he believes a “substantial percentage of Trump voters” support climate policies and might serve as a local-level bulwark against any climate-unfriendly policies — if “those constituents are visible and audible to their members of Congress.” He’s optimistic that the Republican Party has largely moved on from its “dark days” of climate denialism, and that the next four years might see more reaching across the aisle in pursuit of a common goal.
Is such a thing even possible in this day and age? Inglis hesitated. “I surely hope so,” he finally said. He believes Republicans can “breathe easier now” that they’ve had such resounding electoral wins. “The water’s coming up here in Charleston,” he added. “Let’s do something about it.”
If there was one hope I heard across the board from conservative proponents of climate action, however, it was this: that there should be more compromise between the parties on the issues they agree are important. “As much as some people in the climate space may view this as a challenging time for bipartisanship, we actually think it is the moment for bipartisanship,” Perkins told me. “We’re going to see some incredible things done over the next four years.”
Courtesy of U.S. Forest Service
