I won’t sugar coat this: The election of Donald Trump to a second term with a likely governing trifecta has dealt a devastating blow to U.S. efforts to cut climate-warming pollution.
I’ve spent the past four years analyzing the progress made under the Biden-Harris Administration as leader of the REPEAT Project, which uses energy systems models to rapidly assess the impact of federal energy and climate policies. In that time, the passage of landmark legislation — the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — and finalization of key federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, cars and trucks, and oil and gas supply chains put the U.S. on track to more than double its pace of decarbonization and avoid about 6 billion tons of cumulative emissions through 2035. Though even that progress was not enough: Recent policies would do only about half the work required to bend U.S. emissions onto a net-zero pathway by 2035.
A President Harris would have fought to protect and build on the efforts of the past four years. Now that opportunity is lost. One notable climate scientist even declared a second Trump term “game over for the climate.”
With Trump once again ascendant and seemingly committed to dismantling the historic climate progress made by the United States over the past four years, one can be forgiven for feeling anguish about the opportunities we’ve lost, rage about the very real suffering that will result from further delay, or deep despair about the darker days ahead.
But only for a moment. Because the fight to defend that progress begins today, and there is no time to lose.
In 1992, the nations of the world established the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and pledged to "prevent dangerous human induced interference with the climate system." As the parties to the UNFCCC gather once again in Azerbaijan this December, one thing should be clear to all: We have failed in that task. This year is virtually certain to be the warmest on record and the first to breach 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. Wildfires and droughts, hurricanes and floods now seem to strike with alarming frequency and terrible ferocity.
Yet the best science tells us that climate change is not like an asteroid hurtling towards earth, an all-or-nothing battle for survival. Rather, scientists tell us that every billion tons of CO2 and every 10th of a degree of warming we prevent will save lives, prevent suffering, and avoid countless damage.
The fight cannot be surrendered, and the project of building a world where the lives and aspirations of 8-going-on-10 billion people can be powered by clean, abundant energy remains essential.
Indeed, I have been in this fight long enough to have experienced several gutting defeats before — and to have witnessed real, transformative progress.
When I began my career nearly two decades ago, a good onshore wind project cost $100 to $200 per megawatt-hour, two to five times the average cost of fossil power. Germany had just launched a subsidy program paying a lavish €400 to €500 per megawatt-hour for solar photovoltaics. And it would be several years still before the first Tesla Roadster would even hit the streets.
Today, either solar or wind power is the cheapest way to generate new electricity almost everywhere in the world, and the International Energy Agency expects solar to overtake nuclear, wind, hydro, gas, and, finally, coal, to become the largest source of electricity in the world by 2033. Here in the U.S., clean electricity and battery storage constitute virtually all of the more than 2.5 terawatts of projects requesting interconnection to our grids. Likewise, electric vehicles (whether two-, three-, or four-wheeled) are now the cheapest and fastest growing mobility solution for those in emerging economies and the rich world alike. One in five cars and trucks sold globally are now electric — in China, that figure is nearing 50%.
Annual U.S. emissions are more than a billion metric tons (or 16%) lower than their peak in 2007, even as the economy is 40% larger. The European Union has cut emissions by 37% from their peak, and by 8% in 2023 alone. Even China, the world’s top polluter, may have seen its emissions peak in 2023 — seven years ahead of schedule.
In sum, the trajectory of global emissions has been wrestled down from inexorable rise to plateau and impending peak. That may not be enough to prevent dangerous climate change, but it is sufficient to transform the outlook from a bleak world of around 4 degrees of warming and put a much more manageable world of 2 degrees within reach.
The truth is that Donald Trump can only slow, not stop the clean energy transition. The U.S. is only responsible for about a 10th of global emissions, and China, not America, is now the world’s largest market (by far) for cars and trucks, electricity, and industrial commodities like steel and cement. Trump cannot wind back the clock on technological innovation or dampen the appetite for EVs and clean energy in the rest of the world. Emerging climate technologies like decarbonized steel, cement and industrial heat can take root elsewhere, even if they face dimmer prospects in America. And a bipartisan consensus to advance technologies like geothermal, nuclear, and carbon capture in the U.S. remains.
While executive actions can be easily repealed, the legislative achievements of the past four years lower energy prices for American consumers and businesses, have sparked a long-promised American manufacturing renaissance, and direct substantial investment and job creation to Republican-represented districts and states. Texas, that paragon of conservatism, is now the undisputed king of clean energy. Factories producing batteries, EVs and solar panels are sprouting across Georgia, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, and beyond. Clean energy is now big business, and influential companies stand to lose billions if the Inflation Reduction Act is repealed. With Republicans securing razor-thin legislative majorities, these laws could thus prove surprisingly durable.
In times of struggle and defeat, those brave champions of civil rights would remind themselves that, though long, the arc of history bends towards justice. Today, it remains our collective task to continue to bend the arc of global emissions towards net zero.
Vice President Harris began her historic campaign by declaring, “When we fight, we win!” That isn’t always the case, but we can say with absolute certainty that if we give up the fight, we are guaranteed defeat.
There is no “game over” in the fight against climate change. The next battle begins today.
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