Beware a Low-Key Energy Secretary Pick from Trump

Donald Trump does not care much about climate change. By which I mean not just that he does not believe the warming of the planet is a problem, but also that the entire subject is far from the top of his priority list. Unfortunately, that makes his incoming administration even more dangerous.

The implied chaos of the second Trump term is only beginning. In some cases, the operative question is “Is he really going to do that?” Will he actually deport 15 million people, or put a 20% tariff on all imported goods, or prosecute his political opponents?

But when it comes to climate, Trump has offered no attention-grabbing proposals or bizarre promises. He said he wants to “Drill, drill, drill,” but we’re already drilling more than we ever have before. He has a weird obsession with homicidal windmills (“They ruin the environment, they kill the birds, they kill the whales”) and a contempt for electric cars, it’s true. But the real hazard lies in the agenda of those who will run key departments in his government, doing things Trump barely takes notice of.

This may seem counterintuitive to those who view Trump as a uniquely malign force, pushing the federal government in new and disturbing directions. But Trump only cares about a few things — trade and immigration are his primary policy areas of interest, and much of his days will be spent plotting revenge against his enemies — and climate isn’t one of them.

So far, the Trump appointees with influence over climate policy are not the kind of figures who will grab headlines; Americans are unlikely to develop strong opinions about Lee Zeldin (the pick for EPA Administrator) or Doug Burgum (who will be Secretary of the Interior). Below them will be a cadre of unknown and unnoticed officials determined not just to undo every bit of climate progress that occurred under Joe Biden, but also to go much further, purging scientists, stopping environmental enforcement, opening up federal land to fossil fuel production, eliminating pollution regulations, and shutting down every possible office with “climate” in its name or its mission.

So why would it be better if Trump were paying attention? Because the only likely restraint on this assault will be if Trump decides it reflects poorly on him.

That brings us to a crude but useful unified theory of Trump policy outcomes. Expressed as an equation, it would look like this:

Outcome = ((Trump impulses + party agenda) x attention)/political risk

To put it in simpler terms, the relevant questions are: What does Trump want? What do the people around him want? Is this something Trump cares about? And what are the political risks involved?

As an example, let’s take the idea of repealing the Affordable Care Act, which Trump tried and failed to do in his first term. His impulse was to destroy the ACA because it was signed by Barack Obama, whom he hates. His party would also like to destroy the ACA. But Trump himself is not all that interested in the issue of healthcare; he couldn’t be bothered to come up with a plan to replace the ACA, though he regularly promised “something terrific.” Because it’s such a high-profile issue, it won’t move forward without his attention.

Finally — and most importantly — the political risk of repealing the ACA is incredibly high because it is very popular. Repealing it would be cataclysmic for the healthcare system, leading tens of millions of people to lose their health coverage. Put it all together, and the likelihood that Republicans will achieve their longtime goal of ACA repeal is very, very small.

Now let’s plug climate into the equation. Trump’s impulses are uniformly detrimental, but also vague. He told oil executives they should raise him a billion dollars because he’ll give them whatever they want, but if you asked him what specifically it is they want, he probably couldn’t tell you with any specificity.

The Trump officials who will work on environmental issues know exactly what they want — but most of it won’t attract much attention, from the president or the public. When they start gutting PFAS regulations and methane emissions rules, neither Trump nor the average voter will have any idea.

One exception has already been teed up: It now appears that Republicans will try to kill the electric vehicle tax credit. If he wanted to, Elon Musk could stop this: If he told Trump it’s a bad idea, Trump would instruct Republicans in Congress to keep the credit, and it would be most likely be safe. But Musk is of the opinion that while ending the credit might hurt Tesla sales in the short run, his competitors will suffer even more, perhaps getting out of the EV business altogether.

There could be a fight over EV credits when Congress takes up the issue, and it’s even possible that Trump would step in and tell his party to leave them alone if he decided there would be too much of a backlash that would harm him politically. It’s highly unlikely, but the fact that one could at least imagine how it would happen shows how the preferences/attention/political risk dynamic operates.

But to repeat, EV subsidies are the exception of a climate-related policy that will garner some press coverage (though even that may be limited, since the repeal of the tax credits will be part of a gargantuan reconciliation bill with lots of other contentious ideas in it). Most of what happens at the EPA and the Departments of Interior and Energy, where pro-fossil fuel officials will labor every day to undermine environmental protections, will pass by with little notice.

So climate advocates face a difficult task: If they can raise the salience of the climate issue and make a particular Trump administration climate policy unpopular, it would become possible that Trump will notice, perceive some political danger in what his government and Congress are doing, and act to restrain them, for no reason other than his own self-interest.

It’s not much to pin your hopes on, and the idea that Trump himself could be the force of moderation in an administration hell-bent on reversing progress on climate seems crazy. But this is going to be a crazy four years.