What’s at stake for the climate if Trump wins? ‘A catastrophic outcome’

(CNN) — In the first week of a new Trump administration, President Joe Biden’s climate wins would get put through the shredder.

First to go could be the executive orders, including the one protecting 13 million acres in Alaska from oil drilling and another aiming to dramatically increase the number of EVs on the road.

He would pull America out of the Paris Climate Agreement (again) and could even nix the country’s participation in the global climate treaty itself – a promise among countries to prevent “dangerous human interference with the climate system.”

Over the weeks and months that follow, Biden’s new climate rules would be methodically rolled back: limits on tailpipe pollution and unhealthy emissions from power plants, and new safeguards on the oil and gas industry.

Trump’s actions could leave the United States isolated from key allies on a global crisis in its deciding moments. 2023 was the hottest year on record and the rising heat is pushing the world closer and closer to irreparable harm. The only way to minimize the damage is to rapidly deploy clean energy on a massive scale by the end of this decade, scientists and global energy groups say.

Instead, Trump is poised to sprint in the opposite direction.

“He has said he’s going to come back with a vengeance,” former US special climate envoy John Kerry told CNN. “It would really be just a catastrophic outcome.”

This vision of the future is based on interviews with more than a dozen people: industry analysts, public officials and insiders from the former Trump administration, some of whom are involved in Project 2025, a conservative strategy guide to reshape the federal government in the event of a Trump win.

But it’s also based on what Trump has said himself. He has railed against Biden’s climate policies at rallies and derided clean energy, vowing to push America back to fossil fuels. He has openly courted the oil industry at fundraising events, the Washington Post reported, promising regulation rollbacks in exchange for campaign cash.

“No one has done more damage to the American oil and gas industry than Joe Biden,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told CNN in a statement.

Leavitt said if Trump were elected, he would give the oil industry “more freedom,” describing the planet-warming fossil fuel as “liquid gold” and (falsely) as “clean energy.”

“He will do that again as soon as he gets back to the White House,” she added.

While his first term was characterized by policy chaos often stymied by courts, Trump’s second term would be efficient, former Trump administration officials told CNN.

“We lost a fair amount of time early in the Trump administration because we weren’t as prepared as we would be for round two,” Mandy Gunasekara, former chief of staff of the Environmental Protection Agency under Trump, told CNN.

The lesson learned, she said, is to move with speed.

Trump’s circle of influence is more organized this time, focused on gutting key agencies that oversee environmental protection and unwinding most, if not all, of Biden’s marquee climate rules.

It could happen “very fast,” said David Bernhardt, who served as Interior Secretary in the Trump administration. Bernhardt, who is not involved with Trump’s campaign, speculated the former president “would essentially be directing, in many cases, a step back to policies that he implemented in the past,” adding the rollbacks could be done “in a matter of months, in many instances.”

While Biden is cementing a legacy as the most pro-climate president, Trump would work to unravel the progress, focusing instead on America’s fossil fuel “energy dominance,” several people told CNN.

Trump’s second-term energy policies could be summed up by three words he chants at his rallies, popularized by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin 16 years ago:

“Drill, baby, drill.”

Slamming the brakes on EVs

Gas-powered cars and trucks account for the biggest chunk of the country’s climate pollution, and one of Biden’s biggest climate and economic policies is his push toward electric vehicles.

Democrats passed tax credits to help consumers defray the cost of an EV, and Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency finalized tailpipe rules that push the auto market toward fuel-efficient hybrids and EVs by the early 2030s.

Trump and Republicans have seized on those actions as a “mandate” for EVs, which Trump has referred to as “all-electric nonsense where the cars don’t go too far” and a “bloodbath” for American jobs. Trump has promised to undo the tailpipe rules if he is elected, though unwinding them could take months.

There are other ways Trump could delay the transition to EVs – some of which would hit voters’ pocketbooks.

His Treasury Department could slash the tax credits for purchasing EVs. Former Trump Department of Transportation official Diana Furchtgott-Roth, now at the Heritage Foundation, said the second Trump administration would likely also again try to roll back the federal waiver that allows California to set its own car pollution rules.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom told CNN his state will continue “maintaining that leadership” regardless of whether Trump is elected president.

“I don’t care what Trump says or does,” Newsom said. “We’re going to be that anchor, regardless of the prevailing winds in Washington, DC.”

But there are some winds of change that Trump will likely need to bend to.

Unlike the oil and gas industry – which is staunchly opposed to many of Biden’s climate policies, the auto industry is charging ahead with electric vehicles and wants to keep consumer subsidies to help drivers buy them.

John Bozzella, president and CEO of auto industry trade group Alliance for Automotive Innovation, told CNN he didn’t think repeal of tax credits or the Biden administration’s emissions rules was a “foregone conclusion.” In a statement to CNN, Bozzella pointed to fast growth in EV sales and US factories to build them.

“Things have changed quite a bit,” Bozzella said. “We’re moving decisively toward an electric future while providing customers a range of vehicle choices … but it’s important for America’s global competitiveness and our overall economic and national security that we stay on this path. That’s something both sides understand.”

License to drill

Biden and Trump both argue their energy policies would lower consumer costs and create jobs. But they offer vastly different visions on how to do it.

Many of Trump’s energy policies revolve around a simple idea: drill for more US oil to bring down gas prices. The former president has vowed to unleash a torrent of US oil. “Drill, drill, drill,” Trump said on Fox News in February. At times, he’s falsely suggested drilling alone will halve inflation and energy prices.

Energy analysts frequently point out this idea is a fallacy, because the price US drivers pay for gas is highly dependent on the global oil market.

Whether the country is in a drilling boom is governed by “what the price of crude oil is, how healthy the economy is,” Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, and a former George W. Bush White House official, told CNN. “These things are outside of a president’s direct control.”

The US is already awash in oil; it’s producing more crude than any other country in history and has led the world in oil production for the past six years. To the dismay of climate activists, crude oil production hit record highs under Biden, and new records are likely to be set this year and next year, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

But Biden has dramatically curtailed the federal land and waters the fossil fuel industry can drill on. Last year, the administration openly touted the fact it was offering the smallest number of offshore oil and gas leases in history – just three over the next five years.

The oil industry isn’t happy with that, and Trump is capitalizing on it, fiercely courting the oil industry in private fundraisers, promising to dramatically increase the amount of federal lands and waters for drilling.

“A critical component of his plan is expanding access, and we did that in the Trump administration, whether it was the leasing of ANWR, expanding regular lease sales,” Bernhardt, the former Trump Interior Secretary, said. “Those are the types of things I think you would almost certainly see come back.

By coming into office with a pro-oil agenda, would Trump be able to meaningfully increase US oil production?

“No,” said McNally.

Trump’s biggest impact would be “removing the risk of negative policy, rather than implementing policy that is going to measurably increase production,” McNally added.

‘Much deeper trouble’

Trump could gut some of Biden’s pollution rules, but he’ll have a much harder time killing Biden’s biggest clean energy policy – a sweeping climate law even Trump’s own party is benefitting from.

The Inflation Reduction Act, which contained the largest climate investment in US history, has spurred a deluge of clean energy projects and jobs in Republican congressional districts. CNN recently reported the vast majority of the $346-billion-worth of announced investments – nearly 78% – has gone to Republican congressional districts.

“The IRA is much stickier,” said Nate Hultman, director of the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland and a former senior advisor to the State Department. “It’s much more deep-rooted than regulatory actions.”

And while the oil industry wants some IRA provisions gone – like a program that would eventually fine oil producers for large methane leaks – it is supportive of some of the law’s tax credits for hydrogen, sustainable aviation fuel and carbon capture.

What experts are more concerned about is the damage Trump could inflict again on US leadership on the global stage.

The Project 2025 document from the Heritage Foundation recommends Trump should fully exit the United Nations treaty to confront climate change – a decision that would rock international climate negotiations and make it harder for a future Democratic administration to re-enter.

A senior Trump adviser told CNN there haven’t been any serious discussions inside the campaign over whether Trump would go so far as to pull the US out of the treaty. The campaign has also sought to distance itself from outside groups like Project 2025, stating that no policy is official unless it is coming from Trump or his campaign team.

Kerry, who led America’s climate delegation on the world stage for years, called the possibility “disastrous” and “very destructive to the overall process,” adding it could spur other countries to abandon their climate goals at a critical time.

If Trump makes good on that idea, “we’re in real, much deeper trouble than the challenges we already face,” Kerry said.

CNN’s Alayna Treene, Bill Weir and Julian Quinones contributed to this report.

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