While it is of course impossible to predict with certainty what our future holds, we can make some educated guesses based on what has happened during the previous eight years as well as what Trump and his allies, investors, and opponents have learned in the meantime. First we’ll take a look at the current state of the country, then dig into policies Trump has explicitly supported, such as those on his 2024 policy platform, to get an idea of what he is likely to do in his time in office.

Finally, we’ll go over some of the relevant sections of the Project 2025 report, which Trump publicly criticized for the negative press it caused his campaign prior to the election but has since selected several cabinet members who were involved with it and called parts of it “very conservative and very good”. There is no guarantee that his administration will pursue all parts of the radical far-right agenda articulated in Project 2025, but, given the significant overlap between Trump’s stated policy goals and those detailed in the report, understanding what it calls for gives a sense of what he may do.

So where do things stand now in the national decarbonization landscape? Concern among the American public about climate change has largely been eclipsed by economic anxiety caused by inflation and corporate price gouging, both of which were exacerbated by Trump’s actions in his first term in office — a fact seemingly lost on the majority of the voting population. The US has expanded fossil fuel extraction to the point where we are producing more oil than any other nation, ever in the history of the planet, along with record-setting amounts of natural gas. A significant portion of these are exported (over 4 million barrels of crude oil per day were exported last year), with much of the rest used to keep up with growing energy demand from electrification, climate change, the explosive growth of AI, and, to a lesser extent, cryptocurrency mining.

At the same time, however, the Biden Administration’s massive investments authorized by the IIJA and IRA have distributed hundreds of billions of dollars across the country, including about $165 billion to red districts, and have driven a new push for domestic manufacturing capabilities. Solar and wind power are more widespread and more affordable than ever, and Americans are buying more clean vehicles than ever. And thanks to decades of focus on energy efficiency, the nation has saved around $800 billion in energy costs since 1980.

All this indicates a country split between two ideologies, and, unfortunately, the Trump Administration is solidly on the “drill, baby, drill!” side. And this time around, Trump has more allies, more preparation, more popular support, and effective control of all three branches of the federal government; an unprecedented opportunity for an administration that consistently prioritizes business interests and the hyper-wealthy over the public well-being.

For example, Chapter 1 of Trump’s 2024 platform contains sections including “Unleash American Energy”, “Rein in Wasteful Federal Spending”, “Cut Costly and Burdensome Regulations”, “Stop Illegal Immigration”, and “Restore Peace through Strength”. Here he calls for drastically expanding the US’s already record-high fossil fuel production and exports, “eliminating the socialist Green New Deal” (presumably referring to the Inflation Reduction Act, as no “Green New Deal” has ever been enacted), slashing federal agency funding and functionality, ending regulations that protect and benefit the public, stoking racial tensions across the country, and increasing our military presence on the global stage.

It is worth noting that each of these sections contains only a sentence or two of elaboration, with few to zero additional details or explanation of how these broad policy goals will be accomplished. But we can extrapolate some real possible outcomes from these nebulous handwavings based on the first Trump Administration’s playbook. There will almost certainly be attempts to significantly reduce funding to multiple federal agencies, particularly those involved in environmental protection, energy, and corporate oversight like the EPA, FERC, DOE, and BLM. Public benefit incentives and grant programs will likely be first on the chopping block, especially for decarbonization and climate protection purposes.

The goal here is to dismantle the regulatory framework for tracking and controlling decarbonization efforts such that businesses no longer have any constraints placed upon them regarding their greenhouse gas emissions, including through environmental litigation. This objective is in service of taking all the brakes off of domestic extraction of fossil fuels, nuclear feedstocks, and other minerals, while simultaneously skyrocketing energy demand by rolling back energy efficiency standards for vehicles and appliances and deregulating the AI and cryptocurrency industries.

More details can be found in the 900+ page Project 2025 report, which explicitly calls for the elimination of all climate, justice, and equity considerations from federal government activities, converting public goods and services to private industries, drastically expanding resource extraction (particularly in Alaska and the Arctic) and exports, halting development of renewable energy technologies, and re-accelerating nuclear weapons proliferation. These policies are designed to take authority away from federal agencies and put the burden of regulation on Congress or individual states — other than California, which Project 2025 says should be limited in its ability to set its own emissions and efficiency standards.

These policies are all predicated on three key assumptions:

1. Climate change caused by burning fossil fuels is irrelevant and should be ignored and denied;
2. The US needs to maintain its status as the sole global superpower, and can only do this by exporting massive amounts of fossil fuels backed up by the threat of nuclear war; and,
3. The federal government has no obligation to act in the best interest of the American public, except for large corporations.
   

If you happen to disagree with these assumptions as the basis for our national policy, you are far from alone! Fortunately, with the effects of climate change being less-ignorable with each passing year and the benefits of renewable energy being increasingly felt across the country, there is a growing public consensus that we shouldn’t retreat back into a new Dark Age of fear, hostility, denial, and catastrophe. We saw this consensus acted upon in the first Trump presidency, when coalitions of cities and states banded together to protect their climate and public health goals. We can expect to see similar measures taken this time around, especially for popular policies like the renewable energy tax credit expanded by the IRA, which now has a group of Republican Congresspeople calling for its preservation.

Additionally, a court ruling from earlier this year, which ironically was intended to challenge the authority of federal agencies to establish environmental regulations, will make it easier for states to resist deregulation efforts by the Trump Administration. This ruling threw out the long-standing “Chevron deference” that gave federal agencies power to interpret vague laws set by Congress, and was intended to undermine the EPA’s leverage over polluting corporations. The same precedent can also be used by states to tie up other unwanted policy changes in court, potentially delaying or stopping them from being enacted.

But, at the end of the day, solar and other decarbonization technologies make dollars, and they make sense. They’ve saved the American public vast sums of money over the past decades along with real and measurable improvements in health and safety outcomes. And, looking beyond short-term economics, they represent something that cannot truly be claimed by any of the radically anti-social policy goals covered in this blog: our compassion and responsibility for future generations.