(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The new period with Donald Trump can do an infinite amount of damage on a number of fronts. But when it comes to the climate crisis, he can do damage that, in human terms, will last forever – damage that will be visible in the geological archives for a long time to come. His actions could literally help melt the poles and raise the oceans—and in the pages of Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership, his conservative supporters have made it abundantly clear that they will.
Once the Arctic has melted, no one knows how to refreeze it.
The proposals range from the massive – ending support for everything from electric cars to offshore wind farms – to the horribly specific. Project 2025, for example, aims to EPAs Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights (considerations of environmental justice have been enshrined in Biden-era energy policy in a way we have never seen before). The project even goes so far as to ensure that political appointees on the National Security Council take over the preparation of the national defense strategy from the Pentagon, in part to ensure that "climate change" and "critical race theory" are not somehow used to "deter the nation's best men and women from enlisting in service to defend our freedom."
Project 2025 Mandate
The authors of Project 2025 Mandate believes that the US has an "obligation to develop the enormous oil, gas and coal resources for which the country is responsible". They also promise to go back to 2009 to reverse a crucial conclusion from EPA that carbon dioxide causes harm, an attitude that underlies much of federal environmental regulation. Their plan will even abolish National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which measures the damage we do to air and water – as these findings are "one of the main driving forces behind the climate change alarmist industry".
Giving the oil industry absolutely everything it wants.
In some ways, however, the details are not that decisive – or not as decisive as what they will lead to overall: that the oil industry gets absolutely everything it wants. Trump has already signaled that he is willing to give it just that: As The Washington Post reported in May, Trump has begged for campaign contributions from Big Oil by promising to do anything – anything – that the oil bosses want. And they, in turn, are preparing their demands: Politico has reported that the oil industry is happily drafting presidential orders for another Trump term.
The oil industry is happily preparing presidential orders for another Trump term.
Climate threats and Biden
While Trump happily had the climate deniers in his midst, Jo Biden has used his time in the White House to begin to address climate threats – thanks in large part to pressure from the left wing of his party. When Bernie Sanders became the early leader in the 2020 Democratic primary, Biden's climate team sat down with New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Varshini Prakash of the Sunrise Movement to lay out a joint plan. It wasn't the Green New Deal per se, and it was watered down in Congress and then smeared with gifts to the oil industry from West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin.
But Biden used enormous amounts of personal and political capital and, against all odds, got through Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which has now begun paying out tens of billions of dollars to accelerate the energy transition. To make sure that money flows as quickly as possible, White House senior adviser John Podesta – the definition of a gray eminence – set up a team to monitor the critical bottlenecks and ensure that the projects are approved much faster than is usual with the slow pace of the federal decision-making process. And now the deadline could not be more important: No project that is not approved by January 2025 will be – not under the new Trump regime.
Biden used enormous amounts of personal and political capital to accelerate the energy transition.
It's not that Biden has been some green dream. A 50th vote was needed to pass the IRA, and so Manchin—who was the largest recipient of money from the oil and gas industry during the 2022 election campaign—inscribed extravagant funding for Big Oil as carbon capture at power plants. And even without pressure, Biden has done stupid things: An example of this was his approval of the absurd Willow oil complex in Alaska, which may require ConocoPhillips to cool the ground that global warming has thawed, to anchor the infrastructure.
However, Biden's activities have improved. Earlier this year, he announced that his administration would suspend permits for new export terminals for liquefied natural gas before this largest of the greenhouse gas bombs could explode even more – if the American LNG exportis allowed to continue, it will over the next few years produce more greenhouse gases than every single car, home and factory in the EU. With Trump as president, the United States will become an Exxon station, open 24 hours a day.
Free rein
It also means that all other plutocrats in oil states around the world will have free rein to do whatever they want. If the United States is not willing to limit the production of hydrocarbons, there is no reason for others to consider it. Trump is the ultimate license for endless pumping. Project 2025 is happy to help him write that permit, with a mandate calling on the State Department to "withdraw all climate policy from its aid programmes' and 'end its war on fossil fuels in developing countries'.
Calls on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to "withdraw all climate policy from its aid programmes".
Trump has a track record when it comes to that climate changes – an ominous scroll. Project 2025 makes it abundantly clear that he will build on this record, and this time he will not start from scratch. If you want a numerical impression, you can read the in-depth analysis carried out by the British think tank Carbon Brief: "The victory of Donald Trump in the presidential election could lead to an additional four billion tons of additional emissions in the United States by 2030 compared to Joe Biden's plans. » And if you're wondering if this is a lot: “These additional four billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) by 2030 will cause global climate damage worth more than $900 billion, based on the latest US government valuations. In comparison, four GtCO2e corresponds to the combined annual emissions from the EU and Japan, or the combined annual emissions from the 140 countries in the world that have the lowest emissions."
A further 4 billion tonnes of extra emissions in the US by 2030 – equivalent to the combined annual emissions from the EU and Japan.
And it's even worse than that. The climate crisis – unlike most of our political problems – is a timed test. After a certain point, we cannot repair the damage. When Arctic once melted, no one knows how to freeze it again. And that 'point' is approaching: Climate scientists have made it clear that emissions must be halved by 2030; Trump's term will end in January 2029, giving his successor ... 11 impossible months.
This article is part of "Project 2025: The Plot Against America," a special issue of the Nation devoted to analyzing the right's vast and terrifying program for the new Trump era. Edited and translated by MODERN TIMES' editor.
