By Karolina Pajdak
Washington – On the very first day of his second term as US President, Donald Trump followed through on his election campaign threats: No more climate protection! No more prioritising climate issues! In the Oval Office, he publicly signed an executive order, pulling the United States out of the “disastrous” Paris climate protection agreement, which he said had “ripped off” the American people. He loudly announced that drilling for oil and gas would now ramp up again, ending the focus on renewable energies.
The message is clear: for the Trump administration, climate protection means economic, political and social decline. In their view, climate protection makes everything more expensive and complicated. A strong, industrial America – a global political heavyweight where families can afford a good life – is, in their eyes, being held back by climate regulations.
At the start of the year, the newly restructured Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it would review and repeal more than 30 environmental regulations (including water pollution limits for coal-fired power plants, oil and gas production volumes, and car exhaust emissions). The agency’s new head, staunch Trump supporter Lee Zeldin, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed: “By overhauling massive rules on the endangerment finding, the social cost of carbon and similar issues, we are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age. These actions will roll back trillions of dollars in regulatory costs and hidden taxes. As a result, the cost of living for American families will decrease, and essentials such as buying a car, heating your home and operating a business will become more affordable. Our actions will also reignite American manufacturing, spreading economic benefits to communities.”
During Trump’s first term (2017 – 2021), his administration rolled back more than 125 environmental measures and regulations. The Lancet Commission on Public Policy and Health – a group of scientists who came together in 2017 to monitor the impact of Trump’s policies on the health of Americans – concluded in a study that the environmental policies of Donald Trump and his Vice President Mike Pence had led to more than 22,000 additional deaths in 2019 alone, mainly due to an increase in air pollution.
In just the first two months of his second term, Columbia University’s “Climate Backtracker” (Lancet Commission on Public Policy and Health) has already counted more than 70 steps leading the USA away from climate protection, and the number is steadily increasing. For example, Trump plans to reverse President Biden’s incentives for electric vehicles and halt the construction of new wind turbines.
But what does this mean in concrete terms for climate protection in the world’s largest industrialised nation and for the global climate?
Climate scientist Niklas Höhne from the New Climate Institute offered a somewhat reassuring perspective: “Greenhouse gas emissions in the USA will still decline, but somewhat more slowly. The question is how much slower. Trump can’t completely turn back the clock,” he told Tagesschau.de
Concerns over scientific collaboration
Leading marine biologist Prof. Dr Antje Boetius, Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, also raised concerns about the future of international scientific cooperation. In May, Boetius will take over as President of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. Speaking to the DPA news agency, she emphasized that German and American scientists have long maintained a close partnership, especially in polar and marine research. “There is a high level of exchange at all career stages. From that perspective, a weakening of American research is also a weakening of international science as a whole,” Boetius said in an interview with DPA.
Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay