Under Trump, US adds fuel to a heating planet
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
By LISA FRIEDMAN
By pulling the United States out of the main international climate treaty, seizing Venezuelan crude oil and using government power to resuscitate the domestic coal industry while choking off clean energy, the Trump administration is not just ignoring climate change, it is most likely making the problem worse.
President Donald Trump has never been shy about rejecting the scientific reality of global warming: It’s a “hoax,” he has said, a “scam,” and a “con job.”
In recent days his administration has slammed the door on every possible avenue of global cooperation on the environment. At the same time, it is sending the message that it wants the world to be awash in fossil fuels sold by America, no matter the consequences.
The moves follow one of the hottest years on record, during which scientists say climate change supercharged raging wildfires in Los Angeles, deadly flooding in Texas, and a Category 5 hurricane that ravaged Caribbean islands.
The planet is on course to heat up more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels. That’s the threshold beyond which scientists say the risks of catastrophic storms, droughts, wildfires and heat waves, as well as species extinction, increase significantly. The Earth has already warmed by between 1.3 and 1.4 degrees Celsius.
Under Trump, the United States has become the only nation to renege on a pledge to try to keep warming to 1.5 degrees. Its actions will make the global fight harder, scientists said.
“Emissions will be higher,” warned Justin S. Mankin, an associate professor at Dartmouth College who researches climate variability. “Trump’s greenhouse gas emissions will cause Trump’s heat waves, Trump’s droughts, Trump’s floods and Trump’s wildfires.”
America’s carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, oil and gas, which have made it the biggest polluter since the start of the Industrial Age, had been declining steadily since 2007. But last year, after Trump returned to the White House, emissions rose 1.9%, according to the federal government.
Researchers attributed the rise to an increased use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. Scientists said U.S. emissions should ultimately decline again, in large part because renewable energy remains cheaper than fossil fuels. But the decrease could be slower and smaller than a safe atmosphere requires.
“The science is clear that every action matters and every ton of carbon matters,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and a professor at Texas Tech. “There’s a price to pay for every ton of carbon we produce, and that price is being added to our global debt.”
Last Wednesday, Trump announced that he was withdrawing the United States from a long list of United Nations organizations, including the treaty that underpins international cooperation on global warming and a Nobel Prize-winning group made up of the world’s leading climate scientists.
It came days after the U.S. seized control of Venezuela’s oil, the largest known supply in the world but a particularly “dirty” grade, which produces more greenhouse gases when burned than American oil.
And those were just the latest maneuvers. Over the past months, the administration has forced five domestic power plants that burn coal to continue operating despite their planned retirement. It also halted five offshore wind farms along the East Coast that are already partially built and were to provide clean energy to millions of homes and businesses.
Those moves capped a year in which the Trump administration systematically eliminated regulations designed to reduce greenhouses and gutted federal subsidies that could have brought more wind and solar power onto the grid. With Republican allies in Congress, the administration erased incentives to help consumers switch to nonpolluting electric cars from gasoline-burning vehicles. At the same time, federal agencies imposed new policies making it easier and cheaper to produce and burn oil, gas and coal.
Trump administration officials have insisted that investment in clean energy hurts the United States.
“When it comes to climate change we just chuck rationality at the door,” Chris Wright, the energy secretary, said last week at a Goldman Sachs energy event in Miami. He claimed clean sources don’t produce enough energy and don’t reduce emissions, calling it “the greatest malinvestment in human history.”
Scientists disagreed.
“In my wildest dreams I could not have imagined that the Trump administration would do the level of destruction they have tried to do to the development of renewable energy in this country,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton. “Why didn’t I think it imaginable? Because it’s not rational.”
Oppenheimer said the totality of Trump administration actions could lead to either a rise in U.S. emissions or a slowing of their decline. The severity of the climate consequences depends upon how long the policies stay in place.
Calculating the potential impact of the Trump administration on emissions is complicated by the fact that some of the changes to policy and regulations have not yet taken effect.
One study conducted by the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit group, found that some of the biggest regulatory actions being taken by Trump could add 32 billion metric tons of additional climate pollution to the atmosphere by 2055, more than four times the country’s annual emissions today.
“The administration seems hellbent on blowing past ever more dangerous thresholds,” said Rob Jackson, a Stanford climate scientist who chairs the Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists that tracks countries’ climate emissions.
He noted that China and Europe are continuing to lead the world in addressing climate change, but said he worries about the signal Trump’s actions send globally.
“They won’t continue to act on their own forever if countries like the U.S. ignore the threat of climate change,” Jackson said.
For the foreseeable future, the United States is no longer part of the global community trying to slow the Earth’s warming.
Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a leading climate scientist, described the Trump administration’s actions as the last gasp of fossil fuel interests.
He argued that on a global level, the transition to clean energy was already accelerating despite Trump, driven by the economics of clean energy. In 2025, wind, solar and other renewable power sources surpassed coal as the leading producer of electricity.
“We are at the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel economy,” Rockström said. “The U.S. is betting on the wrong horse.”