Trump’s actions are already having consequences for climate

Many human activities result in dumping carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases into the atmosphere, causing heating from the greenhouse effect.

Greenhouse gas concentrations continued their relentless rise in 2024, and last year, our planet crossed the 1.5°C warming threshold for the first time. This is the global mean surface temperature relative to preindustrial values.

The overheating planet will cause higher temperatures and sea levels to rise, hurricanes and rainstorms to become more extreme, droughts and heatwaves to become more frequent and more intense, and increased risk of wildfire. These are already well underway.

Because the United States is both a leading world power and major contributor to climate change (along with China and Europe), it should do its part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and plan for the consequences. Some countries, including the US, have managed to somewhat decrease carbon dioxide emissions in recent years, but that progress is being reversed by the current U.S. government’s actions.

Paris: A remarkable achievement based on goodwill

The way the UN operates is to insist on unanimity, which is very difficult to achieve with any substance. It means that it is impossible to put together binding targets, and results tend to get watered down.

The Paris agreement of 2015 was a remarkable achievement involving unanimous agreement among over 190 countries.  

The whole Paris agreement is based upon goodwill. There are no punitive actions or means to enforce the agreement. The goodwill includes the Green Fund, mandated to support low-emission, climate-resilient development pathways. As of 31 July 2024, 34 contributors had pledged $12.8 billion, of which the U.S. pledged $3 billion, but that is not yet fully honoured.

This becomes a major sore point for all small island states and developing countries, who have not caused the problem but nonetheless suffer the impacts of climate change including rising sea levels.

Major consequences of us opting out

U.S. leadership (under Obama) was essential in Paris. If the U.S. does not lead by example, and there is a moral and ethical responsibility to do so as the largest accumulated emitter, then why should anyone else go along?

Fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest form of energy. This is not true, of course, because of all the downstream effects on air quality and climate change. It might be fixed with some sort of universal carbon tax.  

So either some form of trade wars are realised in which heavy tariffs are used against the renegades, or the whole thing collapses and spirals into a race to the bottom, to see who can destroy the planet first.

The U.S. cannot opt out without major consequences. Without implementation of the Paris agreement, global warming will likely exceed the 2°C threshold before 2060, and perhaps a decade earlier owing to U.S. pullout.

This means increasing many sorts of disruption: dangers with ecosystems being out of whack with the climate, trouble farming current crops, and increasing shortages of food and water.

But if Paris is fully implemented and feeds back on itself to a new renewable energy economy, it may be possible to delay 2°C by 40 years.

It still seems likely that global temperatures will go through 2°C by 2100 regardless. But the delay means that people everywhere can adapt better.

Reversing progress threatens humanity’s survival

Funding under the Biden administration was a real shot in the arm for addressing climate change, but the Trump years loom ominously. Indeed, America’s lack of support for climate science poses a serious problem for the survival of our species. Human climate change already costs hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

In the first Trump administration, “climate” disappeared from government websites and calls for research proposals. But now human-induced climate change is even more firmly and strongly established as a factor in increasing extremes of climate of all sorts. The ability to track what is happening and why, and issue appropriate warnings has improved enormously since the first Trump era, but is in serious jeopardy from loss of expertise and funding.

I have to say I am appalled in multiple ways. Some of the things being done by Trump are not unreasonable, but the manner of execution and process is terrible. People are being fired because they can be, not because of any assessment of their performance and the need for their job.

My own organisation, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, is vulnerable, and I know people in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, some co-authors with me, who have been cut. The role of who looks after ocean data - and quality controls it - seems lost. 

A significant number of researchers are likely to leave. I have also heard that any of the value-added products at the National Centers for Environmental Information like the monthly climate monitoring products are also likely to be jettisoned.

Changes to and elimination of government departments, arbitrarily chopping off already allocated funding, firing incoming new recruits and getting rid of older staff, and culling numerous informative websites are also having consequences. Many grants and loans have been frozen. There is no transition and no measured assessment or evaluations to justify the actions taken.

Global shift to the right

The shift to the right is politics is widespread. Governments are supposed to look after the interests of their citizens, not those of lobbyists and companies.

For example, in New Zealand, the many actions that have been taken by the current government with adverse climate consequences include:

• Removal of the “ute tax” on big inefficient internal combustion engine vehicles, the clean car discount, and the subsidy for e-vehicles

• Lowering the petrol tax for the Auckland area and cutting fuel tax hikes

• Increasing speed limits

• Cutting public transport budgets

• Increasing bus prices for kids and teens

• Decreased funding for walking, cycling, and local road infrastructure projects

• Scrapping the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry (GIDI) Fund, which gave hefty grants to large emitters to cut coal usage

• Removal of decarbonisation incentives

All these actions will increase use of fossil fuels and emissions. The forestry industry has not paid reparations for the billions of dollars of damage caused by forestry waste during Cyclone Gabrielle and other major storms. Yet over 80% of New Zealand’s exports are headed to countries with mandatory climate-related disclosures that are either in force or on the way.

Climate change mandates globalization

Climate action has been a unifying force for social justice, racial equality, women’s opportunities, children’s rights, protection of ancestral lands, and the health of both humans and ecosystems, and the dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the United States, even if its implementation had been flawed in places (such as through reverse discrimination), will have major long-term consequences.

All too often, Trump and his cohorts have used outright lies and distortion of facts as a basis for actions that have frequently been inhumane at best. The appointment of so many cronies has left incompetent decision makers across the government who have vowed to get even and impose purely vindictive penalties. The attacks on those who have stood up in the past have been extraordinarily blatant and many individuals and companies have bowed to pressures rather than speaking up and becoming a target.

The U.S. has lost its place as a law abiding country. Science facts are ignored, and the major threats to the planet outlined clearly by climate scientists have been disavowed, based on nothing but ideology.

Flouting the climate emergency

Trump has declared numerous emergencies (on energy, government waste, foreign trade, etc...) none of which remotely qualify, but no emergency where there really is one on global climate change.

The consequences of increasing disasters are not only increasing prices, but homeowners suffer from increasing or no insurance and falling property values in disaster-prone areas. It has been very discouraging to see the lack of integrity of many Republican politicians and industry leaders who have bowed to the changes underway.

Global impacts - but personal attacks

As an active climate scientist, heavily involved internationally through the World Climate Research Programme and the IPCC in the 1990s and 2000s, I had been attacked several times, such as during “Climategate”.

As a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), where we were base-funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF), because we were not a government department, we had freedom, not available to government employees, to speak out on issues.

Following Climategate, where hacked emails from climate scientists were distorted by climate-change deniers to sow confusion, I was the topic of a number of talk-back radio shows, vilified in the Denver Post, and protesters showed up at my work (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.

The latter did not last long as it was mid-winter and bitterly cold. I was able to post a full-two page rebuttal in the Denver Post.

Republican history of cuts to climate science

A consequence of successive Republican governments leading up to and including the first Trump Administration were major cuts to climate science funding.

Most scientists could go to NSF with a proposal, but I could not because I already received base funding from NSF. I was dependent on funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Institution (NOAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and Department of Energy (DOE) to support my research and support staff. 

For instance, NOAA climate funding dried up after 2012 when NOAA put forward a proposal for a climate service but Lamar Smith (R-Texas, then-chair of the Science Committee in the House) not only killed it but cut research funds for climate by 30%. The word “climate” no longer appeared in calls for proposals.

I began a phased retirement in August 2017 which ultimately led me and my family to move to New Zealand in 2019. I could do this as a NZ citizen (I am also a US citizen), and our daughter was born in New Zealand.

Lack of research funds were one factor, but Trump, the Republicans and US society were other factors. The latter included guns, school shootings, and the Covid-19 response. The ineptitude of the Trump Administration in handling all of these is evident.

My way forward 

I was able to establish an honorary academic faculty appointment in the Department of Physics at the University of Auckland. I also have a high-level emeritus position at NCAR, and I remain productive in writing papers and articles, and giving presentations (pro bono).

So, I was able to move to New Zealand as a citizen, and so was my wife (US citizen) and separately my daughter and her family.

Even so it is not easy. All Medicare payments are effectively lost, although I do receive U.S. social security. The tax year is different, and taxes must get paid in both countries, although there is a double tax agreement.

Racism is generally much less in New Zealand, although tensions are strong related to Māori and the Treaty of Waitangi and how that is implemented. However, New Zealand is very remote and exports and imports travel long distances. That remoteness benefitted New Zealand in the Covid-19 pandemic where hospitalization and loss of life was much less than most other countries.

However many things are quite expensive and GDP per capita is quite a lot less than in Australia and the United States.

Tariffs will hurt efforts to tackle climate change

Suddenly, tariffs are being widely used by the Trump administration, not to punish actions causing climate change, but stupidly to penalize any country that exports goods to the U.S., regardless of whether the U.S. can grow or produce those goods or materials.

Unfortunately, globalization is a major victim and so too are all efforts to address global environmental issues.

This article is also published on Carbon News. illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.