What to expect for environmental policy in a 2nd Trump administration

In a year of highly destructive hurricanes, floods and fires, the Nov. 5 elections unleashed a political tsunami whose aftershocks in the United States and globally will be felt for years to come. Several antecedents can provide a useful perspective in assessing the likely policy agenda of a second Trump administration. They include:

• Donald Trump’s first term (2017-2021) initially included a number of prominent Republican appointees that were inexperienced, ethically conflicted or lacked knowledge of agencies they were tasked with managing. As a result, the administration lost valuable time in implementing budget and staff reductions, transacting policy changes or altering scientific appointments and assessments. Specific appointees such as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt  (2017-2018) became a political poster child for pollution whose ineptness and grifter behavior provided valuable time and motivation for an opposition movement in Congress and across the nonprofit sector to emerge.   

• Pruitt’s successor, Andrew Wheeler (2019-2021), while ideologically committed to the administration’s policy objectives, more often remained within the guardrails of administrative processes in adopting rulemakings that reversed previous Environmental Protection Agency regulatory priorities. As a Washington insider, he and other senior colleagues transacted more substantive changes to air, water, waste and toxic substances policies while remaining largely below the national media radar. While many of these proposed policy changes — such as weakened coal ash regulations, less protective drinking water standards, less stringent mercury emission standards, and rescinding the Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants — were challenged in the courts, a number were promulgated as final regulations.

• The newly elected Trump administration has, during the just completed campaign, communicated that it will again pursue a radical environmental and energy agenda in both policy and personnel appointments. Much of a second-term Trump agenda is contained within The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership (authored by dozens of alumni from the first Trump administration) although other libertarian think tanks and business organizations also contributed their own proposals.  

What’s next?

With fewer traditional conservatives available as administration appointees or in Congress to provide a backstop, we can expect environmental and energy policy to represent a major tip of the ideological spear for the new administration. Several elements of its strategy include:

• Dismantling agencies and eliminating specific budgets, staff and programs. Agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the EPA will be specifically targeted because of their work on climate change and broad-scale regulatory policies. The administration will attempt to zero out entire staff groups responsible for regulation development, collaborations that investigate population health risks from pollution, expanded environmental reporting on climate and other topics, cumulative risks in lower income communities, research and development, independent scientific advisers, and efforts to advance diversity, equity and inclusion.

Resource

Driving Decarbonization: Trends in Corporate Emissions Management

Optera worked with a third-party research firm to survey 90 sustainability leaders at large companies about what trends are impacting their climate program, how they are overcoming common challenges, and how they are prioritizing initiatives moving into 2025.

November 6, 2024

Register

• Reorganizing federal government agencies. President-elect Trump has already announced that Elon Musk will possess a broad portfolio to promote efficiency in government, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will oversee public health policies, including vaccination programs and water treatment. The administration has declared a high priority for removing civil service protections for federal employees. (It failed to achieve this objective in the first Trump term.) This undertaking will prove highly controversial and would immediately land in the court system where decades of civil service precedents exist that are designed to protect employee rights.  Another pathway the Trump administration may consider is the use of the congressional budget reconciliation process to restructure agencies and reduce their budgets and staffing levels.

• Repealing laws and other initiatives to decarbonize the economy.  This effort can take many forms, including attempts to claw back authorities and budgets from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, rescinding methane emission controls and levies, withdrawing regulations on the auto and power plant sectors to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and providing additional incentives to explore for petroleum and natural gas offshore, on public lands and other locations. Consultations have begun within Trump’s staff about whether to seek Supreme Court review of its 2007 finding that greenhouse gases constituted air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act, the basis of EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding. The administration will also support efforts to roll back environment, social and governance issues (ESG) in the financial sector and across publicly traded companies as they relate to climate and other issues.

• Leveraging the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of the Chevron deference to both thwart new regulations and reexamine existing controls. Legal staff within specific agencies (EPA, Food and Drug Administration, Occupational Health and Safety Administration, Securities and Exchange Commission) and the Department of Justice will have the opportunity to review and repeal existing controls that they believe are inconsistent with the Chevron deference ruling. A strong downside of this effort is the cumbersome pace of the legal system in which efforts to implement the Supreme Court’s ruling would require more than a four-year term in office. In parallel to this effort will be an aggressive program to appoint new judges whose judicial philosophy is consistent with the Chevron rescission and other administration priorities.

• Withdrawing from international commitments and other negotiations and forums. As in the first Trump administration, the second will again withdraw from the Paris climate accord that pledges greenhouse gas reductions to limit global temperature increases. It will likely oppose efforts to negotiate a global plastic waste treaty or advance protections to preserve biodiversity.

The response to Trump’s policy agenda

As this agenda is already established through Project 2025 and efforts of supporting organizations, the Trump administration can be expected to mount an executive branch and legislative bull rush to enact as many of these priorities as possible early in its term. Much of its success will depend upon whether Republicans also control the House of Representatives (undetermined at the time of this writing). Either way, House Democrats will be fully motivated, in a closely divided chamber, to block and publicize the dismantling of a host of environmental controls. 

Trade associations (with robust membership support) will largely follow the White House lead, whereas individual companies will frequently duck and cover in public to avoid the negative fallout from employees and other prominent stakeholders. Environmental organizations will seek to mobilize funding, membership and publicity against the administration’s proposals with the goal of delaying the decision-making process for as long as possible to catalyze public opposition.

Altogether, 2025 will be a race against time to determine who can best capture the ramparts of regulatory and legislative processes in what will be singularly titanic struggles with very direct consequences for public health and the environment.

[You’re leading change in an unpredictable environment. Get the strategies you need from the world’s top sustainability leaders at GreenBiz 25, Feb. 10-12, Phoenix.]