A new era for climate stakes

Issue #11: A Climate Stakes U.S. newsletter reboot

In this edition

• Breaking: NOAA cuts hit weather forecasting, tariffs hitting energy sector, oil majors report

• Farmers, firefighters, bird flu researchers: Release the funds

• Lawsuits pending, everywhere 

The big picture

A state of confusion reigns for millions of people and thousands of companies, government agencies, and private organizations across the U.S. — with serious global consequences — as the Trump administration continues to exercise as much executive power as it can. This includes attempts to defund many government agencies and government-supported institutions across the country, to undermine renewable energy projects in the U.S., and to further prop up the fossil fuel industry. This newsletter will help you wade through this pandemonium.

We’re here to keep up with the shifting climate in the U.S. — particularly the stakes for the clean energy transition. This post-election version of the Climate Stakes U.S. newsletter will attempt to take a measure of what’s mere rhetoric vs. the real world effects of the Trump administration’s anti-climate, pro-fossil fuel stance. 

So less Gulf of Mexico and TikTok, and more layoff threats at Ford, for example. 

A few breaking stories:  

• Blanket staffing cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service are threatening early warning systems (CNN): “There are a lot more storms now than 20 to 30 years ago.”

• Flip-flops on steep tariffs on imports from Mexico, Canada, and China: “It probably slows down the energy transition because it drives up cost, especially the tariffs on China, and creates chaos” in supply chains, David Victor, a professor of innovation and public policy at the University of California, San Diego, told E&E News. (Tariff tracker from PIIE. Another taker from Robinson Meyer at Heatmap: Green New Donald.)

• Carbon majors in 2024: Half of global carbon pollution from 36 fossil fuel firms (The Guardian; full report.) 

Month 1: Critical climate stakes for the U.S.

• Likely illegal funding and regulatory freeze (The Hill)

  Part of a wider strategy to assert more executive authority, the wide ranging funding and regulation freeze threatens thousands of critical initiatives (Google Sheet of EPA funding freeze), amounting to possibly trillions of dollars, including:

  • Reporters are looking for stories of real world effects of the funding freeze: Inside Climate News on climate justice programs, other Inflation Reduction Act programs (WP), and Scientific American on rural electric cooperatives: “These are not Trump enemies by any stretch of the imagination,” said one labor official.

  • Electric bills for people in Huntsville, Alabama have been hit with $100 surcharge because of the Trump administration’s low-income energy grant freeze (Popular Information). 

  • There are further delays to the Biden-era proposal to limit PFAS pollution (Truthout) from chemical factories (at least two former American Chemistry Council execs, Nancy Beck and Lynn Ann Dekleva, are returning to the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety, according to The New York Times).

  • But there is pushback: Pennsylvania sues over more than $2 billion in withheld funds (Inside Climate News), 22 state attorneys general sue (Politico). Here’s New York’s lawsuit with lots of examples of the billions of dollars at risk.

• Agency layoffs and general chaos

  • This long interview with former EPA assistant administrator Mary Nichols in the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences covers lots of ground on staff firings and policy changes at the EPA.

  • The New York Times asks, “Is that legal?”, and includes an overview of 38 major presidential actions. (TL;DR, almost all of them appear to be illegal.)

  • “Donald Trump’s re-election has ‘turbocharged’ climate accountability efforts in the states, including laws which aim to force greenhouse gas emitters to pay damages for fueling dangerous global warming, say activists,” (The Guardian), even as the new administration approves new oil industry projects (Inside Climate News).

• Attacks on science and medicine 

  • The EPA plans to reject its established 2009 finding (Union of Concerned Scientists) that carbon pollution endangers the American public. Also on the chopping block: the social cost of carbon (ProPublica).

  • Government scientists and researchers are trying to figure out how to publish a nearly-done report on the state of nature in the U.S. (NYT) after the Trump administration cancelled it: “This work is too important to die,” the project’s director said. “The country needs what we are producing.” 

  • The U.S. pulled its delegation out of last week’s UN climate science meeting in China (Axios).

• U.S. global climate retreat continues

  • E&E News’s Corbin Hiar and Sara Schonhardt wrote about how quiet tech billionaires have been on the Paris exit, as opposed to eight years ago. For example, back then Elon Musk “publicly lambasted Trump’s first Paris pullout and cut ties with the president’s business advisory groups.”

  • Michael Bloomberg and other U.S. climate funders will backfill lost U.S. funding to the UNFCCC (Reuters), perhaps solidifying a seat for state and local officials in global climate cooperation. Linda Kalcher, executive director at think-tank Strategic Perspectives says: "This is where the other U.S. actors come in. I can foresee that a lot of interaction will happen again with the U.S. businesses and states that want to continue.”

Also: 

• New Secretary of State Marco Rubio skipped the G20 meeting in South Africa over objections to “equality” and “sustainability” goals (FP).

• DeSmog maps out connections between oil and gas disinformation agents on both sides of the Atlantic.

• And The New York Times on implications of USAID climate mitigation and adaptation funding disappearing globally. For example, the website of the famine early warning network has gone dark.

• Trackers

  • Tracker of US climate trackers.

  • Just Security has a comprehensive tracker of all the legal challenges to Trump administrative actions.

  • The Sabin Center has a Climate Backtracker.

  • The State Energy & Environmental Impact Center shows that regular people are bearing the cost of Trump’s funding freeze (trackers).

  • $70 billion in clean energy investment in Q4 of 2024 (Rhodium Group).

China ascendant

The leader of an international corporate net zero alliance (The Energy Transitions Commission) suggested (FT) that China, the E.U., and the U.K. form a “coalition of ‘the world apart from the U.S.’ on climate action after the retreat under President Trump.” The group represents companies like Shell, BP, HSBC, Iberdrola, ArcelorMittal, and Tata Steel.

China has pledged its support for the World Health Organization and the Paris agreement. “No country can remain unaffected or solve the problem on its own”, said China’s foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun. “China will work with all parties… to actively address the challenges of climate change.”

Ma Jun writes on green free trade in a protectionist age (Project Syndicate): “the reversal of free trade will accelerate under Trump, with far-reaching consequences – not least for the fight against climate change.”

And Yun Sun of the Stimpson Center in Foreign Affairs says:

BYD, the largest EV maker in the world, wants to team up with Tesla:

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Green industrial policy

Entrepreneur, clean energy booster, and former Biden DOE loan chief, Jigar Shah, has a clever take in his Accelerating Climate Wealth newsletter, — perhaps as an attempt to rein in the more authoritarian aspects of the Trump energy policy: “Biden’s decarbonization investments are not a departure from Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda, but a necessary evolution… The clean energy revolution is the only way to reduce energy costs, revitalize American manufacturing, and ensure energy security – visions shared by the new National Energy Dominance Council.”

Cars

Ford CEO Jim Farley (The Detroit News) has spoken at a fireside chat covering the "cost and chaos" of the Trump administration's tariffs approach: "We've already sunk capital — even though we've rationalized it — in battery production and assembly plants all through Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee… And many of those jobs will be at risk if the IRA is repealed." Meanwhile, Tesla sales are down sharply in Europe (NPR).

Critical green minerals

Reuters did a deep dive on reports of Ukrainian mineral deposits, showing what resources they actually have, and the variable usefulness for the green transition and competition with China.  

It’s not just Ukraine. The administration’s highly aggressive approach to Greenland, Canada, and South Africa is also driven by a stated desire for access to mineral resources says John Lenczowski, founder, president emeritus and chancellor of the Institute of World Politics (Politico): “This is part of a global strategy, which includes economic warfare, and a dimension of economic warfare is resource warfare, and it is intimately linked to [China’s] military buildup and their Belt and Road strategy and their attempts to secure a corner on the markets … on things like cobalt and lithium and the rare earths.”

Is it though? Ed Conway at Sky News has a useful discussion with Niall Paterson on this “rare earths” horse trading: “There is not much, if any, real rare earths… what they are kind of thinking about is anything that sounds a little bit sexy.”

Voters’ climate game (polling, etc.) 

Data for Progress asked U.S. voters how they feel about the Trump administration removing all mentions of the phrase “climate change” from the U.S. Department of Agriculture website and 64% said they strongly or somewhat oppose it. Only 10% of likely voters think we should decrease funding for national forests and parks, and only 16% of Republicans want to cut forest funding, as the Trump administration pursues massive layoffs at parks. 

New polling numbers are out from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, including: 

• 88% support providing federal funding to help farmers improve practices to protect and restore the soil, so it absorbs and stores more carbon.

• 77% support funding more research into renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power.

• 74% support setting strict limits on methane emissions from oil and gas production.

And 70% of U.S. voters, including a majority of Republicans, support taking action to address climate change, according to Data for Progress — voters prefer ramping up clean energy over fossil fuels by a 6 point margin, with a wide split on party lines. 

Finally, most Americans who experience severe winter weather see the effects of climate change (AP).

GSCC is a global network of communications professionals in the field of climate and energy. The views expressed in quotes in this newsletter are those of the people making the comments and not necessarily those of GSCC, and they are presented as a service in the interest of informing the public. GSCC does not endorse candidates.

This edition was written by Nate.