Last week, at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Donald Trump picked J D Vance, a junior Senator from Ohio, as his running mate for the November election.
The development elicited a flurry of articles, most of which talked about trade, immigration, security, and geopolitical alliances. However, there seems to be a blind spot about what a Trump administration could mean for climate, and its impact on India.
Climate deniers
In March 2022, just before he launched his 2024 presidential run, Trump called global warming “a great hoax” in an address to the Republican Party’s top donors. He also mocked the concept of sea levels rising, one of the adverse effects of climate change.
This, of course, was not surprising. During his first term as president, Trump repealed or weakened at least 100 environmental regulations. He withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, rolled back Obama-era climate policies, including the Clean Power Plan, and opened up more land for oil and gas leasing.
If re-elected, Trump will likely continue his battle against his predecessors’ climate policies. With “drill, baby, drill” as his rallying cry, the former President has vowed to scrap the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — the largest investment in reducing carbon pollution in US history — increase investment in fossil fuels, and abolish regulations to encourage electric vehicles.
Project 2025, a policy wish list compiled by Trump’s allies, can serve as a guide for Trump on how to alter the future of American fossil fuel production, climate action, and environmental justice. The document proposes ending wind and solar power subsidies, scrapping energy-efficiency standards for appliances, prioritising the use of fossils, etc. Although Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, much of it was written by people who were top advisers during his first term, and could be part of his next administration.
Vance will be Trump’s trusted general. The junior Senator is sceptical of “the idea that climate change is caused purely by man” and has opposed solar power and electric vehicles. Notably, Vance has received $340,289 from the fossil fuel industry in campaign contributions since 2019, according to a report by The Guardian.
The fallout
One estimate published in 2020 by the Rhodium Group found that Trump’s moves to weaken greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations could add the equivalent of 1.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere by 2035. That is more than the combined energy emissions of Germany, Britain, and Canada in one year.
A Trump-Vance administration could lead to an additional four billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) — a term to describe different GHGs in one common unit — by 2030 compared with Biden’s plan, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis, published in March.
For context, this extra amount is “equivalent to the combined annual emissions of the EU and Japan, or the combined annual total of the world’s 140 lowest-emitting countries,” the analysis said.
The increase in emissions would jeopardise not only the US climate targets but also global climate goals (when it comes to global warming, what happens in the US does not stay just in the US). It will make it impossible for the world to not breach the 1.5 degree Celsius limit. The planet can emit only 100 billion tonnes of CO2 to make sure that there is an 83 per cent chance (a risk-averse situation) to stay within the limit, according to a 2023 analysis by Our World in Data. In 2023, which was the warmest ever year on record, the total CO2 emissions stood at 41 billion tonnes.
Worries for India
Once the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold is breached for a long period, the fall outs of climate change will significantly increase and accelerate. Many of these consequences are already visible, including in India. For instance, between March and June, as sweltering heat waves gripped the country, at least 110 people died due to heat stroke, the Union Health Ministry data show.
Extreme weather events — such as heat waves, floods, and drought — claimed the lives of more than 3,200 people from January 1 to November 30, 2023, according to the State of India’s Environment 2024 report published by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). These events occurred almost every day in the first nine months of 2023, the report added. They led to the damage of 2 million hectares of cropland.
Soaring temperatures have also changed rainfall patterns, made nights hotter and oceans warmer, increased sea levels, and led to glacier melting in the country.
They pose national security challenges for India as well. With the largest population in the world, the country would face a scarcity of resources, such as water, which, in turn, affect food security. India is already 13th among the world’s 17 “extremely water-stressed” countries, according to the 2019 Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas released by the World Resources Institute (WRI).
Migrants and refugees
Climate change will also result in a rise in the number of climate refugees — extreme weather events could push millions of refugees from Bangladesh and Pakistan to India. This would threaten the country’s socio-economic and political stability.
To avoid these severe consequences, there is an urgent need for the world, especially the Western countries (which are primarily responsible for global warming), including the US, to transition to a net-zero economy. However, under a Trump-Vance administration, this is unlikely to happen.
