One day after his election as next President of the United States, climate experts are anxiously waiting which environmental decisions Trump will make in the next 4 years. During his campaign, Trump’s vision and plans for the American climate policy and our planet is quite terrifying. Making a pledge at a Michigan rally earlier this year, Trump indicated he “wants to put America first, including cutting billions in climate change.
First of all, Trump called global warming a ‘joke’ as he referred to the Chinese climate policy and the fact that he wants to get rid off all major climate regulations which where reinstated under Barack Obama. Besides that, Trump indicated he also wants to reopen the debate on the Clean Power Plan and he wants to erase the EPA.
To make things even worse, Trump told the press he wants to cut government spending such as clean energy, electric vehicles ,solar- and windenergy, bio-ethanol, etc… With global CO² emissions already at disturbing figures, it is estimated that Trump decisions might lead to an increase in more than 3 billion tons of CO².
Divya Reddy, Practice Head Global Energy and Natural Resources at Euresia Group, thinks Trump election as President of the United States is a major setback for global climate and environmental policy. “The outcome of the election will face us with a tremendous challenge because Trump explicitly quoted that he’s not fond of the Paris Agreement and ideally he would like the withdraw the USA from the agreement. We worked so hard to get this agreement signed and it took us several years to reach the point where we are right now. Knowing that Trump might take that all away is might bounce us back to 10 years ago.
Trump’s climate policy will be discussed this week at important climate summit in Marrakech, Morocco, where climate experts from all around the world will gather to discuss future climate policies and agreements.
Whatever Trump decides, it’s clear that global climate experts will keep a close watch on the decisions made in the Oval Office. After all, we only have 1 planet to live on.
