It was a brief moment involving a Sharpie pen and an official hurricane weather map, way back before the world knew covid, that perhaps told us all we would ever need to know about the then US President Donald Trump’s approach to science and the climate.

Or maybe it was when the 45th President of the United States of America decided to pull the nation – recognised as the second-largest carbon emitter in the world, next to China – out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change?

The four years between 2016 and 2020 became a strange time for science which, frequently, found itself buried beneath rhetoric, metaphors, and garbled half-truths, swapped instead for repeatable slogans, headlines, and soundbites. But this was all the best part of half a decade ago, and voters – it would appear – have short memories. Short enough, at least, to help fuel the returning Presidential candidate to a victory that will send reverberations across all areas of the environmental, climate, and biodiversity landscape.

Project 2025 – a 900-page ‘wish list’ for the next Republican president (and one Trump has vehemently denied involvement with) – has outlined the myriad ways his administration could harm environmental policy, from bolstering oil, gas, and coal mining to closing down the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

At a time when the science is urging us to make dramatic cuts to global carbon emissions between now and 2030 for a chance to limit climate change to below the 2°C threshold and remain on track to rise no more than 1.5°C pre-industrial levels, analysis suggests a Trump presidency could lead to an additional 4 billion tonnes of US emissions over the next four years. At which point, the window for assertive action to avert long-lasting impact of climate change will no doubt be closed.

Based on US government valuations made in March this year, these extra 4 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions could cause global climate damages worth more than $900 billion. For context, 4 billion tonnes of CO2e 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.

Keep your eyes peeled for anyone in the White House reaching for the Sharpie pen and data charts when that press conference takes place.

A second Presidential term for Trump would very likely mean the US misses its global climate pledge to achieve a 50-52% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, with emissions anticipated to fall just 28% below 2005 levels within the upcoming 5 year timeframe.

But then, Donald Trump – who claimed an early victory over Kamala Harris’ campaign on the morning of Wednesday, 6th November – hasn’t hidden his feelings around the climate change conversation, referring to it and Harris’ green plan as a “hoax” and “one of the greatest scams of all time”. He has also promised to “drill, baby, drill” to bolster US oil, gas, and coal industries and we can reasonably anticipate reduced investment in green energy infrastructure such as wind, to which Trump has previously referred, simply, as “horrible”.

A main focus of the Republican’s ire, however, has been President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – a landmark $468 billion plan to turbocharge investment in green technologies – launching at it a tirade of promises to repeal the law and to block any more funds from the green subsidies package being spent.

This, however, has been met with calls of ‘bluster and bravado’ from the EU, where experts and industry figures simply ‘don’t believe’ that a returning President Donald Trump would actually repeal the signature law. Alongside this, an article written by Politico positions that a full repeal may even help European governments struggling to match America’s subsidies and that the global cleantech race will “continue regardless.”

“I just don’t think there’s any chance of it being completely repealed,” said Antoine Vagneur-Jones, a senior analyst at BloombergNEF specialising in the cleantech sector. “It’ll be very hard for Trump to flick a switch and suddenly make it impossible for European companies to access those different incentives.”

Besides, there are suggestions that enough momentum is now behind the record growth of clean energy around the world, that means it won’t be completely derailed by a Trump presidency. Last year, renewable energy accounted for more than 30% of global electricity for the first time, following the rapid rise in wind and solar power.

Clean electricity has already helped slow the growth in fossil fuels by almost two-thirds in the past ten years, according to a report by the climate thinktank, Ember, which stated that the “renewables future has arrived” when it issued its report in May this year.

“Solar, in particular, is accelerating faster than anyone thought possible,” said Dave Jones, Ember’s director of global insights. 

In fact, solar energy generated more than twice as much new electricity as coal in 2023 and was the fastest-growing source of electricity for the 19th consecutive year. And, with or without the US president, Donald Trump in their court, world leaders are still aiming to grow renewables to 60% of global electricity by 2030 under an agreement struck across nations at the UN’s COP28 climate change summit in December last year.

As the final few votes trickled in to conclude this year’s US Presidential election as forgone, the environmental landscape breathes its collective sigh. COP29 will convene next week in Baku, Azerbaijan, where world leaders will gather to advance the climate agenda in line with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal. The US will, at the time of the gathering, still be led by President Joe Biden.

In what will be another crucial discussion for global environmental action, hope rests on a resolute determination from Number 46 to leave a long-lasting climate legacy, though likelier are we to see the first emergence of the United States’ more isolationist position on the matter from here on out.

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