It’s Election Day in the United States, and the outcome of the presidential race will have a huge impact on the world’s efforts to deal with climate change.
If Donald Trump retakes the White House, he is likely to roll back regulations aimed at limiting planet-warming emissions, expand fossil fuel production and eliminate federal incentives for clean energy and electric vehicles. Those decisions could usher in a new boom in oil and gas production that could lock in years of additional emissions.
In a Times article last week that analyzed Trump’s environmental record, Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University, put it starkly: “Trump’s the worst president for the environment in American history. A second term will be brutal. He is going to go full throttle on having the trophy of shutting down the green movement and replacing it with an older-style gasoline and coal-fired America.”
If Vice President Kamala Harris wins, she is likely to continue President Biden’s effort to expand renewable energy and reduce emissions. But her approach to the fossil fuel industry is not entirely clear, as Lisa Friedman explained in an article detailing the climate stakes of this election. Harris has dropped her previous opposition to fracking, but has said little about issues like whether it should be more difficult for oil and gas companies to drill on federal lands.
“When you look at Donald Trump, he has a record on energy,” said Amanda Eversole, the executive vice president of the American Petroleum Institute, which represents the oil and gas industry. “The Harris campaign and the vice president herself has yet to really provide a substantive point of view on energy.”
Which way the country votes will have an impact on just how much global warming the planet experiences in the decades ahead. And beyond their domestic energy policies, whoever wins the White House will have broad influence over environmental regulations, the role of science in government and the U.S. role in climate diplomacy.
Until we know the final results, here’s a reading list of Times climate journalism that explores some of the main issues.
The Inflation Reduction Act
Trump has promised to undo parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, which is the most substantial federal climate legislation in history. That could put America’s clean energy boom at risk. In particular, Trump has said he would target incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles.
Harris cast the deciding vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which has led to a boom in domestic manufacturing of batteries and other clean energy components. If she wins, one of her biggest challenges will be carrying out elements of the law.
The oil and gas industry
Trump courted energy executives on the campaign trail, encouraging them to raise $1 billion to return him to the White House so he could reduce regulations on their industry, and has promised to “drill, baby, drill” if elected.
Oil and gas interests have given an estimated $75 million to Trump’s presidential campaign, the Republican National Committee and affiliated committees.
The Biden-Harris administration has overseen record levels of American oil and gas production but has taken steps to limit additional drilling and exports.
Project 2025 and the E.P.A.
Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for the next Republican administration, calls for overhauling the Environmental Protection Agency, slashing its budget and “ousting career staff, eliminating scientific advisers that review the agency’s work and closing programs that focus on minority communities with heavily polluted air and water.”
At The Times’s Climate Forward conference in September, Kevin D. Roberts, an architect of Project 2025 and president of the Heritage Foundation, dismissed climate change and record high temperatures.
Trump has repeatedly claimed he has nothing to do with Project 2025, but well over half of the playbook’s 307 authors and contributors have been in his administration or on his campaign or transition teams.
Environment and pollution
During the Biden-Harris administration, the E.P.A. has introduced a raft of new regulations curtailing dangerous chemicals and pesticides, and has begun to ramp up enforcement of pollution laws. California, for its part, has already started “Trump-proofing” its climate policies.
Trump says he wants “clean air and clean water,” but his approach to the environment ignores decades of climate change science.
The U.S. and the world
Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord during his first term in office and has said he would do so again, abandoning the country’s commitment to lower emissions.
The Biden-Harris administration has tried to push other countries to take the fight against climate change seriously, engaging in international climate negotiations and looking for ways to work with China, despite an otherwise tense relationship.
Growing food instead of lawns in California front yards
On a corner lot in Leimert Park in dusty South Los Angeles, not far from Obama and Crenshaw Boulevards, sits a curiosity that’s wildly different from all the neighboring grassy yards. Abundant and lush, it looks like a mash-up between a country idyll and something dreamed up by Dr. Seuss.
Run by a gardening wizard named Jamiah Hargins, this wee farm in the front yard of his bungalow provides fresh produce for 45 nearby families, all while using a tiny fraction of the water required by a lawn.
At just 2,500 square feet, this farm forms the heart of Mr. Hargins’s nonprofit, Crop Swap LA, which transforms yards and unused spaces into microfarms. It runs three front yard farms that provide organic fruits and vegetables each week to 80 families, all living in a one-mile radius, and often with food insecurity. Rooted in the empowering idea that people can grow their own food, Crop Swap LA has caught on, with a wait list of 300 residents wanting to convert their own yards into microfarms. — Cara Buckley
All but two U.S. states are in drought
Almost the entire United States faced drought conditions during the last week of October.
Only Alaska and Kentucky did not have at least moderate drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a record in the monitor’s history.
The past four months were consistently warmer than normal over a wide swath of the country, said Rich Tinker, a drought specialist with the National Weather Service. But in June, while roughly a quarter of the country was dry to some degree, he said, now 87 percent of the nation is.
“Drought in many parts of the country and the world is becoming more frequent, longer and more severe,” said Erica Fleishman, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute and a professor at Oregon State University. — Austyn Gaffney and Mira Rojanasakul
More climate news:
A new study highlighted by The Washington Post may have found an explanation for a recent spike in global methane levels: microbes that live in cows’ stomachs, agricultural fields and wetlands.
The U.S. is trying to be global climate leader even as it remains the top oil producer in the world, Bloomberg reports.
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