The next president will inherit the most ambitious climate policies in US history. They could be a thing of the past after the election.
On the left, voters who don't think climate policy goes far enough are hoping that Democrat Kamala Harris will be more ambitious as president than President Joe Biden. Conservatives, on the other hand, are counting on Republican Donald Trump to throw it all in the trash if he wins.
The election will have decisive consequences for the direction the United States, the world's largest oil producer and second-largest emitter of CO2, will take in the future.
The climate has played very little role in the election campaign. Neither candidate has presented detailed climate plans, but their positions on the issue are well-known. That is why it is clear that the contrast is stark. As Vice President under Biden, Harris is part of the government that has implemented ambitious climate legislation.
Especially with the Inflation Reduction Act, the United States has set a course for lower CO2 emissions. It offers billions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits, so that investments in green energy have reached completely new heights.
The climate skeptic Trump
In the other trench is Trump. He is a climate skeptic and rolled back several environmental policies when he was president in the period 2017-2021. He doubts the threat of climate change and as president withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, which has set a global direction for the fight against the climate crisis.
He has announced that he will do so once again, because the United States under Biden has once again become part of the agreement. He also calls for more oil drilling with his mantra "drill, baby, drill".
The presidential election seems to have a decisive impact on the future of the planet. The goal in the Paris Agreement to keep global warming below 2.0 degrees and preferably below 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels will be almost unattainable if Trump takes the White House.
Overall, his plans could mean that "the Paris Agreement's climate goals could fall completely out of reach", writes environmental professor Tim Benton from the Chatham House think tank in an analysis.
To meet its obligations in the Paris Agreement, the United States has promised to halve the country's CO2 emissions by 2030 compared to 2005. In 2023, a reduction of 18 percent was achieved.
- We really need to stay the course. And it will be completely changed with Trump. The outcome of the US election will have consequences for the entire globe, Leah Stokes, a political scientist focusing on climate at UC Santa Barbara in California, told AFP.
Harris has backed down on fracking
On her website, Harris has emphasized that she wants to build on "the United States' international climate leadership." As a senator and later vice president, she helped put major climate policies in place. But as a presidential candidate, she has been quiet about it.
She has backed down on an earlier statement that she would ban fracking, which is a controversial and highly polluting way of extracting oil and gas. The fracking industry is important in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania.
And she has boasted that under Biden and her, the United States "had the largest increase in oil production in history".
Yet climate advocates are putting their cross on Harris, even though there is dissatisfaction with the direction she has set. Environmental and climate groups attribute the new direction to the election campaign and instead see her previous achievements in the field as uplifting.
According to an analysis from the climate media Carbon Brief, a victory for Trump could lead to the United States emitting four billion tons of CO2 more by 2030 than with Harris at the helm. That is equivalent to the annual emissions from the EU and Japan combined.
/ritzau/
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