ENERGY SECURITYWhat a Second Trump Presidency Will Mean for Energy and Climate
The 2024 election has put a new administration in the White House, but the nation remains deeply divided on a large number of issues, including many policy proposals that implicate energy and climate change.
The 2024 election has put a new administration in the White House, but the nation remains deeply divided on a large number of issues, including many policy proposals that implicate energy and climate change.
“Trump’s presidency will have huge reverberations for international policy,” David Victor, professor of innovation and public policy at the School of Global Policy and Strategy,” recently wrote in a Nature commentary.
The impact of Donald Trump’s second presidency, dubbed by some as “Trump 2.0,” on climate and energy was the center of discussion at a recent roundtable event with Victor, who was joined by Thad Kousser, professor in the UC San Diego Department of Political Science and Varun Sivaram, who served in the Biden-Harris administration as senior advisor to U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry.
The event was moderated by Jade Hindmon, journalist and host of KPBS’ Midday Edition.
The group at the Nov. 18 event discussed the top takeaways from the 2024 election results and what the implications could be over the next four years. The topics included:
Withdrawing from the Paris Accords
Trump pulled out of the Paris agreement in his first term. While Biden rejoined, Trump is expected to withdraw again, perhaps even on Trump’s first day in office.
“I actually think it’s good for them to leave the Paris Agreement,” Victor explained. “All of these agreements work through consensus, and so if you have one country whose diplomats have a political brief to cause trouble, you’re better off not having them have a formal vote.”
He continued, “It’s not good news for the United States to be AWOL, but if the United States is going to be obnoxious to everyone else it’s better just to get out of the way. The key though is, what does the rest of the world do?”
Victor described how other countries in the agreement should respond.
Regardless of Who Is in the White House, Markets Will Continue to Push Decarbonization
“There is bipartisan consensus on supporting the next generation of energy technology innovation,” Sivaram said, who is a senior fellow for energy and climate at the Council on Foreign Relations.
In addition, market forces will continue to push for technological change that decouples energy production from emissions.
Victor added, “That revolution is underway, and it isn’t really affected by who’s in the White House. The President is not some Wizard of Oz who’s pulling all these levers and changing everything outside in the economy.”
