(Photo: Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash)

It’s easy to compare the attitudes of Joe Biden and Donald Trump about climate change. Neither does anything to hide their positions. The former believes it is real and serious. His administration has acted accordingly. The latter does not acknowledge that a problem exists.

Examples of the completely different approaches are easy to find. For instance, the United States was a member of the Paris Climate Accords under President Obama. Trump announced our country’s withdrawal in June, 2017 (the withdrawal became official in November, 2020). In turn, President Biden announced we would rejoin the Paris Accords on the day he took office.

The need to stop damaging our planet is a driving principle of Biden’s overall agenda. The key vehicle of the administration’s efforts is the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which was signed into law in August of 2022. The driving concept is that growing the economy and combating climate change do not present an either/or choice.

In September, 2023, The New York Times reported on updates the administration had issued on the progress of the IRA:

New data being released on Wednesday suggest the climate law and other parts of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda have helped speed the development of automotive supply chains in the American Southwest, buttressing traditional auto manufacturing centers in the industrial Midwest and the Southeast. The 2022 law, which passed with only Democratic support, aided factory investment in conservative bastions like Tennessee and the swing states of Michigan and Nevada. The law also helped underwrite a spending spree on electric cars and home solar panels in California, Arizona and Florida.

Here are a couple of 2023 examples of the administration’s investment in climate change and related activities. The list is far from exhaustive:

On December 15, the administration announced IRA-based investments of $350 million in programs aimed at improving air quality in targeted communities by reducing methane emissions from low-producing wells. Grant recipients include The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protect ($44,457,220), the Ohio Department of Natural Resources ($19,941,597) and the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy ($5,022,306).

On November 21, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a $2 billion fund dedicated to “projects that deploy clean energy, strengthen climate resilience, and build capacity for communities to tackle environmental and climate justice challenges.” The community challenge grants also are funded by the IRA.  

In October, the administration announced investments totaling $3.46 billion in 58 projects across 44 states to strengthen electric grid resilience and reliability. That infrastructure, the press release says, needed to be strengthened in order to face extreme weather. The funding is supporting projects in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

The Climate Change Choice

Donald Trump’s perspective is diametrically opposite and goes far beyond the antipathy to the Paris Accords.

Commentary by The Brookings Institute released in August, 2020 found that the Trump Administration to that point had taken 74 actions to weaken environmental protection and found that Trump “is particularly focused on rolling back policy to address climate change.”

In January, 2021, The New York Times quantified the rules the Trump Administration either had overturned or was in the process of doing so. The story featured a list with seven categories: Air pollution and emissions (30 rules overturned or in the process of being overturned), drilling and extraction (19), infrastructure and planning (14), animals (16), water pollution (9), toxic substances and safety (10) and others (14).

Not addressing a topic also is telling. Climate change does not appear to be directly addressed at the Trump campaign website. The closest it comes is a statement about energy:

President Trump will unleash the production of domestic energy resources, reduce the soaring price of gasoline, diesel and natural gas, promote energy security for our friends around the world, eliminate the socialist Green New Deal and ensure the United States is never again at the mercy of a foreign supplier of energy.

The silence and expansive view of domestic production suggests very strongly that a second Trump term will look much like the first.