More carbon means powerful storms and floods, worse droughts and wildfires lie ahead.

By Keith Schneider, Circle of Blue – January 28, 2025

President Trump blew a lot of smoke at his inauguration. He promised more oil production, less regulation, fewer clean cars, less clean energy. He withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, and opened Alaska to more development. 

Like dry branches dropped in a dark forest, Trump’s inaugural pledges and the executive orders that came shortly thereafter were kindling stoking the bonfire of fossil fuels. 

The president’s allegiance to producing more carbon pollution set off a global chorus of condemnation because it could reverse the downward slope of U.S. climate emissions of the last decade. If emissions head up again, the effect from the world’s second largest producer of climate change gases – behind only China – will be even hotter temperatures and more of Mother Earth’s wrath on every living thing. 

In a world where fresh water is the primary resource at risk from climate change, that means more polar melting to drown coastal cities, more powerful storms to flood rural towns, more dry forests ruined by wildfire catastrophes, deeper droughts to push more cities to day zero, and more crop failures in farm country. 

Trump’s plan to boost fossil fuels goes deeper, though, than his personal distaste for windmills, electric vehicles, the Paris agreement, and other aspects of what he and his supporters view as the woke agenda to slow climate change. Just as significant, judging from what Trump said and what he’s done, is his conviction that America is entering a “thrilling new era” largely based on global mastery of artificial intelligence and computing. 

There’s a reason the tech “broligarchs” in inaugural attendance –Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook — were active and visible. Musk spent a fortune helping to elect the president; the others have curried his favor. Now they are counting on Trump to deliver on two requests: first, deflect attention and turn government regulators away from their beyond-measure wealth, influence, and market-dominating monopolistic business practices; and second, supply the vast amount of electrical power they covet for data centers and other energy-hungry ventures.

The first need – deregulation – is clearly a project Trump is capable of mastering. His laissez-faire nominees now manage the Federal Trade Commission, Justice Department, Commerce Department, and other agencies charged with overseeing corporate behavior.  

The tech barons’ second demand, though, is a problem for the well-being of every American, especially those yet to be born. And that problem lies in the sources of energy the U.S. will develop to deliver adequate supplies of electricity.

Of the 1300 gigawatts of electricity generated in the U.S., solar, wind, and hydroelectric collectively supply more than coal-fired power plants, and have since 2020. Only natural gas is a bigger supplier in the U.S. than renewables. Renewable energy, and to a much smaller extent, the growing number of electric and hybrid electric vehicles, is primarily responsible for lowering those emissions.

Despite this amazing carbon-reducing, environmentally-advanced improvement in American electricity supply, the broligarchs aren’t convinced that clean renewable sources of electricity will be able to meet the 500 more gigawatts of power that utility industry researchers say the U.S. will demand over the next few decades.

Trump and his aides are more than pleased to exploit that uncertainty to advance their vision of a fossil-fueled, carbon-producing future. That’s why their energy plan is really not centered on oil, even though Trump promised to lower gas prices and declared a genuine fake news “energy emergency” to compel more exploration. The U.S. produces more oil than any other nation on Earth; more than it ever has in its history. 

Rather, the Trump plan is principally designed to increase supplies of natural gas, which is much easier and cheaper to tap in the existing hydro-fracked energy fields in New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. The market that offers the most growth potential for natural gas is electricity. And the generating source most vulnerable to being replaced by gas is wind. 

A third of the approaching new demand for electricity – roughly 115 gigawatts of power – is currently planned to be met by wind farms. But those projects are in the earliest and most uncertain “proposed stage” of development, according to the American Public Power Association, an industry trade group. Translation: they’re easy to kill. 

The president leaped at the weakness. He cancelled offshore wind projects, ended wind development on federal land, including a 1,000-megawatt wind project in Idaho, and made it known he was intent on damaging the U.S. wind market. Simultaneously, Trump ordered the end of federal incentives to buy electric vehicles, which increases the market for gasoline and satisfies tech titans by lowering demand in case there are shortages of electricity. Emerging from this jumble of disruption will be natural gas, which is in such abundance that coastal plants and ports are under construction to export it. 

It’s hard to imagine a policy agenda that is more foreboding, more dangerous for the safety of Americans than the one Trump is pursuing. The climate change hazards are self-evident. Hurricanes are growing more powerful, more numerous, and have already drowned Florida’s west coast cities, Houston, Miami, New Orleans, and New York. Terrible floods last year decimated parts of North Carolina and Tennessee. Rising seas regularly inundate the Atlantic coastal cities of Charleston and Norfolk. Wildfires are whipping through Los Angeles. 

The president’s pursuit of fossil energy also is unsound economically, putting America’s economy and well-being in jeopardy. Why? Because it cedes dominance to China in clean energy and clean vehicles, two of the essential industries of the century. 

The U.S. was already well behind in clean technology development, spending half as much on renewable energy, updated power grids, energy storage, and other low-carbon energy sectors as China. China dominates the market for batteries and electric vehicles. It controls over 90 percent of the global market for solar panels. By 2026, solar power alone will surpass nuclear and coal as the largest source of electricity in China, according to Climate Energy Finance, a research group.

Before Trump was elected a second time, clean energy and clean cars were vital and growing industrial sectors in the U.S. labor market with formidable benefits for the climate, water supply, and the economy. Renewable energy jobs numbered 3.5 million and the growth rate was twice as fast as the overall U.S. labor market, said the Department of Energy. More than 17,000 people worked in the electric vehicle manufacturing sector.

The distinguishing feature of the method Trump pursues, admired by tech and fossil energy executives, is the madness it assures for millions of Americans. It’s like Trump has handcuffed the country to the steel leg of a bed frame. It’ll be a feat to drag it to safety.