Policy & Economicsby Michael Chase
Americas
Feb 4th 20257 minsOn January 20, 2025, climate change denier Donald Trump began his second term as President of the United States. With a history of unfriendly environmental policies in his first term, what are we likely to see over the next four years?—During this first presidential term (2016-2020), Donald Trump, a climate change denier, rolled back over 100 environmental regulations. What follows are just some of the most significant.The Clean Power Plan, originally announced in 2015, was the first ever proposed nation-wide standard to reduce carbon emissions and air pollution from power plants. In 2019, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under President Trump proposed a replacement, the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule. However, this rule was struck down by a District of Columbia circuit court as Joe Biden took office in 2021, due to its arbitrary method of calculating and reporting power plant emissions. Although the ACE rule was never enacted fully, its replacement of the Clean Power Plan significantly delayed the process of regulating carbon emissions in America.The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is a foundational piece of environmental policy in the US. As the implementing tool for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the ESA protects species threatened with extinction in America and provides funding for threatened species internationally. In 2019, the Trump administration issued three key strikes against the effectiveness of this act: No automatic protections for “Vulnerable” species. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), vulnerable species are considered to be threatened with extinction. Removing automatic protections to these species granted under the ESA required government authorities to review each species case, delaying the protections these species need to avoid extinction.
Changing the language around how long-term impacts like climate change can be considered. Weaker definitions of “foreseeable future” in the act’s writing could allow for regulators to ignore contributions of proposed projects to climate change and how the species in question may be impacted by its effects.
Before the implemented changes, ESA reviews were solely scientific reviews with no consideration of economic impacts allowed. The Trump administration rule changed things, allowing regulators to conduct economic assessments when deciding whether a species warrants protection, effectively allowing for economics to influence a process meant to be purely based on scientific evidence.
Considered to be one of the first and most influential pieces of modern environmental policy, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has been assuring accountability for the federal government’s impact for over 50 years. During Trump’s first term, NEPA was “slimmed down” significantly. Under his imposed