The United States has never really cared much about tackling climate change, at least at the federal level. Up until the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA — which handed out billions of dollars for people to electrify their homes, and pumped billions more into the clean energy economy — neither Congress nor the executive branch advanced truly meaningful climate policy, given the scale of the crisis.
Yet carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. have fallen from 6 billion annually in 2000 to less than 5 billion today. For that the country can largely thank its states and cities, which have embarked on ambitious campaigns to, among other things, electrify transportation, set automobile pollution standards, and incentivize the deployment of renewable energy. At the same time, wind and solar are now cheaper to build than new fossil fuel infrastructure, and there’s little Trump can do to stop those market forces from driving down emissions further.
Accordingly, Trump has set his sights on states during the first 100 days of his administration. He has tr... Read more