The threat of a Donald Trump presidency is not enough to convince Brian Deese, President Barack Obama’s senior climate adviser, that the ongoing transition of the nation’s energy system from reliance on carbon-heavy fossil fuels to escalating use of clean energy sources can be stopped. “If you look at what utilities are saying, the conversation that they’re having is very different from the political and partisan conversation that happens in the halls of Congress and even sometimes on the campaign trail,” he said during a presentation Tuesday at Columbia University.
Republican presidential nominee Trump has pledged throughout his campaign to overturn several of Obama’s actions on climate change, including carbon emissions standards for new and existing coal-fired power plants and U.S. participation in the international Paris Agreement on climate change.
The Paris Agreement issue has more or less been dealt with at this time. The United States ratified the accord in September, and there are now enough member nations that the agreement will enter into force before the Nov. 8 election. Entry into force launches a four-year period during which no nation that has joined the agreement can pull out.
Still, Trump could still muck up U.S. involvement in the deal. The national commitments included in the agreement are not legally binding, which means Trump could simply ignore the goal of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
Deese said the Paris Agreement’s rapid entry into force exceeded all expectations of participants in the December 2015 negotiations. “Virtually nobody thought that it was possible for the agreement to enter into force this year,” Deese said, though he noted that several world leaders began to work toward the far-fetched goal shortly after the Paris negotiations.
According to Deese, Obama spoke by phone with the leaders of China, India, and Brazil, along with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, about pushing for early entry into force. “[Obama] came away from those conversations convinced that if we could get leadership from the major emitters, what seemed improbable was indeed possible and that entry into force this year … was the kind of somewhat audacious goal that we should be trying to push for.”
The Clean Power Plan, carbon emissions U.S. standards for existing coal-fired power plants, and the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), carbon emissions standards for new-build coal-fired power plants, may be in a more vulnerable position. Both regulations are being challenged in federal court, and Trump could choose not to fight the lawsuits.
Regardless, Deese said, the Clean Power Plan builds on a transition already underway in the electric sector, and that transition will not stop no matter how the lawsuit ends. “I think the good news is that if you look at the underlying trends, increasingly what we are seeing is that the private markets are moving now in the direction of cleaner and lower carbon solutions,” he said.
Trump’s opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged to uphold and expand the climate work of the Obama administration.
Furthermore, Deese said, arguments against taking climate action are quickly falling. The belief that climate change is not real is being abandoned, he said, and arguments that addressing the issue is too costly and will cripple the economy are being disproved.
National carbon emissions have dropped while U.S. GDP has grown, Deese said. “Our success in reducing emissions over the last several years has not been about sacrifice, it has not been about trading off prosperity today for some hoped or foreseen future benefit. It’s been about innovation, it’s been about jobs, and it’s been about contributing to what is the longest streak of global job growth on record which we are living through right now,” he said.
The markets are responding to a number of drivers, including decreasing costs for lower-carbon natural gas and a growing public push for cleaner energy. Now it’s time for the nation’s political system to catch up, Deese said. “As is often the case, our politics is probably going to have to catch up to the substance.”
