When Donald Trump takes back the White House this month, he is expected to roll back many of President Biden’s climate policies, canceling incentives for clean energy, promoting fossil fuel production and drilling, and undoing pollution controls.
It won’t be the first time a Republican president has undone the environmental legacy of his Democratic predecessor. Forty-four years ago, a strikingly similar story played out when Ronald Reagan replaced Jimmy Carter as commander in chief.
Carter, who died this week at 100, was the first American president to grasp the seriousness of the climate crisis and try to do something about it. He promoted renewable energy, worked to limit pollution and understood the long-term threat posed by global warming.
Reagan pushed the country in precisely the opposite direction. To get a sense of how the next four years might play out, it’s worth looking back on Carter’s environmental legacy, and what survived Reagan’s deregulatory efforts.
Clean energy
In 1979, Carter had 32 solar panels installed on the White House roof. While the panels were crude and inefficient by today’s standards, and powerful enough only to run a water heater, Carter saw what was coming.
“In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy,” he said at the installation ceremony.
Carter also set an ambitious goal that by 2000, America would derive 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources of power.
Reagan had the solar panels removed in 1986, and did nothing to support the growth of renewable power in America. Instead, he went all-in on fossil fuels.
The federal research budget for clean energy programs at the Department of Energy was slashed. A tax break for wind installations was eliminated. And Reagan rolled back fuel-economy standards, paving the way for an era of gas-guzzling cars and trucks.
Regulation
Carter signed more than a dozen major pieces of environmental legislation during his single term in office.
The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 sought to minimize the environmental impacts of coal mining.
The National Energy Act of 1978 included the country’s first incentives for clean energy and measures to promote energy conservation.
The Energy Security Act of 1980 went even further to promote alternative fuel sources, including solar energy and biomass.
And the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, better known as Superfund, created a program to clean up hazardous waste sites and hold those responsible accountable for environmental damage.
Reagan worked to undo many of Carter’s legislative accomplishments.
He slashed support for renewable energy, relaxed regulations for the coal mining industry and was accused of mismanaging the Superfund program. (The program’s director was jailed for lying to Congress.)
The E.P.A.
It was President Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. But it was Carter who began to flex the agency’s muscles.
Reagan’s first budget proposal included a 25 percent cut in funding for the E.P.A. In the first years of his presidency, the agency’s enforcement actions plummeted.
Anne Gorsuch, who led the E.P.A. under Reagan, pushed to weaken the Clean Air Act with proposals to loosen pollution standards for automakers and factories.
And Reagan tried to stop the implementation of stronger controls for pollutants in waterways. In 1987, he vetoed a reauthorization of a strengthened Clean Water Act, but Congress overrode his veto, and the law passed.
Public lands
Carter took several steps to protect American wilderness. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 protected more than 100 million acres in Alaska. And with the National Antiquities Act, Carter created several new national monuments, including the Grand Canyon National Monument in Arizona.
But Reagan viewed public lands as something to be exploited, not protected. His administration opened up federal wilderness to logging, drilling and mining. He cut funding for the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management. And he tried to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, a battle that is still playing out today.
What’s next
Reagan wasn’t able to entirely cancel out Carter’s environmental legacy.
Today, the United States derives roughly 20 percent of its electricity needs from renewable sources. (Though it took more than a decade longer to achieve than Carter hoped.) The E.P.A. is arguably stronger than ever. And numerous government programs support renewable power.
Carter was “far ahead of his time,” said Lindsay Chervinsky, executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library. “His contemporaries might have mocked him,” she said, “but today we remember Carter as a president that laid the foundation for 21st-century environmental policy.”
Biden passed two major laws that promoted clean energy, strengthened pollution controls and protected public lands. And while Trump is likely to reverse many of these policies, important parts of this administration’s environmental agenda are likely to survive.
The planet is warming, the consequences are becoming painfully clear and, as Carter predicted, the world is moving toward a future powered by clean energy. That future may be delayed, but history suggests it won’t be stopped.
Fixing methane leaks
The problem: The oil and gas sector is one of the biggest sources of methane emissions in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency. While methane stays in the atmosphere for a much shorter period than carbon dioxide, because of its molecular structure, it traps substantially more heat than CO2.
Fixing methane leaks from oil and gas production has long been put forth as a way to quickly slow global warming. But the industry has been slow to fix the problem.
The fix: The E.P.A. and the Department of Energy late last month announced recipients for roughly $850 million in funding aimed at helping smaller oil and gas operators and others monitor or lower their methane emissions. The funds are from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
By some measures, cutting methane emissions is easier than curbing other greenhouse gases. Simply stopping unburned fuel from escaping the gas combustion process can cut down on methane, said Dan Zimmerle, director of the Methane Emissions Technology Evaluation Center at Colorado State University, one of the recipients of the federal funding.
“It’s the knob that you can turn,” Zimmerle said.
Some of the available technology for cutting methane emissions is already well-developed and cost-effective, he noted. Plus, cutting methane emissions from oil and gas is easier than reducing emissions in some other sectors like agriculture, Zimmerle said.
The obstacles: Despite this technology being available, methane leaks are common. Research has found that methane emissions are rising, with the booming fossil fuel industry in the U.S. being a big contributor. Researchers at Stanford University earlier this year found that the current path of methane emissions could help send global warming over 3 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the end of this century, which could have serious global consequences.
Regulations governing the fossil fuel industry can vary, as older sites often follow older standards with fewer requirements, according to Zimmerle.
What’s next: While methane emissions are difficult to gauge, human-driven methane emissions are expected to climb as much as 13 percent from 2020 to 2030, according to the Global Methane Pledge, an effort that now includes more than 150 nations.
There’s some evidence that the Biden administration’s efforts to cut down on methane emissions are working. A recent study of the U.S.’s biggest oil field showed that methane emissions in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico fell 26 percent last year, according to The Financial Times. — Allison Prang
More climate news:
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California will force insurers to cover fire-prone areas of the state, even if it means prices will rise, The Washington Post reports.
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Heatmap News explores how climate action skeptics have influenced Chris Wright, a fracking and energy executive who Trump has picked to run the Department of Energy.
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The post To Understand Trump and Biden, Look to Reagan and Carter appeared first on New York Times.
