Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
States and municipalities are preparing to take the lead on climate action in a second Trump term as they prepare for an administration that is likely to be less climate-focused and at times antagonistic to their efforts.
President-elect Trump has falsely referred to climate change as a “hoax” and has pledged to promote policies that increase fossil fuels, the main driver of global warming emissions, and has named similar favorable figures in the industry, such as former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. (R) and fracking CEO Chris Wright to implement his agenda. He is also likely to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Agreement, an action he took in his first term before President Biden joined.
The change in leadership in Washington will likely leave climate policy largely in the hands of state and city governments that have already taken ambitious steps to combat climate change during both the Biden and the first Trump administrations.
Elijah Hutchinson, executive director of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, told The Hill that his office will likely be able to maintain some continuity in its operations as the White House changes hands. .
“We expect some level of disruption, but … so much of what we do is under local, municipal and state control that many of the focuses of our office can continue,” he said.
The office, created in 2021, focuses on addressing the disproportionate effects of climate change on the city’s low-income and minority residents, as well as developing strategies for rehabilitating its buildings and improving the use of soil to account for flooding and extreme weather. The city has set itself the goal of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050, which it says is in line with the 1.5 degree warming threshold set by the Paris Agreement to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Hutchinson touted the work the city has already done, including becoming the first major U.S. city to require climate budgeting, or incorporating climate impacts into the city’s budgeting process. Cities like Oslo, Mumbai and London have similar requirements.
However, Hutchinson said, “where we might struggle is with some of these discretionary resources, particularly when we’ve been very successful in accessing money from the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) and BIL (Bipartisan Infrastructure Act) worth more than $2 billion in discretionary programs that fund things like transportation, which are connected to climate and environmental justice.”
Hutchinson said the city is working to lock in secure commitments for discretionary federal funds as soon as possible before Trump’s inauguration, “because we know the money is there.”
“This can be especially difficult in some of our coastal resilience work, but … in New York City, we have huge unmet needs in coastal resilience and we need a lot of federal and state participation in these programs,” he added .
At the opposite end of the country, California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) told The Hill that his office expects Trump to try to rescind the federal waiver that allows the state to impose tube emission standards more stringent than those of the federal government. The first Trump administration rescinded the waiver before it was restored under Biden.
The Biden administration on Wednesday approved another California exemption by approving its rule, which aims to phase out new gas car sales in the state by 2035. The American Petroleum Institute (API) almost immediately called to the Trump administration to rescind the action, with Will. Hupman, API’s vice president of downstream policy, said the lobbying group “urges the incoming administration to change course quickly.”
Bonta pointed to the state attorney general’s office’s history of tangles with Trump on environmental issues, saying “the courts remain an important place to resolve disputes. … We went there during Trump 1.0 (i) we sued the Trump administration more than 120 times,” most of which were environmental cases. One of those lawsuits was over the rescission of the waiver, which Bonta said his office would be. willing to sue again if necessary.
“I think this action in the past may be another one we’re going to see in the future” from the Trump White House, he said.
Although the conservative-majority Supreme Court has repeatedly blocked Biden-era energy and environmental policies, this month the court declined to hear a 17-state challenge to California’s emissions exemption.
Bonta became California attorney general in 2021 after Biden appointed his predecessor, Xavier Becerra, as secretary of Health and Human Services. Despite his lack of personal experience with legal battles against the Trump White House, Bonta said the attorney general’s office has “a team that we’ve rejuvenated” and that he “has kept people with institutional memory on the team “.
“When Donald Trump seeks to pursue a fossil fuel agenda and breaks the law, whether it’s by not following the administrative procedure law or by not following the law, we can take him to court,” Bonta added.
