It’s far from certain that Republicans will control all levels of government in 2025, but party leaders are optimistic. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) told The Washington Post on Tuesday that recent events “are clearly going to have a big impact on lower-ranking candidates.” The prospect has unsettled some leading liberal climate groups and bolstered the confidence of Trump supporters, some of whom continue to reject the scientific consensus that a warming climate poses great risks.
“It’s complete insanity that climate change is the greatest threat to humanity,” said William Perry Pendley, who served as acting administrator of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management during the Trump administration. “President Biden’s solution is, ‘Let’s spend a ton of money to solve a problem that doesn’t exist and change our lifestyles.’ That’s definitely not a Republican position.”
Republicans already have a playbook for what they’ll do if they take full power in Washington: bills that have passed the House in recent years but then died because of Senate opposition or Biden’s veto, including bills that would allow more air pollution from diesel trucks, strip protections for endangered species and open up federal lands to oil drilling.
“A Republican triple crown would be disastrous for the climate and for democracy. … I’m deeply concerned,” said Al-Shiney Adjei, executive director of the youth-led climate group Sunrise Movement, which on Friday called on Biden to forgo reelection and “pass the baton” to a new Democratic candidate.
“We believe it is critical to President Biden’s record on climate change that we do everything we can to win this election, but at this point that doesn’t look like we’ll be able to do that,” she added.
Another potential strategy for Republicans is In Project 2025, a comprehensive blueprint for the next conservative government written by right-wing think tanks and former Trump administration officials, Pendley wrote the chapter on the Interior Department. It recommends increasing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic wilderness, drastically reducing the fees fossil fuel companies pay to drill on public lands, and providing legal protections to energy companies that unintentionally kill birds.
More broadly, Project 2025 proposes eliminating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which predicts weather and tracks climate change, describing it as “one of the main drivers of the climate alarmism industry.” The plan also supports the closure of an Energy Department office with roughly $400 billion in lending authority to support emerging clean energy technologies. It would also cut the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice, which aims to address pollution that disproportionately harms poor and minority communities.
“Project 2025 is really a gift to the fossil fuel industry,” said Patrick Drupp, director of climate policy at the Sierra Club. “If that scenario plays out, it would reverse all of the progress we’ve made.”
Trump said on his platform Truth Social this month that he “knows nothing about Project 2025,” but many of the plan’s architects have worked in the Trump administration or could hold key positions if Trump wins the November election. Trump has also praised the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that helped develop the plan.
Diana Furchtgott Ross, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate and Environment, said the GOP’s split-brain power could breathe new life into a Republican energy bill that passed the House last year but died in the Democratic-controlled Senate. The bill, called HR1, would significantly increase U.S. oil, gas and coal production and ease permitting restrictions that slow pipelines, refineries and other fossil fuel projects.
“I encourage everyone to look at HR1 as a guide to what a Republican Congress might do,” Furchtgott-Roth said.
As for Project 2025, she said, “This was conceived long before President Trump became the Republican nominee, and it was intended as an idea for all Republican and Democratic candidates — people all over the world.”
Pursuing green energy
One of Project 2025’s most controversial proposals is a recommendation to repeal Biden’s signature 2022 climate change law, the Fight Inflation Act, which pumps billions of dollars into promoting green technologies like wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles, with most of the new investment concentrated in Republican-led states and districts.
To completely eliminate these green tech tax credits, Trump would need Republicans to pass new legislation, but even without Congress, he could direct the Treasury Department to significantly limit which companies can claim the credits.
Subsidies for electric vehicles will likely be a major target. Trump has repeatedly called them useless, and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), introduced legislation last year to eliminate electric vehicle subsidies and replace them with incentives for American-made cars that run on gasoline or diesel.
But it’s unclear whether Silicon Valley tech titans can soften Trump’s stance on EVs. Vance has ties to tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who invested in a startup that designed an electric sports car, while Tesla CEO Elon Musk has backed Trump and plans to direct about $45 million a month to a pro-Trump super PAC, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“Musk may speak out, but at the end of the day, it’s hard to imagine Trump and his administration changing their stance on this,” said a former Trump administration energy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly.
Alex Hergott, a former Trump administration official, said many green energy projects still received federal permits under Trump’s administration and that market forces would continue to drive costs down in Trump’s second term.
“You can bet a second Trump administration will pick up where they left off, whether that’s on traditional energy, oil and gas pipelines, or accelerating the transition to market-driven renewable energy,” said Hergott, who served as executive director of the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council under Trump and now heads the nonprofit Permitting Institute.
How these and other decisions It will affect carbon emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere, the main cause of global warming. But a recent analysis by Carbon Brief, a UK-based climate policy and science publication, found that a Trump victory in November could result in an additional 4 billion tonnes of carbon emissions by 2030 – equivalent to the combined annual emissions of the European Union and Japan.
“A Republican sweep in November’s election would allow Trump to avoid Congressional obstruction of his efforts to repeal all of Biden’s climate gains,” Simon Evans, deputy editor and senior policy editor at Carbon Brief, said in an email. “Under those circumstances, Trump could increase U.S. carbon emissions by an additional 4 billion tonnes by 2030 as we project, and potentially even more.”
A platform for climate silence
At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday, the party formally adopted a platform that makes no mention of climate change, instead declaring that America must “Drill, Drill, Drill” and calling oil and gas “liquid gold beneath our feet.”
By contrast, the Democratic Party’s draft platform mentions the words “climate” and “clean energy” 141 times, according to an analysis by the environmental group Evergreen Action, including a seven-page chapter on solutions to climate change.
Some Republicans who have been pushing their party to embrace climate change have criticized the party platform for ignoring the issue.
“I would have liked to see at least a mention of the Republican tradition of environmental protection and dialogue,” said Chris Bernard, president of American Environmental Union Action, a group of junior Republican lawmakers who support climate action.
Bernard noted that polls consistently show climate change is a top concern among younger Republican voters, and he said Republicans ignore the issue at their own peril.
“Our message to Republicans is, you can’t just say, ‘Dig, dig, dig,'” he said.
Some Republican National Convention attendees on their way to the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee encountered a shocking sight: two oil executives slumped over a table in their office, their heads buried in a huge pile of sand.
The executives were actors in a performance art piece commissioned by Climate Power, a liberal strategic communications firm, which said the scene illustrated continued Republican denial of climate change at the behest of the oil industry.
“This is just one more way we communicate the importance of climate issues in this election,” said Alex Witt, a senior adviser to the company.
