Why Trump can’t stop states from fighting climate change
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 tons 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 President Trump can do to stop those market forces from driving down emissions further.
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Accordingly, Trump has set his sights on states during the first 100 days of his administration. He has tried to kill New York City’s congestion pricing, though last week the Department of Justice accidentally filed a document outlining the legal flaws with the administration’s plan. On April 8, he signed an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to identify and halt any state climate laws that she deems illegal, including California’s pioneering cap-and-trade program. That directive, though, is probably illegal itself, because the Constitution guarantees states broad authority to enact their own laws, legal experts told Grist. “This is the world the Trump administration wants your kids to live in,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “California’s efforts to cut harmful pollution won’t be derailed by a glorified press release masquerading as an executive order.”
In a counterintuitive way, the lack of federal climate ambition has made what action has occurred more resilient because states are doing their own things and collaborating with each other. If the country had established a grand governing body years ago — something like an Environmental Protection Agency but focused exclusively on climate change — the Trump administration could easily dismantle it.
“States have been saying since the election that they retain the authority and the ability and the ambition to drive down pollution and keep America on track to meet its goals,” said Casey Katims, executive director of the U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of 24 governors (just one of them a Republican) focused on climate action. “This order is an indication that the president and this administration know that all of that is true.”
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This is not the climate movement’s first tussle with an administration hostile to action. The U.S. Climate Alliance and America Is All In — a coalition of thousands of political, cultural, and business leaders — both formed after Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2017. States also now regularly share information with each other, like the best ways to encourage the construction of energy-efficient buildings and to replace gas furnaces with electric heat pumps. They’re also collaborating to modernize their grids to meet the extra demand that comes with widespread electrification.
“That relationship building and trust has not only allowed us to be truly a coalition, but it’s allowed us to move faster together on our climate action,” said Amanda Hansen, deputy secretary for climate change at California’s Natural Resources Agency. “The coalitions that came together very quickly in response to the first Trump administration are now significantly larger, more capable, and have really solid foundations for true collaboration.”
While California and other states will have to wait and see which climate policies Bondi deems illegal, they’re already fighting on other fronts in court. When the Trump administration froze nearly $3 trillion in federal assistance funds in January, including those provided by the IRA and the bipartisan infrastructure law, 23 attorneys general (including those in Republican-led Vermont and Nevada) sued, and a judge ordered the money released.
Disbursing these sorts of funds isn’t optional — it is required, because Congress passed legislation allocating them. To stop the flow of money, Congress would have to change the laws. “It’s just costing the taxpayers millions of dollars to address these lawsuits for congressionally authorized funds that were critical to addressing the climate crisis,” said Jillian Blanchard, vice president of climate change and environmental justice at Lawyers for Good Government, a coalition of 125,000 attorneys, students, and activists.
Other organizations and nonprofits are joining in the litigation as well. Lawyers for Good Government worked with the Southern Environmental Law Center, for instance, which is suing the administration to release federal funds meant to invest in, among other things, energy-efficient affordable housing. “This administration appears to be just banking on the fact that they don’t need to follow the law until and unless someone sues them,” Blanchard said. “And that’s really an unfortunate state of affairs for the United States of America.”
Even as uncertainty looms, progressive states are doubling down on climate policies. For example, Washington state’s legislature recently passed an update to its clean fuel standard that could double emissions cuts from transportation, the state’s biggest source of carbon emissions. “We really need to continue to lead on this front,” said Leah Missik, the acting director for Washington state at an organization called Climate Solutions. “States have always been the incubators for important climate policy work.” The state’s voters last fall resoundingly rejected an attempt to repeal a landmark law that caps emissions and raises money from polluters to install energy-efficient heat pumps, electrify ferries, and put solar panels on public buildings.
Ultimately, climate action is increasingly popular among voters. A spokesperson for Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois pointed to polling that shows 65 percent of people in the state are worried about climate change and 70 percent support fully transitioning to clean energy by 2050. “Voters are smart,” the spokesperson said, “and the more the Trump administration tries to kill clean energy policies that are giving us cleaner air, good-paying jobs, and lower energy bills, the more pushback you’re going to see, because those policies are popular for a reason.”
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