Now that Trump has been re-elected, the goal of preventing global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is dead, nine climate scientists and policy experts told me this week.

“There’s virtually no hope” for limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University. “Certainly if there was a smidgeon of hope, yesterday afternoon that was gone.”

1.5 degrees is generally communicated the critical threshold past which the planet will experience significantly more extreme climate impacts like raging wildfires, droughts, deadly heat, mass coral reef die-offs, sea level rise, and more. However, scientists note that it's just an estimate; the tipping points could be more or less than 1.5 degrees.

Either way, Trump’s re-election can be seen as “the final nail in the coffin” for the 1.5 degree goal, said Rachel Cleetus, a policy director and economist at the Union for Concerned Scientists.

But that doesn’t mean the fight to preserve a livable climate is over, according to every scientist and policy expert I spoke to post-election. In fact, each one affirmed that every fraction of a degree past 1.5 makes climate disasters more damaging, especially for the most vulnerable countries and communities.   

Frontline communities “have continually had to fight for justice, regardless of whatever presidential administration is in power,” said Michael Méndez, an assistant professor of environmental policy at the University of California, Irvine. “We really rely on organizing communities at the local, regional, and state level to have climate action that is achievable."

"Every fraction of a degree matters,” Cleetus said. “Globally, we have to do everything we can.”

The existential threat of Trump’s second term

It’s important to note that even before Trump’s re-election, the 1.5 degree Celsius target was hanging by a thread. According to a United Nations emissions report published last month, the majority of countries are cutting emissions far too slowly to stabilize warming at safe levels. And 2024 is likely to be the hottest year in the history of human civilization, surpassing 1.5 Celsius. 

Indeed, most of the people I spoke with were skeptical that any president, including Kamala Harris, could have put the U.S. back on track to meet its climate goals. 

But all nine experts are deeply concerned that Trump, who falsely calls climate change a “hoax,” will make planetary heating far worse than it would have overwise been. Just how much worse depends “on the extent to which Trump unravels Biden's climate legacy,” said Simon Evans, deputy editor of Carbon Brief and co-author of a study on how much Trump’s presidency could impact emissions. 

Evans estimated that a Trump administration could add 4 billion tons of carbon emissions to the atmosphere by the end of the decade, the equivalent of $900 billion in global climate damages. That analysis—which is based on neither the best nor worst case scenario—assumes that Trump will roll back all of Biden’s climate policies, including the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

If Trump follows through on his other campaign promises, he could gut environmental agencies, increase fossil fuels, block renewables, and roll back scores of environmental regulations. Then there’s the proposals found in Project 2025, the unofficial blueprint for Trump’s second term published by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Project 2025 calls for more extreme measures like the privatization of the National Weather Service, eliminating environmental justice programs, defunding renewable energy, and erasing even the mention of “climate change”.

The ripple effects of Trump’s election will also likely be felt internationally. Trump will almost certainly pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement again, and may even withdraw the U.S. from all climate diplomacy efforts. That would be a hefty blow to global climate goals, especially since the U.S. is one of the biggest polluters in the world.

But even with all this, it’s still possible the world can limit the temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius, Dessler told me. It all depends on the actions of state governments, local governments, other countries, and regular people.

“I still think 2 degrees is reasonable,” he said. “Because again, whatever the U.S. does, the rest of the world is moving on.”

2C is still “reasonable”

Because the U.S. is the world’s largest historical climate polluter, its cooperation in reducing emissions is critical to preserving a livable planet in the long term. But the U.S. may not be that necessary over the next four years, experts told me—if other countries are able to fill in the gaps.

Large emitters like China, the European Union, India, and Brazil need to drastically reduce emissions to prevent dangerous levels of warming. “I think inevitably, leadership and contributions will need to come from the rest of the world,” said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

China in particular could step into the gap. China’s massive investment in clean technology already threatens to leave the U.S. behind, a gap that could widen over the next four years. The country has also rapidly electrified and expanded renewable energy and storage. Last year, China’s solar and wind capacity reached a record 1,200 gigawatts—as much power as 600 Hoover Dams.

While the rest of the world may carry on the momentum, the U.S. still plays a large role in moving other countries towards more ambitious climate targets. “We have seen that in the past that U.S. diplomatic engagement under a climate-friendly administration has made a difference in China’s level of ambition,” said Shuo. “And now with the Trump administration, a bilateral climate agreement between Washington and Beijing will be shelved.”

The balance of power will be tested next week at the United Nations annual climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. During negotiations, Biden administration officials will make new pledges—pledges that Trump is unlikely to honor. “I am still confident about the near-term,” said Shuo. “But I am very worried about the long term.”

There is still a possibility for effective action in the U.S., though. For example: Trump may not be able to dismantle some of Biden’s landmark renewable energy investments—if he receives significant enough pressure to back off. The IRA is popular among Republican lawmakers for bringing more money into their districts via clean energy tax credits. 

And states and local climate laws continue to have power even without federal safeguards—for example, Washington voted this week to preserve a state law that generates billions to fight climate change.

Renewable energy will also likely continue to replace more expensive coal power, as it did during the first Trump administration. “At some point the US will realize that fossil fuels are just not competitive,” Dessler said. “Staying on fossil fuels is not the way to run a competitive economy. It just costs too much."

Even with the fallout of Trump’s anti-climate policies—policies that multiple experts told me amount to climate injustice—the climate community is strapping in for a years-long fight.

“It’s hard to know what the future is going to hold, but those who work on this issue are in it for the long term,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute. “We’ve already been through this once.”

“We have a window—not a big window—of time,” said Gregory Jenkins, a climate scientist and professor at Penn State University. “And climate change is one of those problems where you have to work on it now.”

Many thanks to Mijin Cha and Daniel Swain for sharing their knowledge and expertise with me for this story.

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In our next edition, we’ll dive deeper into the climate activists springing into action, and what they say we can do to help. Make sure you’re subscribed to read it.

Further reading:

• Climate Initiatives Fare Well Across the Country Despite National Political Climate. Inside Climate News, November 7, 2024.

  At least five of six ballot measures related to climate change resulted in what most environmentalists consider wins. But state legislative races across the country that could impact climate policy had more uneven results.

• What Trump’s Victory Means for Climate Change. The New York Times, November 6, 2024.

  Laurence Tubiana, France’s former climate ambassador and one of the architects of the Paris agreement, insisted that the Paris accord “is stronger than any single country’s policies.” …There is economic momentum behind renewable power, she said, and by spurning it, the United States would risk forfeiting the future.

• Trump donor fined for pollution leads a fight to end methane emission penalties. The Guardian, November 4, 2024.

  The Hildebrands have donated more than $3m, almost all to Republicans, in this election cycle amid a record glut of oil and gas industry contributions to Trump. Methane regulations are of particular interest to Hildebrand – this month, Hilcorp agreed to pay a $9.4m civil penalty for violations in its emission of methane, among other pollutants, from its New Mexico operations.

• The Ghosts of John Tanton. Propublica, October 2024.

  This fall, the great replacement theory and the immigration crisis at the border have vaulted to the top of many voters’ concerns. While violence and persecution and economic opportunity remain the primary drivers pushing migrants into the U.S., the evidence increasingly also points to climate change as a growing factor. Yet immigration is still largely seen as separate from the environmental stresses contributing to it, and scrutiny of the far right has largely missed its intertwining with the climate crisis.

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