As US President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump race for the White House, the results of the November 5 election will strongly impact the global response to climate change, as temperatures and weather patterns resulting from human activity keep rising and being more unpredictable, according to NASA.

On July 8, new data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service was released that between July 2023 and June 2024 the temperature was the ‘highest on record’. Compared to the pre-industrial age, temperatures were 1.64°C warmer.

A report like this will be treated differently, depending on who will move into the White House in January, given the stark difference between the two candidates in terms of climate policies – Trump described climate change as “non-existent” while Biden called it “an existential threat”.

The stakes are high, one of the reasons for this is because the US is the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs). In 2023 alone, the American economy emitted more than 4,700Mt GHGs and the demand from America resulted in significant amounts of GHGs being emitted elsewhere.

Most importantly, the US is a key factor in tackling climate change on the international stage. During Barack Obama’s presidency, the US was the driving force behind the 2015 Paris Agreement, under which most major economies, including two other largest emitters, China and India, agreed to cut its GHG emissions to stop temperatures from rising above two degrees.

Trump’s views on climate change policies

In 2020, Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, a move that he had announced three years earlier. It was the most significant of his decisions related to climate.

The former president argued that the Paris Agreement would ‘cost 2.5mn Americans their jobs by 2025.’ In quotes published by ABC News, Trump’s administration believed that reducing greenhouse gases 26%–28% by 2025 would constitute a “massive redistribution of United States’ wealth” and “undermine our economy, hamstring our workers [and] weaken our sovereignty”.

Trump previously called Obama’s water protection regulations “ridiculous” and “disastrous” because they took away farmers’ property rights. This resulted in him removing them, however, he did keep some of the protections for navigable waters.

What Biden fixed

In 2020, Biden defeated Trump in the election and rapidly reversed the decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

Following the Paris Agreement, every five years, each country has to present a National Determined Contribution (NDC), a country’s plan to reduce greenhouse gases. In the 2030 NDC, presented by Biden’s administration in 2021, America aimed to achieve a ’50 to 52% reduction from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas pollution by 2030.’

Additionally, Biden pledged to reach net zero emissions economy-wide by the end of 2050. In 2021, he also decided to revoke permits for the TransCanada Corporation Keystone XL oil pipeline.

The current administration argues that the two main areas of Biden’s NDC connect promoting growth, creating jobs, and achieving social justice with tackling climate change. The incumbent president perceives climate change as an “existential threat” and that responding to this threat will offer ‘an opportunity to support good-paying, union jobs, strengthen America’s working communities, protect public health, and advance environmental justice.’ The second area is supporting American workers, and this is where ‘this target prioritises American workers’ and ‘create[s] millions of good-paying, middle class, union jobs.’

Future scenarios

As we approach the 2024 presidential election, nothing indicates that Trump has changed his views on climate change. The Republican candidate still sees it as a “hoax”.

ABC News summarised that running for the 2024 Republican nomination earlier this year, Trump ‘repeatedly downplayed the dangers of rising sea levels’ and referred to proposed regulations to tackle global warming as “radical”.

If Trump wins this year’s election, America will likely withdraw from the Paris Agreement again. In an interview with Politico, when asked about whether the US would remove America from the Paris framework, Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed this sentiment.

Biden has strongly underlined the importance of tackling climate change. Unlike Republicans, Democrats believe that investing in new technologies will create, not remove, jobs across America, such as making investments to create millions of ‘family-supporting and union jobs in clean energy generation, energy efficiency, clean transportation, advanced manufacturing, and sustainable agriculture.’

If Biden wins, the 2030 NDC plans will continue, meaning that the plan of reducing GHGs 50–52% by 2030 will remain.