How the Trump administration’s climate math doesn’t add up

When President Donald Trump talks about climate change, he often recycles a well-known and flimsy argument: Doing anything about it would be a financial disaster. After withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, he said it was costing the United States “trillions of dollars that other countries were not paying.” He also said that President Joe Biden’s plan to boost electric vehicles threatened the auto industry with “economic destruction” (before Trump “saved” the industry by knocking it out, of course). Trump has tried to scare other countries into following suit, telling world leaders last year: “If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.” »

Considering the Trump administration’s rationale for abandoning environmental protections, it always comes down to money. Officials justify these measures with estimates that almost always avoid or minimize the staggering costs of letting climate change continue unchecked, even if extreme weather highlights the risk. A record spring heatwave ravaged the western United States in late March, worsening wildfire forecasts and threatening the snowpack, crucial to the region’s water supply. The costs are already being felt: A Brookings Institution analysis in September found that the effects of climate change, from rising insurance rates to health threats from wildfire smoke, cost the average American household between $219 and $571 a year, depending on how much severe weather you attribute directly to climate change. For some households, costs exceeded $1,000 per year.

Clearly, taking steps to prevent such disasters doesn’t harm the economy as a whole, said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School, but it does harm some industries, including oil companies. For decades, the fossil fuel industry has argued that taking action on climate change is too expensive. “There’s this dominant narrative, and I guess what I would say is that’s not by accident,” Wagner said. In the early 1990s, the American Petroleum Institute began commissioning economists to conduct research aimed at curbing the greenhouse gas appear prohibitively expensive. An industry-funded study in 1991 calculated that imposing a carbon tax of $200 per ton would reduce the U.S. economy by 1.7 percent by 2020. It ignored the cost of inaction on climate change.

The tradition continues today through the Trump administration’s cost-benefit calculations for repealing environmental regulations. For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency has considered the health benefits of reducing air pollution — such as avoiding asthma attacks and premature deaths — when it conducted a cost-benefit analysis to approve clean air rules. That changed in recent months, when the Trump administration’s EPA revamped the practice so that it now effectively treats the value of saving human lives as $0. He also rejected the “social cost of carbon,” a measure that estimates the economic damage caused by floods, droughts and other effects of global warming, which the Biden administration had set at $190 per ton. Last June, an Associated Press investigation found that Trump’s EPA consistently emphasized the costs of pollution rules while omitting their benefits — even though for 17 of the 20 rules reviewed by the AP, the benefits exceeded the costs, sometimes by a lot.

When the agency repealed its fuel efficiency standards for vehicles in February, along with its own ability to regulate climate change, it promised that the new fuel standards would save Americans $1.3 trillion in auto payments by 2055. But a table buried in the EPA’s regulatory impact analysis found that fuel purchases, vehicle repairs, insurance and other costs would total $1.5 trillion over that same period, surpassing any savings resulting from repeal. Another problem became evident after the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran pushed the average price of gasoline in the United States above $4 per gallon: The administration’s savings estimate had assumed that gasoline prices would remain around $3 per gallon for the next 30 years.

Even if the Trump administration’s projections ignore it, protecting the environment can boost the economy. The Clean Air Act, passed in 1970, was not only successful in reducing pollution, but also contributed to economic growth and productivity. Research showed that U.S. gross domestic product was 1.5 percent higher in 2010 than it would have been without the legislation because exposing children to less air pollution made workers more productive later.

And if buying clean technology costs you money, well, it also stimulates the economy. “If the government forces you to cut off your gas line and install an induction stove and a heat pump, OK, you might hate it because you’ll be forced to pay for it, but someone will benefit from it,” Wagner said. “The economy benefits.” He spent $100,000 renovating his 200-year-old, 750-square-foot loft in Manhattan, installing energy-saving appliances — including a heat pump, an induction stove and a more efficient refrigerator — switching to LED bulbs and improving insulation, among other measures. “So we spent a lot of money,” Wagner said. “That added $100,000 to the economy.” Ultimately, it should also save his family money: The changes have reduced their utility bill to about $100 a month, from a maximum of $450, although it may take decades to recoup the initial costs.

Of course, it’s one thing for resource-rich countries like the United States to invest in technologies to reduce emissions and prepare for the impacts of climate change. It’s another thing to do so for cash-strapped countries around the world facing historically high debt levels. But a recent study examined decades of data from 172 countries and found there was “no inherent trade-off” between adapting to climate change and maintaining stable public finances. “There are ways to invest in better preparedness for climate change that not only do not endanger fiscal stability, but in the long run can actually contribute to it,” said Jorge M. Uribe, study author and professor of economics and business at the University Oberta de Catalunya in Spain. The study, published in the European Journal of Political Economy, reveals that measures to improve housing, protection and comfort of people can improve public finances.

Uribe hopes his research can counter the entrenched idea that there is no middle ground between protecting people from climate change and protecting the economy. The frame is so persistent that it often goes unnoticed. For decades, Pew Research has asked people to choose which of these two statements they agree with: “Stricter environmental laws and regulations cost too many jobs and hurt the economy” or “Stricter environmental laws and regulations are worth it.”

Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, says he has always hated this question. “It’s a forced trade-off, when we know that environmental protection often has positive economic benefits, but the wording of this question forces people to choose one or the other,” Leiserowitz said. Surveys from the Yale program have found that most American voters believe that protecting the environment is actually a priority. GOOD for the economy, with 59 percent saying it improves economic growth and creates new jobs. Only a small minority, 18 percent, believe this harms growth and jobs.

“Look, we have to make tough choices, right? There are,” Wagner said. “At the same time, I think it’s very clear that when most people say there are trade-offs – when most people say it’s climate versus the economy – they’re wrong.”