Trump and Biden are not the same

An analysis of both presidents’ climate policies quantifies the difference.

Only one of these presidential candidates actually answered a question about the climate crisis. Source: Mario Tama/Getty Images

President Joe Biden is facing a growing number of calls to step aside in his race for re-election this week, following a dismal debate performance and lackluster interview that failed to calm fears over his age and ability to win in November. 

It’s a crisis of faith happening at a critical point in the fast-approaching election. But from what I've been seeing and hearing, it seems more a belated expression of angst that’s been brewing inside many American voters for much longer; a nagging apathy that says neither Biden nor former President Donald Trump is right for the job.

When it comes to protecting a livable planet, that feeling is valid and based in fact. According to an analysis published in March by climate news site Carbon Brief, neither a Biden presidency nor Trump presidency would put the U.S. on track to achieving net zero emissions by 2050, the benchmark needed to prevent catastrophic warming of over 1.5 degrees Celsius. In order to put the U.S. on that track, Biden would have to implement significant new climate policy measures in the second term. Trump would have to become a completely different person. 

As alarming as that is, however, it does not mean that Biden and Trump are the same, as I’ve heard some folks in my orbit and on social media claim. On climate change, there is a massive, quantifiable difference—one that would be deathly irresponsible to ignore. 

The difference between Biden and Trump: $900 billion in climate damages

It’s understandable that some climate-concerned voters might be disenchanted with both Biden and Trump. Biden may have spearheaded the passage of the nation’s largest climate legislation ever, the Inflation Reduction Act. But his administration has also presided over record expansions of oil production and liquefied methane gas exports; approved major fossil fuel projects like the Alaska Willow project and the Mountain Valley pipeline; and dropped an investigation into whether Louisiana discriminated against Black communities in Cancer Alley. 

But even with all that, a Trump administration would still add an additional 4 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere by 2030 compared to a Biden administration, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis. 

That additional 4 billion tons could add more than $900 billion in global climate damages compared to Biden, the study’s authors claim.

Source: Carbon Brief analysis of modelling in Bistline et al. (2023) and Rhodium Group (Taking stock 2023).

Carbon Brief’s analysis was based on a study in the journal Science and modeling by the research firm the Rhodium Group that looked at the impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

In the scenario Carbon Brief analyzed—which is neither the best case nor worst case scenario—they assumed that a second-term Trump administration would roll back all of Biden’s current climate policies, including the IRA, as Trump has promised. It also assumed that Biden would not put any new climate policies in place in his second term, but would retain the IRA and other new regulations on oil and gas facilities, vehicles, power plants, appliance efficiency, and more.

The study authors then measured how much more carbon pollution the U.S. would emit without the IRA and Biden’s environmental regulations. Importantly, they found that emissions would decline no matter who is elected; primarily because market forces are driving the transition from fossil fuels to cheaper, cleaner energy. 

So try as he might, Trump can’t stop the energy transition. But he can slow it to a powerful degree. The analysis authors found that the extra 4 billion tons emitted under a Trump administration would offset all of the emissions saved over the past five years by solar power, wind power, nuclear power, electric vehicles, and heat pumps.

To further put that 4 billion tons of carbon into perspective, compared to a Biden administration, a Trump administration could add the carbon equivalent of:

• 933 coal plants

• 9,684 gas plants

• 473 million homes’ energy use for one year

• 864 million gas-powered vehicles driven for one year

• the combined annual emissions of the European Union and Japan

• the combined annual emissions of the 140 lowest-emitting countries”

The additional 4 billion tons of emissions from a Trump administration would also certainly push warming past the catastrophic 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold, study co-author Simon Evans said. 

“The chances of staying below 1.5 degrees are already extremely limited, to put it politely,” said Evans. So if their analysis about a second-term Trump presidency is correct, Evans said, “If you vote for Trump, then you're voting for the end of any hope of 1.5 degrees.”

The extra $900 billion in costs from those emissions also translate to immense human suffering. The amount is an attempt to measure the cost of climate damages to people’s homes, crops, livelihoods, and even the cost of their deaths.

That’s not to say that, under a Biden administration, there would be no climate damages; there certainly would. But a Trump presidency would be more costly than Biden’s, at a time when the climate crisis is already deadly and unaffordable at $38 trillion per year in global damages. (Carbon Brief’s analysis did not estimate how many lives would be lost to climate change under either Biden or Trump—though other experts have estimated that the climate crisis will kill an additional 6 million people per year if left unaddressed.)

I don’t point this out to celebrate Biden; his administration is objectively not doing enough to prevent climate catastrophe. I point it out to illustrate a logical fallacy that often occurs when thinking about climate change. Often, people assume that because things are bad, they can never get any worse. But with climate change, they always can.

And on Monday, Republicans revealed what worse looks like. The GOP published a new, 16-page policy platform that doesn’t mention climate change, air or water pollution, or the environment whatsoever—but it does promise to "DRILL BABY DRILL" in all capital letters. That promise echoes those found in the widely-publicized Project 2025, which is essentially a gift bag for the fossil fuel industry.

So even if Biden is replaced by a different presidential nominee, like Kamala Harris, Trump is still 4 billion tons of pollution worse for the planet. “The analysis doesn't depend on the person,” said Evans via email. “It only depends on the assumption that Biden, or an alternative Democrat, would fully implement the climate policies listed in our article.”

Evans said that Carbon Brief is “strictly policy neutral” and acknowledged that any Democratic president would need to address the “policy gap” between the administration's climate ambitions and its actual policies. But even with that gap, “It's pretty hard to look at the analysis that we did and imagine that a vote for anyone other than Biden is going to be a good thing for climate change.”

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Further reading:

• How 'Pro-Climate Voters' Could Sway the 2024 Election. Newsweek, July 2024.

The U.C. researchers found that the importance a voter placed on climate change was one of the strongest predictors of their choice of a candidate, especially among independents, and those voters broke heavily—about 77 percent—for Joe Biden. There were many issues on voters' minds in 2020, of course, but the researchers found that, in a tight race, the climate-minded voters made a difference.

• Republican platform heavy on energy, silent on climate. E&E News, July 2024.

The Republican Party aims to make the United States “Energy Dominant,” slash regulations and streamline federal permitting if former President Donald Trump is reelected. The GOP’s platform committee approved the “Make America Great Again!” document Monday. 

…The GOP platform makes no mention of climate change, greenhouse gases, the environment, pollution, clean air or clean water. It makes a brief mention of conservation in a section on restoring “American Beauty.”

• Biden vs. Trump on Climate Policy. The New York Times, June 2024.

This is a very big year for elections around the world, but no election has more potential to affect the planet’s warming climate than the rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

• UK’s Election Is a Rare Win Against Anti-Climate Campaigns. Bloomberg, July 2024.

By contrast, Keir Starmer’s Labour has a manifesto that puts climate and clean energy front and center, and in Ed Miliband, an energy secretary with many years’ experience in climate diplomacy. While the UK has long been ahead of the curve in climate progress — it has decarbonized faster than any other G7 country — the incumbent Conservative Party has spent the past year downgrading its once-lofty ambitions.

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