| For environmental advocates, Trump’s re-election was something like the return of a nightmare they never thought they’d experience again. “No one in American history has shown more disdain for the environment,” says Kierán Suckling, executive director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “His anti-environment agenda is overwhelmingly unpopular and truly a threat to life on Earth.” Coming on the heels of the hottest year ever recorded, having a man who calls the climate crisis a “giant hoax” in the world’s most powerful office is an ominous sign. Governments are already failing to meet their own targets to cut planet-heating pollution and backtracking by the US, the globe’s second largest emitter, will further gum up progress and winnow away financial aid for developing countries suffering the brunt of heatwaves, floods and other climate-driven calamities. But while the world is still not doing enough to avert dangerous global heating and the impact of climate activism has faltered since the heady days of Greta Thunberg prior to the pandemic, some other things have changed since Trump was last president. Global investment in renewable energy now eclipses that of fossil fuels, electric cars are now the vehicle of choice from China to Norway and, even in the US, record investments are being made in solar, wind, batteries and other clean energy technologies in places where manufacturing was considered moribund. None of this is happening fast enough to head off climate disaster, but it has changed the calculus. More than 80% of clean energy activity is happening in Republican-held districts of the US, bringing hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Trump’s attempts to turn the clock back to an era of untrammelled fossil fuels will be more awkward to achieve this time and is set to encounter resistance even from some in his own party. “This is the first of what will be many attempts to ignore reality and try to stall the world’s unstoppable and irreversible move to a clean energy economy,” former vice-president Al Gore said of Trump’s first executive orders. “But these proclamations are not reflective of our political and economic reality. These efforts to roll back progress – particularly the hugely popular clean energy investments in the Inflation Reduction Act – will be met with opposition from both political parties.” One analysis has even found that if states, cities and businesses in the US step up their climate ambitions – perhaps optimistic given banks are retreating from their green pledges and tech billionaires’ new fealty to Trump – the US could still slash its emissions in half this decade and get to net zero by 2050. As the new US president sets about dismantling environmental rules and calling for “drill baby drill”, the emergence of this greener economy and people willing to fight for it and against polluting industries will face a severe stress test. The direction of travel may not change, despite Trump’s efforts, but the climate emergency was always a timed challenge. Four years may become a long, lost stretch. Read more: | 