Climate Policy in the Age of Trump

Breakthrough’s Ted Nordhaus, Alex Trembath, and Jessica Lovering assess the fate of climate policy in the Trump era for Foreign Affairs, and conclude that from a performance standpoint, not much is likely to change. Over the past three decades, international agreements and national commitments have done little to cap and reduce emissions, leaving significant decarbonization challenges ahead. In order to redirect our emissions trajectory, they argue, we’ll need a climate policy reset, one that will build political consensus to properly value our current and future low-carbon assets, including advanced nuclear. While the new administration is not likely to propose a coherent climate policy in this regard, one thing it should do is force climate advocates to rethink their policies and their politics—a reckoning that “might offer a more hopeful and optimistic path for climate advocacy in the years to come.”

Read the full Foreign Affairs article here.