President Trump has expressed little interest in fighting climate change. One of his key cabinet officials has even sought to evaluate whether humanity benefits from a warming climate, in a bid to undermine environmental rules.
Yet even as he works to accelerate oil and gas production, Mr. Trump’s economic approach may inadvertently reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as consumption slows in response to a global trade war.
Any reprieve for the planet, however, would be brief. Over the longer term, tanking the economy with tit-for-tat tariffs is likely to impede progress, because of how much clean energy deployment depends on overseas supply chains and because voters are less likely to support climate policy when they’re financially stressed.
Carbon emissions, largely a byproduct of going places and making things, have always been tethered to economic growth. Forecasters increasingly anticipate that Mr. Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs could tip the economy into recession as companies and consumers cut spending in the face of higher prices for imported goods.
“If we’re talking about a traditional recession, people fly less, they buy less stuff, there’s less investment in capital goods,” said Alex Heil, a senior economist at the Conference Board, who focuses on energy and climate. “And just a slowdown in economic activity is likely to slow down carbon emissions.”
That is what happened in the last two recessions. Global carbon emissions dipped slightly, before resuming their upward march. (Emissions in the United States continued to decline after 2008 as cheap natural gas displaced coal, and it’s possible that a similar peak is nearing for the rest of the world.)
