Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman
The fight against climate change has taken a body blow with the election of Donald J. Trump, who calls global warming a “scam” and has promised to erase federal efforts to reduce the pollution that is heating the planet.
Mr. Trump told a jubilant crowd Wednesday that the United States, which signed a global agreement last year to transition away from fossil fuels, will instead amp up oil production even beyond current record levels. “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world,” said the president-elect, who won with substantial financial support from the oil and gas industry. “More than Saudi Arabia. We have more than Russia.”
But Mr. Trump’s zeal to repeal the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate law that is pouring more than $390 billion into electric vehicles, batteries and other clean energy technology, will quickly face a political test.
Roughly 80 percent of the money spent so far has flowed to Republican congressional districts, where lawmakers and business leaders want to protect that investment and the jobs they bring.
And voters in some states approved policies to fight climate change, setting up tension between states that want to accelerate climate action and an incoming federal administration that intends to slow it down.
In Washington State, voters upheld an ambitious new law to force polluters to cap their fossil fuel emissions. In California, voters backed a ballot initiative to create a $10 billion “climate bond” for climate and environmental projects.
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