Hillary Clinton shares Donald Trump warning

Hillary Clinton has issued a warning about how she believes the environment will be impacted if Donald Trump is successful in his presidential bid this year.

Trump, who defeated Clinton in their White House race back in 2016, is the presumptive Republican 2024 presential nominee. He is expected to face off against incumbent President Joe Biden at the polls in November.

Former Secretary of State Clinton, who has been a frequent critic of Trump over the years, reacted to the possibility of the onetime real estate mogul landing another term by sharing a report on the potential environmental impact it could have.

Taking to X, formerly Twitter, on April 22, she wrote: “What’s at stake for our climate in this November’s elections? Absolutely everything.”

Accompanying the post was a link to an article published on scientific website Carbon Brief, in which it was predicted that Trump returning to power “could add 4 [billion tons] of U.S. emissions by 2030.”

Per the article, which was based on evaluations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the predicted emissions would lead to global climate damages worth more than an estimated $900 billion.

“If Trump secures a second term, the U.S. would also very likely miss its global climate pledge by a wide margin, with emissions only falling to 28% below 2005 levels by 2030,” the report read.

Among the moves Carbon Brief reported could lead to such issues is Trump’s potential to roll back Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which was passed in 2022.

The Inflation Reduction Act’s passage came after opposition from Republicans and some Democrats to enact the sweeping tax, energy and climate legislation. Biden framed the legislation as a historic investment in clean energy that would create new jobs for middle-class Americans left behind in the changing U.S. economy.

The legislation includes more than $300 billion in energy and climate funding aimed at reducing the nation’s carbon emissions by 40 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. It also sets aside $64 billion to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies through 2025 and allows Medicare to negotiate the cost of some prescription drugs.

Additionally, the law established a 15 percent minimum tax rate for large corporations that is projected to generate more than $300 billion in revenue.

As of press time, Clinton’s Trump post has garnered more than 14 million views. Newsweek has contacted representatives of Biden and Clinton via email for comment.

During his time in office, Trump was publicly skeptical of climate change efforts. The Trump administration rolled back nearly 100 environmental rules and regulations. This is something that Biden has since worked to undo.

When Trump assumed office in 2017, climate data was removed from the EPA website and every reference to the words “climate change” was wiped. Trump regularly proposed deep cuts in the EPA’s annual budget but these were resisted in Congress.

During his presidency, Trump reversed all of President Barack Obama‘s climate policies, including the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. He also issued an extensive executive order on “Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth” which eliminated any external treaties imposed on the U.S. which would restrict energy production.

Trump’s order said this was to “promote clean and safe development of [the United States’] vast energy resources, while at the same time avoiding regulatory burdens that unnecessarily encumber energy production, constrain economic growth, and prevent job creation.”

Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement—a legally binding treaty struck in 2015 committing to reduce the impact of climate change—shortly after entering office.

This was ostensibly over concerns over the cost of switching to cleaner energy technologies to address climate change. In a June 2017 White House press statement, Trump said that “compliance with the terms of the Paris Accord and the onerous energy restrictions it has placed on the United States could cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025.”

The Trump Administration said it “took strong action to protect the environment,” in a White House release published in 2020.

“Under the Trump Administration, the U.S. EPA took numerous, substantive actions to clean up the air, increase access to clean drinking water, address legacy pollution and reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Mandy Gunasekara, a former chief of staff at the EPA during the Trump administration, previously told Newsweek.

“We achieved this while cutting red tape and regulatory costs, which proved a boon for the economy. Our focus was on fulfilling EPA’s core mission and helping American communities and businesses grow. I imagine if we get a chance to do this again, we will follow the same, proven course.”

Gunasekara said there were a few actions of note, adding: “We finalized four actions aimed at reducing greenhouse gases, including the first-ever standard for aircraft. We initiated a serious review and improvement to the lead and copper rule for the first time in 30 years. We revamped efforts to improve domestic recycling, setting a 50 percent national recycling rate.”

Under Trump, the EPA deleted the highest number of superfund hazardous waste sites from a national priority list since the 2001 fiscal year, a total of 82 in four years which is equal to what the Obama administration did during eight years in office, she said, and it also released a federal strategy for tackling marine litter.

But some environmentalists have not been swayed and have publicly stated that a second Trump term would see more of the same on climate, if not worse.

“A second term for Trump would truly step the EPA into an alternate universe,” Dan Costa, a former director of the Air, Climate and Energy Research Program at the EPA, told Newsweek in 2022.

“I would expect as in his past term that any impediment to unbridled profit would be obliterated. Addressing climate change is not simply a decision or series of decisions, but one that must be rooted in leadership from the top and the Congress. Congress is obviously split and who knows what’s coming next session depending on the election?”