President-elect Donald Trump has put forth a slate of Cupboard nominees that displays a transparent dedication to fossil fuels and upending the nation’s efforts to deal with local weather change.
The eclectic group consists of TV personalities, trade insiders, and local weather skeptics. If confirmed, they’re anticipated to advertise fossil fuels, environmental deregulation, and hostility towards local weather science. They may also possible stymie the enlargement of renewable vitality and the adoption of climate-friendly applied sciences.
In fact, the clear vitality transition has constructed up some momentum that even the Trump administration can’t cease. State and native governments are making ready to take up the mantle as properly. However Trump clearly intends to make use of the total weight of federal authority to reverse the local weather initiatives of the Biden administration and sluggish or stall additional efforts to mitigate the disaster. Such efforts would add billions of tons of greenhouse gases to the ambiance.
Grist has unpacked the background of the Trump Cupboard nominees who may have an particularly important influence on federal local weather coverage, the general public, and, finally, the planet.
Division of Vitality
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The vitality secretary performs a significant position in shaping the nation’s vitality coverage and, due to this fact, its response to local weather change. The nominee, Chris Wright, would handle a sweeping portfolio, giving him oversight of all the things from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to federal analysis into vitality applied sciences. His division additionally could be charged with setting home-appliance effectivity requirements for hundreds of thousands of Individuals.
Wright has deep roots within the fossil gas trade. He leads the world’s largest fracking firm and has in depth expertise with shale gasoline extraction. In a video posted to LinkedIn, he stated, “There is no such thing as a local weather disaster, and we’re not within the midst of an vitality transition, both.” He concedes that local weather change is “an actual difficulty,” however calls its impacts “clearly overwhelmed by the advantages of accelerating consumption” of oil and gasoline.
Whereas crucial of wind, photo voltaic, and a transition to cleaner vitality usually, Wright has proven help for geothermal vitality, nuclear energy, and carbon sequestration, and the Vitality Division could bolster its help for these areas below his watch. However he’s additionally poised to incentivize fossil gas manufacturing by pushing for additional deregulation of the sector, and to do little to advance an “vitality transition,” a time period he calls “misleading.”
— Tik Root
Environmental Safety Company
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The appointment of Lee Zeldin to steer the Environmental Safety Company has profound implications for fossil gas manufacturing, the clear vitality transition, and the nation’s capability to mitigate the impacts of a warming world. Past setting emissions requirements and implementing environmental laws, Zeldin would determine how a lot of the company’s $12 billion finances to spend on local weather mitigation and adaptation, industrial oversight, and inexperienced vitality growth.
Throughout his eight years in Congress, Zeldin commonly voted in opposition to progressive local weather and atmosphere insurance policies — together with the Inflation Discount Act, which he stated “sucks” — incomes him a rating of simply 14 p.c from the League of Conservation Voters. Zeldin is a chair on the conservative America First Coverage Institute, which has known as the Paris Settlement “lopsided” and endorsed opening the Alaska Nationwide Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
He plans to shortly roll again laws to advance Trump’s financial agenda. Amongst his possible targets are Biden-era initiatives loathed by fossil gas firms, together with air monitoring round refineries and tighter air pollution limits. Zeldin has waved on the significance of unpolluted air and water, however supplied no indication of how the EPA will guarantee these issues alongside a smaller finances and diminished guidelines — an indication of robust occasions forward for communities preventing for environmental justice.
— Lylla Younes
Division of the Inside
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Till his nomination, Doug Burgum was finest recognized for promoting a billion-dollar software program firm earlier than changing into North Dakota’s governor in 2016 and launching a failed bid for president final 12 months. As Inside secretary, Burgum would oversee federal oil and gasoline leases and play a key position in fulfilling Trump’s promise to open extra lands and waters to drilling. He additionally could be accountable for nationwide parks and monuments, federal wildlife refuges, and insurance policies affecting Indigenous peoples. Additionally inside his purview: presiding over a brand new Nationwide Vitality Council that, in accordance with Trump, will “oversee the trail to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE.”
Burgum has acknowledged the truth of local weather change and has backed some Biden administration inexperienced vitality subsidies that Trump opposes. He’s even known as for making North Dakota carbon impartial by 2030 and has made a concerted effort to enhance tribal relations.
That stated, Burgum helps the present route for the Dakota Entry Pipeline that’s opposed by the Standing Rock Sioux, and his shut friendship with an oil and gasoline trade titan Harold Hamm and main monetary investments within the trade fear environmentalists, who count on the Trump administration to aggressively drill, even on the expense of sacred lands and the way forward for the planet.
— Anita Hofschneider
Division of Agriculture
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The U.S. agriculture secretary is an understated however influential place that shapes the way forward for a meals system that’s contributing to, and reeling from, local weather change.
If confirmed, Brooke Rollins, a lawyer who grew up on a farm, would lead an company that’s the spine of meals safety and security, a necessary supplier of catastrophe help and security internet packages, and a driver of rural growth. The USDA additionally helps tackle local weather change via land conservation, agricultural analysis, forest administration, and its promotion of sustainable farming.
Rollins at the moment leads the America First Coverage Institute, a conservative assume tank. She holds a level in agricultural growth, however has restricted working expertise in meals or agriculture. A longtime Trump ally who served in a number of roles in his first administration, together with a stint as appearing head of the Home Coverage Council, there’s no query whether or not she’s going to advance Trump’s agenda.
That agenda is prone to embody sweeping tariffs, which in Trump’s first time period led to commerce wars that decreased farmer earnings so considerably the federal authorities needed to bail out farmers with large subsidies. If she’s confirmed as agriculture secretary, Rollins could be concerned in renegotiating key commerce offers. Rollins can be possible to assist advance Trump’s objectives to decontrol the agriculture trade, curb food-assistance packages, and roll again sustainable ag funding and analysis.
— Ayurella Horn-Muller
Division of Transportation
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Transportation accounts for practically one-third of the nation’s greenhouse gasoline emissions, giving the company Sean Duffy could lead a broad local weather mandate. As secretary of the division, the previous lawmaker would oversee the allocation of transportation infrastructure and mass transit funding. He additionally would help the event of different fuels and any development of the EV transition that may proceed below Trump.
The one-time star of MTV’s The Actual World spent practically 9 years in Congress, the place he served on the Home Monetary Companies Committee, however his most up-to-date expertise is as a Fox Information character.
It stays unclear how he’ll strategy key points like infrastructure, which tends to be comparatively bipartisan, however he has known as the Biden administration’s help of electrical automobiles “the dumbest coverage.” That doesn’t bode properly for the destiny of Biden’s plan to roll out 500,000 public EV chargers by 2030.
Duffy received’t be capable to change tailpipe emissions requirements (that’s the EPA), however he can possible hamper the Nationwide Electrical Car Infrastructure program and restrict EV analysis. It additionally stays to be seen how he’ll deal with maritime and aviation emissions, together with growing extra sustainable jet fuels.
— Tik Root
Division of Well being and Human Companies
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The nation’s prime medical science establishments could quickly be led by a conspiracy theorist.
The Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, the Nationwide Institutes of Well being, and the opposite companies inside the division that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hopes to steer do greater than safeguard public well being. They’re key to understanding how local weather change drives infectious illness.
At the same time as that work grows extra important, Kennedy needs to reorient the division to eradicate what he calls “company corruption.” He believes, amongst different issues, that vaccines trigger autism, Wi-Fi alerts are carcinogenic, and antidepressants contribute to high school shootings. Kennedy would shift analysis away from infectious illnesses and towards continual and genetic situations. That’s dangerous, since local weather change is fostering the unfold of Lyme and different illnesses carried by ticks, mosquitoes, micro organism, and fungi. The final time the CDC determined to veer away from such work, it was humbled by the AIDS epidemic.
It’s unclear how a lot Kennedy might accomplish, as a result of lots of his objectives require congressional approval or are past the division’s purview. However it’s clear that, if he’s confirmed, seismic adjustments are coming to how the federal government research and ensures public well being.
— Zoya Teirstein
Division of Housing and City Growth
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Scott Turner has at varied factors been an NFL cornerback, Texas state legislator, Baptist pastor, and motivational speaker. Little in his resume has a lot to do with housing, besides a stint in the course of the first Trump administration main a White Home council accountable for “alternative zones,” or tax breaks designed to encourage funding in low-income city neighborhoods. The trouble benefited rich builders as an alternative.
If confirmed, Turner will management an underappreciated instrument of American local weather coverage: The Division of Housing and City Growth enforces truthful housing legal guidelines and funds public housing. The nation’s large housing scarcity makes constructing houses — notably reasonably priced ones and multifamily residences in cities — a local weather difficulty, as a result of city density results in much less driving and decrease emissions.
Challenge 2025’s chapter on housing coverage, written by Ben Carson, Trump’s first housing secretary, supplies clues to how Turner may strategy the job. It requires repealing all of HUD’s local weather change initiatives, in addition to slicing funds for constructing reasonably priced housing. It proposes revising zoning and constructing laws to speed up building — however, in contrast to many reform efforts, it apparently doesn’t help “upzoning,” equivalent to permitting multifamily housing in areas beforehand zoned for single-family housing. If Turner follows this mannequin, he’s unlikely to make a dent in homelessness or the local weather impacts of suburban sprawl.
— Gautama Mehta
Division of the Treasury
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The Division of the Treasury’s identify belies its outsize significance in setting the nation’s local weather agenda. Domestically, the company that Scott Bessent would lead develops clear vitality tax coverage and analyzes the financial implications of local weather regulation. Internationally, it represents america in multilateral boards coping with local weather change, just like the G7, and leads negotiations on how a lot the U.S. will present to poorer nations to assist them adapt to a warming world.
Bessent is a hedge fund supervisor with an eclectic political historical past. He has described the Inflation Discount Act “the doomsday machine for the deficit” and has known as for elevated oil manufacturing. His priorities as Treasury secretary would possible middle on decreasing the federal deficit, serving to shepherd company tax cuts via Congress, and evaluating the influence of tariffs on the federal finances.
With the intention to cut back the deficit, Bessent has urged that Trump ought to intestine the clear vitality tax credit included within the Inflation Discount Act — President Biden’s signature local weather laws, which Bessent known as a “doomsday machine for the finances.” He has additionally suggested the president-elect to pursue an financial coverage that features producing a further 3 million barrels of oil or its equal per day.”
— Joseph Winters
Division of State
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Though the nation’s prime diplomat focuses totally on statecraft, the place has below earlier presidents included advancing worldwide local weather efforts via treaties, serving to craft worldwide fiscal insurance policies to deal with the disaster, and utilizing diplomatic leverage to encourage different nations to satisfy their commitments to the 2015 Paris Settlement and different accords.
Senator Marco Rubio concedes anthropogenic local weather change is actual — a place he appears to have come to grudgingly — however argues that aggressive measures to deal with it hurt the economic system. He favors technological fixes to emissions discount, has known as the Paris Settlement “an unfunny joke” that will “damage financial progress,” and opposed the Inflation Discount Act. Over the course of his profession Rubio obtained over $700,000 from the oil and gasoline trade whereas dismissing insurance policies that will spur the event of renewable vitality.
In distinction to Trump’s isolationist America-first worldview, Rubio, who opposes a cease-fire in Gaza, typically takes hawkish positions in opposition to nations like Iran and Russia. He additionally has obtained greater than $600,000 from the protection trade throughout his congressional profession. Past the humanitarian prices, struggle has an amazing local weather influence: Current analysis has proven that militaries are accountable for no less than 5.5 p.c of the planet’s greenhouse gasoline emissions.
— Lylla Younes
Division of Labor
Warmth is the nation’s main weather-related reason behind office deaths, with agriculture, building, and supply staff at biggest threat. With temperatures rising, the division that former lawmaker Lori Chavez-DeRemer could lead faces a rising mandate to guard those that toil in ever-hotter situations.
The Division of Labor establishes and enforces office laws and oversees the Occupational Security and Well being Administration, which lately proposed the primary federal heat-protection measures. These guidelines haven’t but been finalized.
Chavez-DeRemer, a Republican and former consultant from Oregon, has supported labor-friendly laws and is backed by the Worldwide Brotherhood of Teamsters, which has fought tirelessly for warmth protections. (Greater than 20 native unions backed her unsuccessful reelection bid.) Her nomination has confounded enterprise leaders who believed Trump would favor their pursuits.
Throughout her two years in Congress, Chavez-DeRemer was amongst three Republicans who backed the Defending the Proper to Arrange Act to make it simpler for staff to unionize and have interaction in collective bargaining. She additionally pushed for a clear vitality buildout in Oregon and was vice chair of the Conservative Local weather Caucus. Nonetheless, it’s unclear whether or not she’ll help the warmth rule, given Trump’s deregulatory agenda.
— Frida Garza
Division of Authorities Effectivity
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This workplace, which President-elect Trump introduced days after his election, will, he stated, “dismantle authorities forms, slash extra laws, minimize wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal companies.” That might profoundly hinder efforts to battle local weather change.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead this company, generally known as DOGE. Though Musk acknowledges local weather change is actual, Ramaswamy is an “unapologetic proponent” of fossil fuels and believes “extra individuals are dying of unhealthy local weather change insurance policies than they’re of precise local weather change.” The info show in any other case: At a minimal, tens of 1000’s of individuals die annually from supercharged climate occasions.
In a latest op-ed, the lads elaborated on their mission, calling out Supreme Court docket rulings that curb the flexibility of the Environmental Safety Company to control energy plant emissions and make it simpler to problem guidelines adopted by that company and others with roles within the local weather battle. “Collectively,” they wrote, “these instances counsel {that a} plethora of present federal laws exceed the authority Congress has granted below the legislation.”
Additionally they have vowed to chop the federal workforce and establish billions in finances cuts. Given Trump’s perception that local weather change is a “hoax,” DOGE is probably going coming for federal efforts to mitigate it.
— Matt Simon
