What Can US Cities and States Do for the Climate Under Trump? Plenty

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(Bloomberg) — Sharon Lavigne’s life has been cloaked in pollution. 

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Lavigne is a retired special education teacher from St. James Parish, a region within Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, nicknamed for its high concentration of polluting industries. But that wasn’t on Lavigne’s mind when she went to a community meeting in 2015. A teacher friend had been passed over for a promotion, and she wanted to find out why. 

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She didn’t get an answer — but she kept going to meetings. 

Then in 2018, a plastics company announced it would build a large complex near Lavigne’s home. A community-based health committee “said they couldn’t fight it because the governor approved it. It was a done deal,” said Lavigne, who disagreed with their assessment. So she founded RISE St. James, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting against the expansion of the petrochemical industry in the region. In 2022, partly due to RISE’s efforts, a district court vacated the project’s air permits, putting it on hold.  

At first blush Lavigne’s efforts might seem small compared to sweeping federal policies on climate change like the Inflation Reduction Act. But grassroots, local and state actions are critical to driving down US emissions. It’s a power that is likely to take center stage after the reelection of Donald Trump, who campaigned on repealing the IRA and expanding fossil fuel extraction. 

State and local governments can model change that’s later scaled up. For example, Washington State tax credits passed during Trump’s first administration helped inform how the IRA was structured. They can also push the needle on the clean energy transition in their own right, such as in 2021 when North Carolina passed a bill mandating that Duke Energy Corp., the state’s largest utility, reach net-zero emissions by 2050. 

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According to Justin Balik, the senior state program director for Evergreen Action, a climate policy think tank, US states not only made considerable progress during Trump’s first term, “they’re even more poised to lead and in some ways better prepared” than they were in 2017.

Now,  24 states and Washington, DC, have targets for either net-zero carbon emissions, 100% renewable or carbon-free electricity, or both. This includes some states that voted for the president-elect, like Michigan and North Carolina. There are also more Democratic governors and state attorneys general in office than when Trump began his first term, and 13 states will have Democratic trifectas in January, making it easier for them to pass the kind of climate and energy legislation that GOP lawmakers may oppose.

Nonetheless, bipartisan action is possible: North Carolina’s clean energy bill emerged from negotiations between the Democratic governor’s office and the Republican legislature. That happened, in part, because previous policies had led to a “tremendous influx of clean-energy investment job growth,” said Matt Abel, executive director of the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association, which was privy to the negotiations.

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The first Trump administration also gave rise to coalitions that pushed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions even as the US began the process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. That includes the US Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of 24 governors. “Those coalitions and organizations are now not starting from scratch,” said Balik. “They’ve been through the full first Trump term, through the Biden-Harris administration.”

Defending existing climate regulations will be one priority. On election day, Washington State voters rejected a ballot measure to rescind its cap-and-trade program. Even red states will likely try to safeguard incentives in the IRA, since they are reaping most of the investment unlocked by the law. States can also deploy new policies and funds: California residents voted in favor of a $10 billion climate resilience bond in November. California has also set its own tighter fuel standards for cars, which others can choose to follow (and many have); similarly, states can act independently to reduce emissions from the power sector, as North Carolina did. 

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US cities taking the initiative on climate include Honolulu, where residents just approved amending the city charter to create a climate resiliency fund, and Nashville, which was among more than two dozens cities and counties that voted this month to steer more funding to public transit. 

New York City in 2019 passed a law to reduce emissions produced by its largest buildings 40% by 2030 and to net zero by 2050. The building sector is the city’s largest source of emissions. “It is an enormously important, transformational law,” Christopher Halfnight, the senior director of research and policy at the nonprofit Urban Green Council, said of Local Law 97. 

The Climate Mayors is a bipartisan network of roughly 350 mayors working to drive change locally but also the federal level. In the West, cities including Phoenix and Salt Like City, which have been struggling with water shortages in the Colorado River basin, “are starting to get together to share best practices on what individual cities can do to better manage water,” said Mark Gold, the director of water scarcity solutions at the National Resources Defense Council. “This concept of trying to move towards self-sufficiency to build climate resilience is something that we’re talking about at length,” Gold said. 

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At every level, advocacy “needs a strong grassroots mobilization and activist base,” said Balik from Evergreen Action.

That means people like Sharon Lavigne. Back in St. James Parish, she’s still fighting. Earlier this year, an appeals court reversed the 2022 decision that stalled the petrochemical project. But if she hadn’t gone to meetings and then founded RISE, “it would’ve been built by now,” she noted.

She offered advice for people looking to get involved locally: “Go to the meeting. Find out what’s going on in your community,” she said. “Find out what you’re drinking. Find out what’s in your water, in your air or your soil. Be vigilant.” 

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