Trump’s energy policies ignore the urgent lessons of the California fires

The fires showed US vulnerability to severe climate events – and the need to prioritize financing for climate resilient infrastructure, regulation of construction, and funding of emergency services.

Expert comment Published 22 January 2025 4 minute READ

On his first day back in office, Donald Trump signed executive orders to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accords and revoked a host of other climate policies that were implemented by the Biden administration. These moves deepen vulnerabilities for communities worldwide – and for a United States that itself is unprepared for the challenges ahead. 

The escalating impacts of climate change, such as the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, are stark reminders that the impacts of extreme weather events transcend political and social boundaries. Yet, in the face of these shared threats, politicizing climate action and perpetuating climate denial continue to distract from the urgent challenges posed by a world that surpassed the 1.5°C warming threshold in 2024, the hottest year on record. 

Under the rallying cry of ‘drill, baby, drill,’ Donald Trump signed additional executive orders declaring a ‘national energy emergency’ aimed at expanding oil and gas drilling in Alaska, halting new offshore wind projects in federal waters, and ‘Unleashing American Energy’. 

These day one actions ignore an uncomfortable truth: not only is climate change accelerating faster than anticipated, but the US is highly vulnerable and unprepared for the consequences.

Extreme weather events are here to stay

A UN Environment Programme Foresight Report, Navigating New Horizons, published in 2024, identified the creation of ‘uninhabitable places’ due to accelerating climate change as the number one risk. 

The threat of fires in Los Angeles is certain to persist, raising critical questions for citizens about if, how and where to rebuild and highlighting the growing concern that some parts of California may already be becoming uninhabitable. 

Beyond California, across North America and in many other regions globally, shifts to climatic patterns and changes to land use are causing larger, more severe and faster-moving fires. 

Extreme fire incidences are forecast to increase up to 14 per cent by 2030 and up to 50 per cent by the end of the century, according to the UNEP’s analysis in its 2022 report Spreading Like Wildfire.  

The upshot is that governments and public emergency services will be increasingly unable to protect citizens and their property, there will be challenges to law and order during and after disaster events, and insurance companies will no longer provide coverage for property in vulnerable locations. Unless bold policy actions are taken now, efforts to address the challenges ahead will remain piecemeal, leaving communities vulnerable.

With the recent fires in LA set to become the most expensive in Californian history – estimated to cost in the order of $275 billion – what lessons can governments learn to better prepare for future climate-related disasters?

Public and private finance is needed

The California government faced criticism for being unprepared, with emergency services failing to function effectively and the LA Fire Department being understaffed and suffering from a lack of resources. 

Budget cuts to emergency services risk worsening chronic underfunding, severely limiting their ability to respond at scale and leading to a proliferation of privatized emergency services and inequity within communities. 

National or state climate adaptation plans should… ensure critical services are linked together. 

The Trump administration’s intention to cut public spending and deregulate would steer the US off course, leading to a further regression against its target to reduce emissions to 66 per cent below 2005 levels by 2035. That, in turn, increases the risks of recurring extreme weather events.

Communities would be better prepared for emergencies if their response capacities are bolstered by state or central governments, including via greater public budgets for critical emergency services. National or state climate adaptation plans should include strategies to deal with wildfires and other climate-related disasters that ensure critical services are linked together. 

The Los Angeles wildfires ought to create momentum for an urgent review of US national strategy. Lessons could be learned from the Australian government, which created a Bushfires Royal Commission after the 2020 ‘Black Summer’ fires, and acted to strengthen institutions and services based on its recommendations. 

Crucial investment

Only with public funding and better risk ownership in climate strategies can the focus shift to building capacity across institutions and society to limit the scale of future climate events.

Infrastructure systems must be future-proofed, throughout their lifecycle, as they are critical to recovery efforts.

But public finances alone are unlikely to meet the scale required for crucial investment in climate-resilient infrastructure in disaster-prone areas. 

As pointed out by the OECD’s report on Infrastructure for a Climate-Resilient Future, financing through private sector investments, long-term planning for resilient infrastructure, fewer regulatory roadblocks and complementary public and private finance will also be needed. 

Inadequate financing will risk continued investment in poorly adapted infrastructure that is more susceptible to damage and to higher costs of maintenance. 

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Strengthening regulatory guidance for infrastructure planning and construction in such areas is also essential, embedding climate-risk evaluations into early design and planning, as well as resilience standards in construction and maintenance. 

Infrastructure systems must be future-proofed, throughout their lifecycle, as they are critical to recovery efforts from more severe climate-related disasters: damage sustained to the Palisades water infrastructure, for instance, will weaken rapid-response capacity in Los Angeles until costly repairs are made.

International climate action without the US

All such efforts will fall short if the global community does not get serious about drastically reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. With Donald Trump pulling the US – the world’s second-largest emitter – out of the Paris Agreement and ramping up domestic oil and gas exploration, other nations are left to navigate the urgent climate crisis without American participation.

Doubling down on oil and gas exploration might lead the US to fall further behind China in the rapidly expanding global green technology trade.

The US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, though a clear abdication of global leadership, has long been anticipated and may prove less consequential for the green transition. Other nations can take decisive actions to fill the gap, such as strengthening bilateral and multilateral climate partnerships and scaling up green technology transfers.

The risk might be greater for the US: doubling down on oil and gas exploration might lead the US to fall further behind China in the rapidly expanding global green technology trade.

It could also mean missing out on the clean energy boom estimated by the International Energy Agency to be worth $2 trillion last year and poised to dominate future economic growth –  creating millions of jobs worldwide.

Rolling back on climate policies prioritizes the short-term economic gains from fossil fuel production, over the safety of communities affected by extreme weather events. Trump views his measures as imperative to improve the US’s position in its global competition with China and others. However, deregulating fossil fuels and withdrawing from the Paris Agreement isolates the US and cedes its international leadership to competitors.

Meanwhile, failing to take bold policy action in response to the fires will make the US less able to adapt to the inevitable effects of a heating world, and exposes it to greater costs from future events like the wildfires.

How convincing Trump’s anti-climate policy decisions look to the American people after four more years of severe climate events remains to be seen.