By Mike Gunter, Rollins College faculty member
My New Year’s hope is our nation finally turns the corner on climate mitigation and embraces the larger umbrella of sustainability.
While there is much to applaud at state and local levels, the United States has failed miserably when it comes to national initiatives and global leadership. We have stunted progress on climate change far too long — even though the threats it presents should unite rather than divide us.
And I am hopeful that 2025 is the year that brings us together.
Then again, it could just as easily be the year we seal our fate to a decidedly warmer world. If avoided at the close of 2024, the coming year may be the first to bring a 1.5-degree Celsius increase over pre-industrial temperatures, condemning our planet to all the climate crises this entails. This warmer world will mean still more flooding and more drought and dangerous wildfires, stronger hurricanes and tornadoes, melting glaciers and sea level rise, and biodiversity loss and ocean acidification with coral reef destruction.
All that said, in the spirit of the season, and for the sake of my children, I’m going to choose the more optimistic scenario. In 2025 we will finally incorporate sustainability into our national ethos and address the unfolding climate crisis. My reasoning starts and ends with the election of President Trump.
I realize Trump will do everything in his power to reverse the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which beyond increasing tax revenues and reducing health care costs happens to be the most substantial climate legislation in U.S. history, accelerating our transition to a clean energy economy with nearly $400 billion in federal funding.
And I realize Trump will withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Accord, the 2015 international agreement targeting a 1.5°C cap on rising temperatures while committing wealthy countries like the U.S. to help developing states make the required energy transitions.
Despite all this, while Donald Trump won the 2024 U.S. election for many reasons, one stands out above all others. To oversimplify, the overarching voter rationale was economic.
But why should this bring climate advocates hope?
Take the case of solar. As solar photovoltaic costs fell 90% in the last decade, Americans across the ideological spectrum embraced it. Regardless of left or right political leanings, when it comes to saving and making money, Americas want to see green.
Beyond alternative energy options like solar being increasingly cheaper than traditional fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, the ability to make energy yourself, on your own rooftop, invokes age-old American values of independence and self-sufficiency. As such, residential rooftop solar represents a truly bipartisan constituency.
Even Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis agrees, vetoing his fellow Republicans in the Florida Legislature and their 2022 attempt to kill net metering in the Sunshine State. I’m excited to see to what degree shifting financial political realities like this push Trump in an alternative-energy direction, one he regularly spoke against when on the campaign trail.
President Trump’s return to the Oval Office also promises to ignite a litany of fiery policy debates when it comes to sustainability more broadly. State and local challenges to his attempts to reverse or weaken national policies and funding on everything from clean water and air to public transit and climate resilience will rightly receive the lion’s share of attention.
But I’m most excited to see how environmental interest groups will respond, especially within the so-called red states. The American environmental movement built a storied legacy responding in strength when more sympathetic ears were out of power. Think the Nixon and Reagan years, when new groups not only formed but brought legions of previously apathetic Americans into activist ranks.
And moreover, from a conservative perspective, our nation has a long and proud tradition of protecting treasured natural resources and preventing radical environmental change under Republican administrations. It was Teddy Roosevelt that ushered in the National Park system, for example. And Richard Nixon oversaw the burst of environmental legislation that included everything from the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act to the Endangered Species Act.
Of course, particularly in Nixon’s case, popular opinion created the political incentives for these leaders. My hope is 2025 will echo that distinguished past, welcoming new voices to our civil society that push leadership in a similar direction — with substantial carbon emissions reductions.
Mike Gunter is a Cornell Distinguished Faculty and chair of the political science department at Rollins College. His most recent book is “Climate Travels: How Ecotourism Changes Mindsets and Motivates Action.” This opinion piece was originally published by the Orlando Sentinel, which is a media partner of The Invading Sea.
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Here here. I hear you. My hope too is that a rush to the bottom will result in hitting a trampoline of resistance that catapults us into a future of clean energy.