There’s a long list of worries about what a second term for Donald Trump could mean for the world: Rising authoritarianism, further protectionism, the continuing erosion of women’s rights, and more upheaval in geopolitics – just to name a few.
Should Mr. Trump win in November, there’s also the question of how detrimental it will be to U.S. leadership on the environment. An American withdrawal from the Paris agreement, again, would be virtually assured, as would a weakening of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the CBC’s Rosemary Barton that a Trump presidency “would slow down the world’s progress” in fighting climate change.
But if there’s any hope for the environmentally concerned, it’s that an American president has only limited power to transform the world. Just ask President Joe Biden.
The U.S. passed a remarkable milestone in recent weeks: It produced a weekly average of 13.3 million barrels of oil a day. That’s more than in its whole oil-dependent history, and helps cement its title as the biggest producer of crude on the globe.
It’s remarkable, especially when you consider this is happening during the presidency of a climate-focused Democrat who told voters during the past presidential campaign that he would “end fossil fuel” and publicly turned down donations from oil and natural gas executives.
It could be chalked up to telling people what they wanted to hear. But if there’s a more charitable explanation for why Mr. Biden is now presiding over a massive expansion of the domestic oil-and-gas industry, it’s because where demand exists, oil will find a way.
The power unlocked by combustion has a way of turning even the most progressive of politicians into energy hypocrites. Mr. Biden has had to devote much of his political capital to keeping oil prices at an even keel during his term. Prices were rising even before Russia’s attack on Ukraine. But once the fighting had truly disrupted global markets and sent prices soaring, Mr. Biden’s administration dipped into its Strategic Petroleum Reserve, urged domestic producers to drill more, and approved new projects. Internationally, Mr. Biden has pleaded with Saudi Arabia for more oil and loosened sanctions on Venezuela’s sector. (And, somehow, vast quantities of Iranian oil have slipped through U.S. sanctions.)
The past four years forced the realization that as long as a restive American public is clamouring for low-cost gasoline, geopolitics can upend the best-laid plans. Bucking a decades-long trend, the U.S. now produces more energy than it consumes. It has become the largest LNG exporter on the planet, which has helped keep the lights on in Europe. However, just last week the Biden administration announced an election-year pause on new projects, pending an economic and environmental review.
Despite messaging from both political camps – including from Republicans who say Democrats are killing the domestic energy industry – the U.S. is at once a huge fossil-fuel producer, and a beacon of green energy development. Renewable energy production has also reached record highs.
And there would be stark policy differences between a new Biden or Trump administration. Emissions actually matter to the former. Mr. Trump is likely to be more strident in tearing up environmental policies if he’s emboldened by a second term.
But the decentralized nature of the U.S. will allow states and municipalities to implement their own climate policies. The Inflation Reduction Act, focused on climate and EV production, also includes generous industry incentives for decarbonizing heavy-emitting sectors like oil and gas. It’s so popular even Mr. Trump might not do away with it.
And of course, Mr. Trump approved the controversial Keystone XL pipeline on his fourth day in office in 2017. Mr. Biden killed the project on his first day. Market uncertainty about which outlook will prevail will prevent the cross-border project from ever being rehashed.
Despite that, Canada is set to hit its own milestone: By the end of 2024, the country will likely be producing more than five million barrels of oil a day, a new record. In a world that consumes more than 100 million barrels of oil every day, it’s not U.S. levels, but it’s not peanuts either.
Even as his government introduced the details of the oil-and-gas emissions cap, federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson told The Globe, “There’s no point in Canada effectively shutting-in production that’s not related to declines in global demand, and allowing the United States or Venezuela to actually export more.”
Until the question of how we reduce fossil-fuel dependency while also providing enough juice to an energy-hungry world is answered, oil markets and domestic demand will continue to rule the roost. In the face of those forces, our political leaders don’t have as much power as we think – for the good and the bad.