The Morning: The stakes on climate

October 11, 2024

Good morning. Today, my colleague Lisa Friedman writes about each presidential candidate’s climate policies. We’re also covering Hurricane Milton’s aftermath, Barack Obama and the Nobel Prizes. —David Leonhardt

In Michigan. Todd Heisler/The New York Times

The contest

Will governments slash greenhouse gases enough to prevent the most dangerous impacts of global warming? Scientists say the next few years will provide the answer. The United States has pumped the most carbon dioxide into the atmosphere of any country since the Industrial Revolution, and that makes the next president’s energy choices enormously consequential.

Vice President Kamala Harris calls climate change an “existential threat” that the United States must combat. She’s pledged to build on the billions of dollars the Biden administration invested in clean energy (such as solar, wind and other renewables). Although congressional Republicans may block new laws, she is likely to use regulatory power to reduce emissions.

Former President Donald Trump dismisses climate change as a “hoax.” As Hurricane Helene ripped through the Southeast, he called global warming “one of the great scams.” He wants to extract more fossil fuels — the burning of which drives climate change — and end renewable energy subsidies.

The Morning is running a series explaining the policy stakes of the election. In this installment, I’ll focus on climate change, which I’ve covered for 16 years.

Trump’s ‘liquid gold’ agenda

A green pump jack extracts oil next to two houses.

A pump jack extracts oil in Signal Hill, Calif. Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

Trump does not consider climate change a problem that requires a solution. Curtailing fossil fuels, he argues, hurts the economy and drives up energy prices.

During his first term, Trump appointed people who deny climate science to key positions. He withdrew the United States from the Paris agreement on climate change, a 2015 accord in which nearly all nations pledged to limit warming. He rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations, including limits to emissions from power plants and automobiles.

There are three ways analysts believe he could go further if he wins: by weakening government agencies; expanding fossil fuel production; and impeding clean energy.

Trump’s allies have pledged not just to reverse the climate regulations that President Biden restored, but also to dismantle parts of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy by shuttering offices, relocating staff members and embedding loyalists in key positions.

He has promised to grant virtually all permits to drill oil — which he calls “liquid gold under our feet” — on public lands and waters, keep coal plants burning and make it easier to build gas pipelines. Those policies could create new jobs, but they would emit greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to another billion cars on the road, according to a study by Carbon Brief, a climate analysis site.

The final area is clawing back clean-energy subsidies that the Biden administration is doling out under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Yet while Trump rails against electric vehicles as “green scams” and claims windmills cause cancer (they don’t), he might find resistance to slashing those programs in Republican congressional districts that are receiving money. This summer, 18 House Republicans wrote to Speaker Mike Johnson asking him not to eliminate clean-energy tax credits next year.

Harris’s plan

Harris wants to boost clean energy, but she doesn’t have a ton of options. She has two main ideas: She’d continue Biden’s subsidies and improve electrical transmission from remote wind and solar power generators to population centers that can consume it.

Fixing the nation’s electricity grid might seem like a wonky presidential platform, but it could determine whether the United States meets its climate targets. The Biden administration has pledged to cut emissions roughly in half by the end of this decade, which would mean massive deployment of clean energy. But the nation’s fractured transmission system can’t handle that growth right now.

It will be up to Congress to fix that problem. But Republicans insist that any bipartisan deal also fast-track pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure. That’s a poison pill for many environmental groups. The Harris campaign hasn’t weighed in on such a compromise.

Without legislation, a Harris administration would have limited tools. The E.P.A. could set new controls on big industrial polluters — steel and cement plants, factories, oil refineries and others. She could also lobby Congress for a “carbon tariff” against China and other global competitors — a fee added to imported goods like steel and cement based on their carbon emissions. She also might use executive authority to limit new gas exports or drilling on federal lands.

All of those possibilities come with challenges, either from the courts or political opponents.

Hurricane Milton’s aftermath

A woman in an tie-dye shirt and sunglasses wades through flooding.

Floodwaters in a mobile home park in Lakeland, Florida. Nicole Craine for The New York Times

Hurricane Milton did not cause the disastrous storm surge in the Tampa Bay region that many had feared. But there was severe flooding along Florida’s west coast, where some areas got as much as 18 inches of rain.
More than 100 homes were destroyed, and rescuers pulled people from submerged vehicles and buildings throughout yesterday. See photos of the storm’s aftermath.
Officials said at least 12 people had died in the storm. Six were killed by a tornado in eastern Florida, and several were killed by falling trees.
More than three million homes and businesses in Florida were without power for much of the day yesterday. That number is now more than 2.5 million. Read the latest.
A fishing boat captain survived for hours in the Gulf of Mexico, clinging to a cooler and a life jacket.
Dangerous conspiracy theories about Hurricanes Helene and Milton have spread on social media, including that the storms were engineered by Democrats. (Jimmy Kimmel debunked that conspiracy theory on late night.)
Biden urged Congress to pass more funding for the Small Business Administration, which issues loans for storm-affected homeowners and businesses, and criticized Trump for spreading falsehoods about the government’s response, telling him, “Get a life, man.”
Some who stayed behind posted videos of their experiences to TikTok, giving viewers a window into the hurricane’s effects.

THE LATEST NEWS

2024 Election

Barack Obama stands in a blue shirt and looks out at a crowd.

In Pittsburgh. Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

Barack Obama urged Black men, who polls suggest have become more open to Trump, to drop their “excuses” and vote for Harris.
Harris, at a town hall event with Univision, walked a fine line on immigration: She endorsed a pathway to citizenship, but she also promoted tougher border security.
Trump declined an offer to debate Harris on CNN. Harris, who had accepted, will instead hold a town hall event with the network in Pennsylvania.
Trump pledged to make car loan interest fully tax deductible. He also said he would keep Chinese cars off U.S. roads, accusing international companies of having “raped our country.”
Elon Musk is all in on Trump: The two talk regularly, and Musk may even canvass for Trump in Pennsylvania.
“The Apprentice,” a movie about Trump’s relationship with the lawyer and fixer Roy Cohn, is in theaters today. Read The Times’s review.

Economy and Business

Consumer prices rose 2.4 percent in the year through September, another month of milder inflation.

TD Bank agreed to pay about $3 billion in fines on charges of ignoring flagrant activity by criminals who used the bank to transfer funds.
Tesla introduced new self-driving taxis. Experts think they probably won’t be on the road soon.

War in Ukraine

Troops ride on an armored vehicle in Ukraine.

Ukrainian servicemen in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. Nicole Tung for The New York Times

September was the bloodiest month of the war for Russian forces in Ukraine, according to U.S. officials.
Ukraine’s Parliament voted to increase taxes on personal income and bank profits to raise money for the war.

More International News

A U.N. panel said Israeli attacks on medical workers and hospitals in Gaza were war crimes.
Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, has been offering aid to his country’s neighbors as he tries to counter China’s influence.
A shipping lane between Taiwan and mainland China handles more than a fifth of the world’s seaborne trade, new research shows — a sign of global consequences violence could have.

MORNING READS

The northern lights above an apartment building in Queens.

In Queens. Daniel P. Derella/Associated Press

Northern lights: People saw the northern lights at a much lower latitude than normal. See the photos.

Bella Freud: The designer, a great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, plays therapist to celebrities.

Travel: Toronto’s hidden ravines offer urban explorers an oasis of birdsong and burbling creeks.

Lives Lived: Thomas Rockwell, depicted as a child in his father Norman Rockwell’s art, grew up to became a successful author of children’s books, most notably “How to Eat Fried Worms,” a gross-out tale that millions of grade-school students have devoured. He died at 91.

SPORTS

A man in a white jersey swats a shot away from a man in a yellow jersey.

Blocked. NBA TV

N.B.A. Giannis Antetokounmpo swatted LeBron James in the Lakers’ win against the Bucks. The moment went viral, Sports Illustrated reports.

W.N.B.A. The Minnesota Lynx outlasted the favored New York Liberty in Game 1 of the finals after overcoming an 18-point deficit to force overtime. Read a recap.

M.L.B. The New York Yankees are heading back to the A.L.C.S. after a 3-1 win in Kansas City.

ARTS AND IDEAS

A woman in a navy scarf speaks into a microphone.

Han Kang Yonhap/Yonhap News Agency via Reuters

Han Kang, the South Korean author best known for “The Vegetarian,” won the Nobel Prize in Literature. That novel, which was published in South Korea in 2007, tells the story of a depressed housewife who shocks her family when she stops eating meat, and later yearns to turn into a tree. A Nobel official praised Han’s “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

Related: While Han Kang’s victory was celebrated as a crowning cultural achievement for her country, her work also represents a form of rebellion against its culture.