Climate Politics

Climate Skeptics Are Hatching Big Plans for a Second Trump Term

Activists would push a new Republican administration to boost coal-fired power, block EPA science and challenge models of global warming.

Homes in front of the John E. Amos coal-fired power plant in Poca, West Virginia, on Feb. 11, 2022. 

Photographer: Dane Rhys/Bloomberg
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Activists who dispute the severity of human-caused climate change are quietly preparing to seize their moment should Donald Trump win a second term.

Pushed to the political fringes during Joe Biden’s presidency, they are now laying the groundwork to bring back coal-fired power plants, gut science at the Environmental Protection Agency and neuter the modeling used in the federal government’s national climate assessment and other reports.