Trump's Legacy: Climate Change

"[T]he damage done by the greenhouse gas pollution unleashed by President Trump’s rollbacks may prove to be one of the most profound legacies of his single term," according to an article by Carol Davenport.

President-elect is likely to spend much of the next four years undoing the sweeping environmental regulation rollbacks implement during the Trump administration, but not before a significant amount of emissions, pollution, and irreversible marks are left on the country's public lands.

The legacy of those changes will outlive the policies, but on varying timelines, depending on the kind of pollution in question," according to Davenport.

Pollutants like industrial soot and chemicals can have lasting health effects, especially in minority communities where they are often concentrated. But air quality and water clarity can be restored once emissions are put back under control.

That is not true for the global climate. Greenhouse pollution accumulates in the atmosphere, so the heat-trapping gases emitted as a result of loosened regulations will remain for decades, regardless of changes in policy.

A study released in September quantified the amount of emissions enabled by the Trump administration's anti-regulatory actions. In total, the Trump administration's environmental rollbacks will emit an additional 1.8 billion metric tons of climate emissions equivalent to carbon dioxide by 2035.

But as Davenport points out, these are emissions are coming at a critical movement.

"Over the past four years, the global level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere crossed a long-feared threshold of atmospheric concentration. Now, many of the most damaging effects of climate change, including rising sea levels, deadlier storms, and more devastating heat, droughts and wildfires, are irreversible."