Chart: Admin is slowing climate progress. Here’s how much.

President Donald Trump has been derailing U.S. efforts to cut planet-warming emissions since he moved back into the White House. Now we have a more precise accounting of the expected damage.

The U.S. is currently on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions just 26-35% below 2005 levels over the next decade, according to new estimates from research firm Rhodium Group.

That’s much less of a reduction than was forecast under the Biden administration. A July 2024 report from Rhodium found that the U.S. had at that point been on track to cut emissions 38-56% by 2035. In other words, the worst-case scenario under Biden last year was still better than the best-case scenario following Trump’s destruction of the country’s decarbonization strategy.

As it stands, the U.S. will miss its 2030 Paris Agreement commitment by a mile — a fact unlikely to trouble Trump, who abandoned the agreement on his first day back in office.

The new Rhodium findings illustrate how swiftly Trump and the GOP have undone the hard-fought energy-transition progress made by the Biden administration.

Three years ago, then-president Joe Biden signed the landmark Inflation Reduction Act into effect, creating generous tax incentives for renewables, home-energy upgrades, and electric vehicles, as well as a host of grant and loan programs aimed at accelerating industries away from fossil fuel use.

But the Trump administration and the GOP-controlled Congress have essentially repealed the law, as well as a host of other environmental protections, like limits on vehicle emissions, that would have helped not only rein in greenhouse gases but also reduce harmful air pollution.

It’s grim news. But inherent in this rapid reversal of progress is, if you squint, a kernel of hope: Trump has proven that things can change very fast. Under a new administration, a rapid change of trajectory could happen again.

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