What Can US Cities and States Do for the Climate Under Trump? Plenty. Federal progress on climate may stall, but city halls and statehouses are in a good position to build on recent gains. Bloomberg  Kendra Pierre-Louis November 27, 2024 Sharon Lavigne’s life  has been cloaked in pollution.  Lavigne is a retired special education teacher from  St. James Parish, a region within Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, nicknamed for its high concentration of polluting industries. But that wasn’t on Lavigne’s mind when she went to a community meeting in 2015. A teacher friend had been passed over for a promotion, and she wanted to find out why. She didn’t get an answer — but she kept going to meetings. Then in 2018, a plastics company announced it would build a large complex near Lavigne’s home. A community-based health committee “said they couldn’t fight it because the governor approved it. It was a done deal,” said Lavigne, who disagreed with their assessment. So she founded RISE St. James, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting against the expansion of the petrochemical industry in the region. In 2022, partly due to RISE’s efforts, a district court vacated the project’s air permits, putting it on hold. At first blush Lavigne’s efforts might seem small compared to sweeping federal policies on climate change like the Inflation Reduction Act.

But grassroots, local and state actions are critical to driving down US emissions. It’s a power that is likely to take center stage after the reelection of Donald Trump, who campaigned on repealing the IRA and expanding fossil fuel extraction. State and local governments can model change that’s later scaled up. For example, Washington State tax credits passed during Trump’s first administration helped inform how the IRA was structured. They can also push the needle on the clean energy transition in their own right, such as in 2021 when North Carolina passed a bill mandating that Duke Energy Corp., the state’s largest utility, reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

According to Justin Balik, the senior state program director for Evergreen Action, a climate policy think tank, US states not only made considerable progress during Trump’s first term, “they’re even more poised to lead and in some ways better prepared” than they were in 2017. Now, 24 states and Washington, DC, have targets for either net-zero carbon emissions, 100% renewable or carbon-free electricity, or both. 

Bipartisan action is possible......North Carolina’s clean energy bill emerged from negotiations between the Democratic governor’s office and the Republican legislature. That happened, in part, because previous policies had led to a “tremendous influx of clean-energy investment job growth,” said Matt Abel, executive director of the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association, which was privy to the negotiations. Defending existing climate regulations will be one priority. On election day, Washington State voters rejected a ballot measure to rescind its cap-and-trade program. Even red states will likely try to safeguard incentives in the IRA, since they are reaping most of the investment unlocked by the law. States can also deploy new policies and funds: California residents voted in favor of a $10 billion climate resilience bond in November. California has also set its own tighter fuel standards for cars, which others can choose to follow (and many have); similarly, states can act independently to reduce emissions from the power sector, as North Carolina did....... read on https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-27/what-can-us-citie