Re-imagining the national interest: How Trump's climate policy has shifted the U.S. away from a path toward sustainability
The Trump administration’s recent moves to dismantle core U.S. climate policies have signaled a fundamental redefinition of the “national interest.”
In late July, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said they would revoke the 2009 “endangerment finding.” This finding allows the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The change will ultimately allow the federal government to remove all limits on GHG emissions from cars and trucks. This followed earlier decisions to cancel over 27 billion dollars in clean energy and climate grants authorized under the Inflation Reduction Act. These steps—along with a series of other changes in the early days of Trump’s second term—break from the Biden administration’s climate policy agenda. They cast a long shadow over U.S. progress toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This was all telegraphed by Trump during his campaign. He was clear that he would reverse Biden’s climate policy and instead focus on “unleashing American energy.” But the scale and ferocity of these moves is hard to fathom. The scientific evidence that humans are affecting the climate—not to mention the daily reminders in the form of historic floods, choking wildfire smoke and devastating hurricanes—is beyond debate. Indeed, Americans see this reality: the number of Americans that accept climate change is happening outnumbers those who think it is not by a ratio of 5 to 1 today.
This is what is so puzzling about Trump’s climate policy. Given all the evidence and widespread public recognition of global warming, abandoning a sustainable pathway defies reason. So why is this happening?
Trump’s policies are about more than removing regulations in the name of small government, or a desire to appease big business, or to gain votes from workers in the extractive industries. They are emblematic of a deeper cultural and political dynamic that is playing out in America, which my co-author Eric Taylor Woods and I explore in our recent article, How nationalist rhetoric drives polarization over climate change in the US, published in Environmental Politics. In this study, we show how Republican and Democratic presidential candidates are both increasingly framing climate policy in nationalist terms—but they draw from starkly opposing conceptions of the nation. These competing nationalisms are fueling a dynamic that we call “nationalist polarization,” a form of political division that transforms climate change from a rational policy problem into a symbolic struggle over American national identity itself.
The broader lesson from our research is that when climate change is framed as a cultural issue—a debate over who is truly American and what kind of future the nation deserves—it becomes highly resistant to compromise. Even though most Americans think climate change is happening, these competing nationalist frames seem to be driving polarization among the public on how to respond. Politicians have increasingly been approaching climate change as a zero-sum game, where each side accuses the other not just of poor policy but of betraying the nation itself. In such a context, evidence and global responsibility are easily cast aside.
The Trump administration’s program of repealing environmental regulations exemplifies this dynamic. The EPA’s Administrator, Lee Zeldin, has framed these decisions not as rational action stemming from scientific evidence, but as a patriotic effort: they are about “driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age.” This framing builds directly on how Trump talks about the issue. He consistently argues that the threat to America is not climate change but rather domestic environmental policies that hamstring American workers, industry, and international agreements that privilege other nations. In short, the Trump-era Republican party uses exclusive, protectionist nationalism to cast climate action as a threat to American sovereignty, jobs, and industry. This is a sharp reversal of the Biden administration’s argument that decarbonization was in the national interest precisely because it could bring investment, jobs, and global legitimacy.
This shift cannot be understood purely through an economic or partisan lens. It must be seen as part of a broader ideological project that frames environmental protection as incompatible with a strong, sovereign, and self-reliant nation. Indeed, one of the core findings of our research is that Republican climate messaging increasingly centers on themes of protectionism and cultural defense—rejecting the idea that environmental leadership enhances the nation’s status and instead portraying it as a threat to American identity and autonomy.
The consequences of this ideological reorientation extend beyond America’s borders. Under Trump, the United States has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and scaled back international climate funding. These actions endanger the multilateral cooperation that is core to achieving the UN’s SDGs, SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals).
Ultimately, the Trump administration’s climate agenda is reshaping what counts as the national interest. Scholars, policymakers, and institutions committed to the SDGs must pay close attention to these narratives. Political and cultural forces—particularly nationalism—are not peripheral to environmental governance; they are central. If we hope to advance sustainability transitions, we must understand the powerful stories people tell about the nation and perhaps even reorient them to help drive toward a climate-resilient future.
