Blain’s Morning Porridge 30^th April 2025: Forget Trump – Climate Change has the potential to inflict much more pain

“Change is coming, whether you like it or not..”

100 days of Trump has distracted us from many big issues – including how his policies have knocked back climate science by decades. Former UK premier Tony Blair has identified massive failures in climate-change and net-zero policies. It’s time to consider how extreme weather will do even more economic damage than trade wars.

For the last 100 days all we’ve talked about is how politics are influencing markets to the exclusion of almost anything else – factoring the consequences of how rising trade frictions will likely trigger rising unemployment, higher rates and increasing inflation to impact asset prices.

It’s a great time to be research economist. New reputations are being made in spotting and predicting how the economic data – like this Friday’s US employment report (which is expected to be dire) – will influence markets.

It’s not such a good time if you are a climate or environmental scientist….

Over 50 of Trump’s cascading Tsunami of executive orders have been anti-green: removing the US from the Paris accord (again), allowing drilling for oil, gas and coal on Federal Lands, rescinding clean air and water legislation, dismissing carbon cost programmes and now sacking the scientists who were charged to write the National Climate Assessment Report – which was mandated by Congress to provide a detailed analysis of exactly how climate change is affecting the US environmentally and economically every 4 years. This would have been the 6^th report providing irrefutable evidence and data on how the environment is changing. It is now in limbo.

Trump’s plan is very simple. America First policies are designed to strengthen the US economy to exclusion of all else. These policies take precedence over everything, especially any attempts to protect the future by delaying the programme of new factories and infrastructure. It’s a short-term solution to the immediate issues he sees holding back the US economy: it no longer makes very much, and its main advantage is abundant fossil energy. Simples – let’s use that abundant energy to make more.

The policy requires silencing dissent from the climate and environmental lobbies. Flood the news and focus on the economy… and the Greens have found themselves pushed off the front of the media because of the headlines on markets, jobs and inflation.

Whatever climate change deniers deny, the scientific data was persuasive: it showed the earth is heating up, and the thing that’s changed is the dramatic rise in carbon emissions and greenhouse gases since the industrial revolution began 250 years ago. The science has shown how warmer oceans drive more powerful storms, change weather patterns and create the wild and unpredictable extreme floods, wildfires, drought and storms that have pushed up insurance costs. (Insurers are not fools – they spend lots of good money to understand the threats they face.)

For years there has been resistance to the facts of climate change – push back and arguments about cause and effect, and what else might be triggering rising global temperatures and rising sea levels and all the environmental and economic consequences that will surely follow. The climate scientists have produced the data to show how carbon emissions are responsible, and to predict the likely consequences.

Over the years the rise in the number of conspiracy theorists arguing climate change is fake, or that it’s a WWF plot to destroy ‘Merica, has become almost a testament to the strength of arguments of climate change science. But rather like the Catholic Church denying the Earth orbited around the Sun, (and imprisoning Galileo for proposing such a heretical notion), the Trump administration has added Climate Denial to its doctrinal basis.

One of Trump’s solutions is to undermine the Climate Lobby by the devastatingly simple and effective expedient of getting rid of the data.

This includes the National Climate Assessment Report, but also sacking anyone in government agencies involved in the science of the environment and climate change. NASA had been the main agency producing the scientific evidence climate change scientists used to show the Earth was warming, and that human activities were the cause. The head climate scientist at Nasa, and associated teams, were all sacked in March. It was framed as a “reduction in force”.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has seen its head-count slashed by DOGE by thousands of people – one of its prime goals is the science behind natural disasters and preparing for them. Contracts to universities to run climate and marine monitoring projects have been defunded. The new Trump appointed head of NOAA first came to public prominence during Hurricane Dorian when he altered NOAA maps with a sharpie to show the storms predicted path would suit Trump’s claims it would miss Florida!

Trump hasn’t faced the degree of environmental backlash that any European politician would have encountered. That’s a testament to the strength of the fossil-fuel lobby, and billionaires unwilling to delay their spending plans. Trump has played a smart game focusing on the immediate economic reasons to deny climate change at a time of rising economic uncertainty for American workers. Attacking the Universities, and defunding climate outreach to schools, has meant the US never produced a Greta Thunberg equivalent. (That’s her quote at the top this morning.)

If there is no data then no one can prove climate change is real, that its man-made, and might be preventable. QED.

Trump’s anti green crusade has done nothing to encourage other nations to trying and improve the environment. It’s a typical free-rider problem – we all share “Spaceship Earth”, and even if one nation moves heaven and earth to cut carbon emissions to zero by 2050, it will achieve nothing if other nations increase their emissions….

Yesterday the Tony Blair Institute For Global Change released a new report – the former UK prime minister has called for a global rethink of net-zero policies, arguing that trying to limit energy consumption and the use of fossil fuels is “doomed to fail” because of the free-rider problem. You should read the whole report: The Climate Change Paradox: Why We Need to Reset Action on Climate Change”

Blair makes the point that Western governments have been asking their voters to make massive and costly changes to their economies and lifestyles – witness the UK’s energy costs being about double anywhere else after decades of badly thought out transition policies towards green and renewable power (Ed Milliband is the current bogeyman, but the problem has been long-term).

Blair slams the UN and the COP gabfests for failing to effectively address transition: “strategies based on phasing out fossil fuels in the short-term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.”

He points out India now produces 1 billion tonnes of coal each year. China initiated 95 gigawatts of new coal-fired power last year, and airline travel will double in the next 20-years. Urbanisation will drive increasing demand for cement and steel – massive producers of carbon emissions. Africa currently produces just 4% of global emissions – but as its population doubles in the next 30 years, its demands for energy, infrastructure and power will quadruple!

I would urge you to read the whole report… its worth thinking about…. While Trump is prepared to close his eyes and pretend climate change is an SEP (a someone else’s problem for his grandkids to solve), Blair makes some powerful points about the urgency of climate action and the need for new strategies.

While writing the porridge this morning, it’s a beautiful morning out there, so I am going to take some time off this afternoon to go get my paddleboard out and enjoy the environment before we destroy it…

Out of time, and back to the day job…

Bill Blain

Author Morning Porridge

Founder Windshift Capital

Partner Shard Capital