Lord Adair Turner has suggested Donald Trump’s second term as President of the United States will have big implications on global efforts to slow down climate change.

Appearing on the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment’s (IEMA) podcast ‘Sustainable Matters’, the economist sat down with Sarah Mukherjee MBE, CEO of IEMA, to discuss how policy changes enacted by the new US administration will impact our environmental future, along with his fears over climate change and the hope he has in technology.

With Donald Trump being sworn in as the 47th President of the USA this week, the conversation turned to the impact of the new presidency on international efforts to slow down global warming.

Just this week, Mr Trump has vowed to once again withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement, the legally-binding international treaty signed at the COP21 UN Climate Change Conference in 2015. The agreement, which came into force in 2016, was ditched by President Trump during his first term, a move which was reversed on Joe Biden’s first day in office in 2021.

The new administration says the president will also end the “green new deal”, a reference to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act climate policy that directed billions into clean energy, along with efforts to boost ownership of electric vehicles, in an effort to save the US car industry.

“Let me be absolutely clear,” Lord Turner told Sarah Mukherjee, “The moment Trump was elected, and even more so what he’s now said, whatever was my estimate of what’s the best we could limit global warming to by the end of this century…

“Maybe before he was elected, I thought with a lot of good policy, we might limit it to 1.6 degrees or 1.7.

“I’ve added .2 or .3 to my estimate of what we can do, simply because Donald Trump has been elected.”

The president also announced a “national energy emergency” to reverse many of the Biden-era environmental regulations, and a commitment to “drill, baby, drill” in his inaugural address, signalling a move to a renewed interest in oil and gas exploration in the US.

“We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it,” Mr Trump told the audience.

Lord Turner says the reversal of Joe Biden’s environmental policies will have huge implications on global efforts to slow down climate change and move towards newer, more sustainable technologies.

“If you think that it doesn’t make a difference to switch from Biden supporting clear action on climate change, to Donald Trump saying “this is a ‘liberal hoax’” and “I’m going to drill, baby, drill”, you really are living in delusion-land if you don’t think that matters.”