Greenhouse gases are — by definition — air pollutants.
The classification has been a bedrock principle of U.S. climate policy for years, and because of it, the federal government has the authority to set limits on all kinds of planet-warming pollution, from tailpipe exhaust to power plant emissions.
Republican megadonor Tim Dunn wants to undo all of it.
And the Texas oil billionaire is spending millions of dollars to help elect former President Donald Trump to try and reverse that policy, along with other U.S. efforts to address global warming.
“It would be ideal if we could get rid of this ‘CO2 as a pollutant’ business,” Dunn said last year at an event hosted by the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank that he funds.
To do that, Dunn suggested that Trump issue an executive order on his first day in office to reverse a precedent that has stood for 15 years. “I hope we have a E.O. every E.O. we can, to curb all this silliness about CO2 emissions,” Dunn said.
Environmental policy experts say it would take much more than an executive order to stop the federal government from defining greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide as air pollutants.
But they say Dunn’s interest in the issue is notable, especially since the longtime Texas power broker is expanding his ambitions beyond the Lone Star State. And while it may be a long shot to undo the labeling of greenhouse gases as air pollutants, it’s one of many anti-climate policies Dunn wants to see enacted in a second Trump administration.
Dunn for years has funded efforts in Texas to push the state further to the right — much of it aimed at boosting Christianity’s influence in the public sphere. Now he’s opening his wallet for bigger ventures and to take on tougher targets, such as U.S. climate policy.
“He’s going to be against anything that falls into what he sees as environmentally woke, and he will put his money where his mouth is,” said Matt Angle, founder of the Lone Star Project, a political action committee that works to elect Democrats in the state.
One of Dunn’s most significant investments on the national stage is with the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank founded in 2021.
Dunn sits on its board, and he has helped fund it with more than $400,000 in donations from a separate foundation that bears his name.
The America First Policy Institute is well positioned to influence a second Trump administration if the Republican presidential nominee recaptures the White House.
In August, Trump tapped Linda McMahon, the group’s board chair, to serve as co-leader of his transition team. The America First Policy Institute also employs a number of former Trump administration officials including former Energy Secretary Rick Perry and former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt.
The Trump campaign and the America First Policy Institute did not respond to requests for comment from POLITICO’s E&E News. Attempts to reach Dunn through the America First Policy Institute were unsuccessful.
Dunn’s giving isn’t limited to the America First Policy Institute.
He has donated at least $5 million this cycle to the Make America Great Again PAC, a political action committee that backs Trump, according to federal election records. And he has given more than $6 million to GOP candidates and the Republican party this cycle, according to OpenSecrets.
In addition to those contributions, Dunn helps fund a bigger network of influence.
The Texas billionaire bankrolls the Dunn Foundation, which has a war chest of $100 million that is used in part to fund groups that deny or downplay climate change and its effects. Those include the Heartland Institute, Turning Points USA, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, according to the foundation’s most recent tax filings.
The investments represent a multipronged attack on climate policy that could hinder U.S. efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, said one Texas Democrat.
“I can’t imagine anything more dangerous to the planet than Tim Dunn shaping our climate policy as a country,” said Democratic Texas state Rep. James Talarico.
CO2 is good for plants, Dunn says
Dunn largely avoids talking with the press or signaling his political intentions publicly.
That makes his comments last year at the Texas event with the America First Policy Institute all the more remarkable because it offers a rare public window into the ideas he and the group could champion in a second Trump administration.
If Republicans win control of Congress and the White House, Dunn said he would like to see them pass legislation in support of the fossil fuel industry by using the same budget reconciliation strategy that Democrats employed to pass the Inflation Reduction Act.
“They’ve now figured out how to put all this stuff in reconciliation so now we can get most of this stuff done with the majority if we can get a trifecta and AFPI does its job,” Dunn said. “With your help we can actually go in with a plan, enact the plan and then actually turn this ship in America. I think that’s actually very feasible at this point in time.”
Dunn lives on a family compound in Midland, Texas — the heart of oil and gas country — and near a megachurch and Christian school that he funded.
He was the CEO of CrownQuest Operating last year when it agreed to sell CrownRock LP to Occidental Petroleum. That sale closed this year. In 2023, he and his affiliated groups accounted for two-thirds of the donations to the state Republican party, ProPublica reported.
Underpinning his approach to policy is the view that unchecked carbon emissions aren’t a threat to humanity — a stance that puts him at odds with decades of climate research and the consensus of the scientific community.
“Carbon dioxide causes the plants, the Earth, to green. It’s not a pollutant,” he said. “If you want your plants to grow twice as fast, you pump CO2 into your greenhouses.”
In addition to promoting the fossil fuel industry, Dunn and the America First Policy Institute also would like to see a second Trump presidency roll back the Biden administration’s moves on climate and energy, starting with the Inflation Reduction Act, which specifies that greenhouse gases are pollutants.
Steve Moore, a Trump economic adviser and senior fellow at the America First Policy Institute, said the group would be pushing for policies that prioritize fossil fuels or reverse Biden administration efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
He also said the America First Policy Institute aims to cut hundreds of government programs — including those around clean energy.
“I think that there will be an emphasis on really trying to find ways to identify wasteful and inefficient programs and really finding a way that we can eliminate — hopefully — hundreds of antiquated government programs, and potentially save hundreds of billions of dollars,” he said.
A longtime target of conservatives
There will be fewer people willing to stand in the way of attacking regulations and climate policy during a second Trump term, said Steve Milloy, who was a part of Trump’s EPA transition team in 2016.
At the top of that list, he said, is an assault on EPA’s bedrock determination that greenhouse gases are considered air pollutants — known as the endangerment finding.
“In Trump 2.0 you will see the endangerment finding being rescinded,” he said. “Climate is a hoax and you have to go to the source of the evil, which is the endangerment finding.”
Greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, have been classified as a pollutant since 2009, when EPA issued the endangerment finding, which determined that public health and the environment was threatened by greenhouse gases and should be addressed under the Clean Air Act.
Since then, it has been used as a key building block to craft EPA rules on the emissions of vehicles and power plants.
The endangerment finding is backed by a mountain of climate science and long has been a target of conservative groups, even if there is no legitimate scientific research that calls into question the warming of the planet as a result of humanity’s burning of fossil fuels.
The latest run at the endangerment finding is “part of a long pattern of fossil fuel interests denying basic science about human health and the environment to protect their profits,” said Leah Stokes, a professor of environmental politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
“They just lie about what the science says,” she added. “And then they try to get the federal government or the justice system to go along with their propaganda at the expense of the American people’s health.”
During Trump’s first term in office, some administration officials attempted to weaken or overturn the finding, but the effort never materialized.
Last year, conservative groups petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the endangerment finding, claiming it was causing personal economic harm because of the regulations based on it.
The high court rejected the case.
To dismantle the finding, opponents first would have to disprove or discredit years of scientific research, which they have been unable to do. But during Trump’s presidency, there were several unsuccessful attempts to attack climate science. Those efforts likely would be ramped up in a second term.
The America First Policy Institute is led by Brooke Rollins, a top Trump White House aide. Before she joined the Trump administration, Rollins headed the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which has long fought to unwind the endangerment finding.
Rollins is reported to be a top contender for Trump’s chief of staff if he wins the White House.
