The environment and fair taxes are deeply linked issues, both fundamental to creating a just society where people can meet their basic needs and have access to opportunities. The environmental and fair taxation movements worked together to utilize the tax code and the arcane budget reconciliation process to spur once in a generation climate progress in 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). 

Now, with parts of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that gave huge giveaways to wealthy corporations and polluters set to expire at the end of 2025 amid unified Republican control of Washington, a new tax-and-spending fight is underway that will greatly impact climate justice alongside economic justice. Extension of these cuts would waste trillions of dollars that could otherwise be used to address basic human needs, climate change and fund other green priorities. Beyond this extension, there is also the need to push for additional tax revenue, which can be used to invest in solutions to the ongoing climate crisis. 

Extending Trump Tax Cuts for the Rich Would Endanger Climate-Response Funding

Extending the expiring tax cuts would add $5.5 trillion to the national debt—debt that recent history shows Republicans will use as an excuse to cut environmental programs. As an example, the policy playbook for the Trump administration, Project 2025, calls for the complete repeal of all the green tax incentives in the IRA (p. 696). 

The Republican-controlled Congress has started the process of extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts and paying for them in part with potential cuts to environmental investments. The House Budget Committee voted for $1.5 trillion in unspecified cuts over the next 10 years; but another House panel, the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, had earlier outlined possible sources of environmentally damaging revenue , including:

• Repealing $800 billion in IRA green-energy tax credits, including those promoting electric vehicles, home energy efficiency, carbon sequestration and more environmentally sustainable vehicle fuels.
• Expanding offshore oil and gas leasing.
• Repealing the Biden administration’s tighter tailpipe emissions and vehicle-fuel-efficiency standards. It was estimated this would raise over $100 billion by depressing demand for electric vehicles and therefore the use of EV tax credits. 
• Raising $50 billion by taxing employer-provided transportation benefits, including those for public transportation.
• Diverting $5 billion from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.

More Tax Cuts for the Wealthy Makes The Rich Even Bigger Threats to the Planet

Exploding income inequality has created individuals with excessive amounts of wealth, and through their extreme consumption, the richest 1% create as much carbon emissions as the poorest two-thirds of humanity. Extension of the expiring Trump tax cuts would continue to grow this inequality as the Trump tax cuts primarily benefit the wealthiest. As of February  2025, the collective wealth of American billionaires had well  more than doubled to around $7 trillion just since enactment of the Trump tax law. For the health of our economy, our communities, and our planet, we should be combatting wealth and income inequality, not feeding it. 

The Trump Tax Cuts Were a Vehicle for Extreme Anti-Environmental Attacks – and Could Be Again

Republicans used the 2017 Trump tax cuts to do huge favors for their fossil fuel industry allies. Despite the bill being about tax cuts in name, Republicans took advantage of the partisan budget reconciliation process to open up the sacred Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling and could in the law’s expansion expand drilling across all of our public lands. 

Instead of Extending the Destructive Trump Law, We Need More Laws Like the IRA

The IRA combined the most comprehensive response to the climate crisis in history with the most progressive tax reform in decades. Environmental and tax-fairness activists should use that potent combination as an inspiration for joint action that can more effectively move both agendas forward.