Once Again Global Action To Mitigate Climate Change Is At Risk

With Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House, a climate change denier is once more going to be in charge of the country that currently is the world’s leading oil and gas supplier and its second biggest greenhouse gas polluter. Trump has called anthropogenic climate change an expensive hoax, mythical, and nonexistent. When he was President in 2017, he withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement. He discounts evidence of sea level rise and criticizes wind turbines for killing birds and bats en masse. He has questioned the need for electric vehicles (EVs) although with Elon Musk now in his back pocket, that last item on his climate-denying list will likely go away.

The last time Trump bailed on the United Nations and its supervised global climate change efforts, he left a vacuum that China and the European Union had to fill. Now, the future of the COP annual meetings, where global climate change negotiations take place, is likely to take a back seat to any actions the U.S. takes or doesn’t regarding the climate file.

Trump has indicated he is no fan of the American Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which has pushed the U.S. on a path to mitigate climate change through programs that accelerate electrification of the economy. The Act uses tax credits, deductions and rebates to cover carbon emissions capture. It provides vehicle credits for purchasing EVs. It includes incentives to develop clean fuel alternatives to gas and diesel, money for home energy audits, retrofit funds for windows, doors and improvements to building envelopes for energy conservation. It subsidizes upgrades to heat pumps and the purchase of solar panels and biomass stoves.  It offers utilities money for grid modernization, and expansion of renewable energy capacity including solar, on and offshore wind, and battery storage. There are incentives for domestic sourcing and production of the critical minerals needed to support battery and renewable energy development. Funds are available for special climate programs where Americans have been affected by extreme weather events including federal assistance for climate resilience for indigenous people.

Will he try to roll back these federal programs considering that the money already invested has benefitted many states that voted for him? The IRA’s job impact is already noticeable having created several hundred thousand new jobs in 44 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. The projections show the Act will yield more than a million new jobs yearly in the years to follow. For Trump to kill the Act would be political suicide so I highly doubt he will do much more than play around the edges to shore up his climate change-denying credentials.

This week Trump announced his pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It is former congressman, Lee Zeldin, whose voting record in support of environmental issues has been weak. He is likely to have a mandate to roll back EPA policies that restrict fossil fuel expansion and use and may undo initiatives around carbon emissions capture and sequestration.

Trump likely will pull the U.S. out a second time from the Paris Climate Agreement which will put other countries on the hook to make up the greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction differences that will be absent with the world’s second-largest polluter walking away. Trump may even go further and withdraw from the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change conventions agreed to by then-President George H. W. Bush and unanimously approved by the American Senate. That convention established the basis for the Paris Agreement in 2015 and the annual global COP meetings that are organized to tackle climate change.

The commitments to slash emissions by 50% in 2030 from 2005 levels made by President Biden will be ignored. The remaining American climate change program commitments will have to come from state and local governments. Fortunately, at the non-federal level, the U.S. has good coverage with 48 states and the District of Columbia having developed comprehensive climate change action plans. Hundreds of cities and towns also have climate action policies. An organization called the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) throughout the U.S. provides support for local initiatives by providing technical assistance and tools.

In a PBS News segment, its headline reads: “Experts worry Trump’s second term will cripple efforts to stop climate change.” The article expresses concerns about an “emboldened Trump” and what it will mean to the limiting of warming of the planet. Trump’s return to the White House is happening just as mean atmospheric temperatures are approaching 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) the desired lower threshold target that Paris Climate Agreement attendees aspired to achieve. In the absence of U.S. climate leadership, however, unless the rest of the world steps up we are trending in the wrong direction.

At COP29 this week it was expected to achieve agreement on a global climate aid fund that is expected to grow to $1 trillion annually. Absent the U.S. contribution after Trump pulls out, the fund will likely not come close to the objective. At the same time as an international partner, the U.S. will lose with some stating that everyone knows the country doesn’t follow through on any agreements it signs. What an indictment.