As the annual global Climate Conference (COP29) continues its first week in Baku, Azerbaijan, we can already see what the impact of the next Trump presidency will be. Credit: Shutterstock
By Felix Dodds and Michael Strauss
Nov 12 2024 – So, the worst has happened. American voters have apparently just elected the most chaotic and kleptocratic individual in their country’s political history as their president. (We say ‘apparently’, because these days nothing can be certain about the integrity of the US political or electoral system – as is the case with far too many other countries.)
That means the incumbent president, Joe Biden – who implemented the greatest investment in wind and solar energy, in climate-friendly technology, and in reducing CO2 emissions in any nation in history – is out.
That means the previous president, Donald Trump – who opposed every one of those climate-friendly investments and has promised the greatest re-investment in oil, gas and coal of any nation in history – is back in .
There are many losers from the US election, and the mood in Baku these two weeks will often seem bleak, but it will offer a clear opportunity for starting to work out a strategy by which climate change can be addressed without US leadership
As the annual global Climate Conference (COP29) continues its first week in Baku, Azerbaijan, we can already see what the impact of the next Trump presidency will be.
At home, Trump plans to dismantle President Biden’s environmental regulations in favor of the oil and gas industry. As he often screamed at his rallies, his policy is ‘drill baby, drill !’ That indicates the petroleum reserves under US national parks and in the fragile Arctic will be opened for extraction – even though the US already is the largest producer and exporter of crude oil of any country.
Internationally, the previous Trump administration withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement – a process that for diplomatic reasons took four years to come into effect. If, as expected, a new Trump administration decides to again leave the Paris Agreement, it would be far more damaging. This time it will take only one year from the date the United States notifies the UNFCCC that it plans to leave. Next year’s pivotal COP30 would then be the last annual meeting the US attends as a party to the climate convention.
That withdrawal – combined with the probable end of all (?) climate assistance by the US to developing countries – will most likely (very possibly) herald the end of any chance for the world to achieve the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit for global temperature increase that was won in hard negotiations in in Paris in 2015.
It risks putting the world on a cataclysmic climate trajectory in this, the critical decade that was supposed to reduce the increase of the gases that impact on climate.
The infamous Project 2025 of the American far-right also calls for a future Republican administration to withdraw from the World Bank – which is the largest contributor to climate finance. That possibility is occurring right at the time that countries will be setting their new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), due on February 10th.
Developing country governments will therefore realize there will be less funding available to help implement their plans, so might reduce their ambition – at least for the next four years. Even if countries were able to obtain US funding, Project 2025 says this would be dependent on the recipients aligning with conservative religious values such as opposition to abortion.
The reductions may go further than the US government. Trump and US conservatives have attacked environmental, social and governance investing strategies (ESG) for years and attempted to intimidate companies.
Jefferies Financial Group has advised ESG Fund bosses to have ‘lawyers on speed dial’. So, an attempt to use the market to continue work on climate change may not be an easy option. Any CEO that goes against him will be aware that his or her company might feel the wrath of the White House – lost contracts being the obvious penalty.
There will be a wider erosion of multilateralism than on climate. The previous Trump administration withdrew the US from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). A new Trump Administration, led by anti-vaccine extremists, may move to limit engagement with the World Health Organization (WHO) as well.
What wealthy nations can – and must – do!
So how can other nations respond to this challenge?
The EU nations are faced with a tremendous challenge. Can they help fill the gap that will be left by the US while also defending their security and their democracies from active efforts to undermine them?
Can the EU and other developed nations implement a small but cumulatively significant climate tax dedicated to assisting adaptation and loss in the South?
Can the oil-producing North Sea nations tap far more of their own immense sovereign wealth funds to help others – particularly small island nations (Small Island States) – to avoid catastrophic climate damage?
Can the UK find increased motivation to rejoin the EU, at least on trade and environmental policy, given that Trump tariffs could cost the country $28 billion in lost exports1, dealing another serious impact to an already fragile British economy ? [1 Robert Olsen, Forbes magazine, Nov 9, 2024]
Can institutional investors, non-profit funders and corporations – even US corporations – increase their contributions to the Private Sector Facility of the Green Climate Fund, which provides funding directly to programs in local communities in developing countries?
Finally, can the Middle East petrochemical states fully share their vast wealth derived from oil to help the far-poorer nations facing climate risks caused by that oil? Can they support the universal phase out of oil, coal and gas – instead of simply building their own mega-solar plants to protect themselves as they continue to pump oil?
What developing nations can – and must – do!
Meanwhile, can the most rapidly-developing nations fill the political and financial gap and provide some of the lost social cohesion?
India has already pledged an important goal of 35 percent reduction in emissions intensity of its GDP by 2030 (which is not the same as absolute CO2 emissions reduction, but still a positive step), and net zero emissions by 2070. The official delegation of India to COP29 – together with government delegations of other rapidly-developing nations – could jointly announce their determination to increase their already announced Nationally Determined Contributions, and resist the loss of momentum from the US backing away from its carbon reduction goals .
Can India – the nation with world’s richest experience of both Western and Eastern cultural strengths, and the largest democracy – finally resolve its problems of racial and religious hatred, and present to other nations a new model of economic prosperity that lifts up and values the poorest as well as the richest?
Can China start to share technology and export growth to poorer countries in a model of genuine sharing that isn’t based on economic self-aggrandizement?
Can Brazil stabilize itself politically and nurture its immense ecological resources before they are cleared away and turned into cattle ranches?
Can South Africa walk past its internal political problems and various recent corruption scandals to become the sub-Saharan economic engine and political leader that everybody had hoped it would be?
Can Russia stop trying to repeat its own history of genocidal imperialism (see Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe) and fomenting insurrection, and instead act like a responsible nuclear power? After all it was Russia whose ratification of the Kyoto Protocol saw it come into effect.
A more isolated US will provide more opportunity for leadership by the most rapidly developing nations.
Perhaps it is now time for China, India and the most rapidly developing nations to significantly contribute financially to climate funds like the loss and damage mechanism that assists the very poorest and most vulnerable nations .
Perhaps countries like India and China, Brazil and Indonesia – whose cultures have thousands of years of agricultural experience in monsoon and rainforest ecosystems – could cooperate to provide expertise to farmers in other countries now facing tropical deluges.
The BRICS group now includes not only Brazil, China, India, Russia, South Africa and the UAE, but countries in a partnership relationship, like Indonesia and Turkey. It therefore includes six of the world’s predicted top 15 economies by 2030.
That is not an economically powerless group. It represents significant economic power. Will they use that power to help their brother and sister nations now even more at risk from climate chaos?
Or will they each merely attempt to mimic the worst aspects of Western vulture capitalism – taking as much possible, giving as little as necessary, while racing to exploit their own poor and working people, as well as the poor and working people in other countries ?
A coalition of the still willing
As always in policy and politics, perception can be as important as substance, and generating a public appearance of momentum can be a necessary ingredient for generating actual progress in negotiations. So, agreeing to address the problem is an essential step.
For the world to work, nations must be willing to work together. For the planet not to spiral into economic, social and climate collapse, individuals in each country must be willing to respect and care for other people – and other peoples .
There are many losers from the US election, and the mood in Baku these two weeks will often seem bleak, but it will offer a clear opportunity for starting to work out a strategy by which climate change can be addressed without US leadership.
The return of Trump will not only be the worst scenario for climate, of course. The impacts on civilians living in Ukraine and Gaza and Sudan, on women in the US and Afghanistan and Iran, on refugees and minority families throughout dozens of countries, and on democracy everywhere, will be potentially disastrous .
But the impact on climate might be the one that’s the most difficult – if not impossible – to reverse. Unless, that is, the remaining responsible governments – in a coalition of the still-willing – can creatively and cooperatively configure a strategy to minimize the damage, and constructively move forward for the common global good, together.
Felix Dodds is an Adjunct Professor in the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina. He has have participated in United Nations conferences and negotiations since the 1990s. Felix Dodds and Chris Spence co-edited Heroes of Environmental Diplomacy: Profiles in Courage (Routledge, 2022), which examines the roles of individuals in inspiring change.
Michael Strauss is Executive Director of Earth Media, an independent communications consultancy based in New York. His clients include NGOs, national governments, trade unions and UN agencies. He coordinated press conferences at the United Nations and at global environmental summits from 1992 to 2012 .
He is co-author of “Only One Earth – The Long Road, via Rio, to Sustainable Development” with Felix Dodds and Maurice Strong.