The Nepal Weekly 
November 12, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump’s victory casts immediate doubt over the future of U.S. climate measures and raises questions about the country’s commitment to cutting planet-warming pollution.
A recent United Nations report warned that global climate action is moving too slowly — and that if world leaders don’t immediately and dramatically step up their efforts, there is “virtually no chance” of meeting the international target to limit temperature increases.
Trump, meanwhile, won his second term on a pledge to unleash fossil fuel development, slash pollution regulations and dismantle President Joe Biden’s climate agenda.
He has pledged to once again pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, a nonbinding pact to slash emissions that are driving up temperatures. His victory comes as international climate negotiators prepare to meet next week in Azerbaijan, where countries will hash out a new target for climate aid that some developing nations say should exceed $1 trillion annually.
Without U.S. contributions, other countries will be reluctant to step up funding, making deeper emissions cuts harder to achieve, diplomatic analysts say.
But Trump has often rejected the presence of climate change, or shrugged off its damaging effects on people and the environment.
“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” Trump said in a victory speech early Wednesday morning, vowing to increase the production of oil, which he called “liquid gold.”
Trump is likely to pull the USA out of the Paris agreement, the landmark international climate pact negotiated in 2015 during the Obama administration. Trump withdrew the USA from the deal when he was last in the White House. Moreover, Trump may go further this time and attempt to withdraw the USA from the international treaty that underpins the deal – the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This would cast the US further outside the global push to reduce dangerous greenhouse gas emissions, and make it harder for a subsequent president to rejoin the effort. Joining a treaty requires a two-thirds Senate majority, and legal experts are divided on whether Trump could exit a treaty without the same mandate. Australia is bidding to host the UN climate negotiations in 2026, the so-called COP31. If it succeeds, it will have to steer the challenging negotiations without the diplomatic heft of our closest ally.
And with the US no longer working towards climate action, Australia will need to establish new alliances with governments in Europe and Asia and strengthen existing ones. For example, the new Labour government in the United Kingdom has already proposed a Global Clean Power Alliance, which Australia is no doubt considering.
The US is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, after China. If it doesn’t cut pollution, humanity’s climate goals will be further out of reach – and with it the chances of preserving a habitable planet this century and beyond.
In 2100, when children alive currently are the same age as Trump is now, the loss of the Great Barrier Reef will be the least of their worries. They will be contending with more frequent and intense heatwaves, longer bushfire seasons, flooding and sea-level rise.
Trump has promised a complete repeal of President Joe Biden’s flafgship climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act. That law passed in 2022 and has been a boon for clean energy. It has already provided billions of dollars in tax credits for solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, among other technologies.
But it remains to be seen whether Trump will follow through on the threat. Some Republicans support the Inflation Reduction Act, especially those whose states have benefited from the jobs and investment. In fact, more than three-quarters of clean energy investments announced by the Biden administration are in Republican districts, such new solar manufacturing in South Carolina.
It is no surprise, then, that Republican lawmakers have already written to the leadership opposing the repeal of the climate bill. But given that Republicans have just flipped the Senate, and at the time of writing the House remains up for grabs, the repeal remains a live possibility.
