https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/11/climate/cop29-climate-talks-trump/index.html
Excerpt:
Similar anxieties are brewing among diplomats gathering in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, on Monday for the COP29 climate talks — and for good reason: Trump has vowed to again pull the United States from the Paris Agreement, which binds nearly all the world’s countries to dramatically slash carbon pollution. Instead, he is poised to revive his “drill baby, drill” agenda to cash in on more American oil and gas.
A U-turn on US climate policy could be disastrous for the planet, as it raises the risk of emulation. When America does something on the world stage, at least some countries tend to follow.
“Paris is one of those agreements where you need a critical mass of economic powers and emitters, past and present, to actually be able to address this challenge,” said Oli Brown, an associate fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House.
Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, negotiators will ramp down their expectations in terms of what’s possible at the talks, he said.
“And it will allow big emitters to not take the kind of ambitious action that’s needed, because they don’t want to be at a competitive disadvantage to the US, if the US is unburdened by any sense of collective responsibility,” he told CNN.
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But the real sting is, that as the world’s biggest economy, the US has more power than any other country to fund climate change action in the developing world. Even if it stays in the Paris Agreement, an “America First” Trump administration is unlikely to be more generous with grants and loans for other countries’ green transition.
That alone sets the talks up for failure — their main aim was to agree to a transfer $1 trillion a year from wealthy countries and institutions to help developing nations build clean energy systems and to adapt to worsening extreme weather, like heat waves, floods, drought, storms and wildfires.
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Jonathan Pershing, who served as deputy climate envoy at the start of the Biden administration, however, says the worst outcome is more likely a hit to America’s reputation on the global stage for flip-flopping on its promises.
He pointed out that it took a whole year for the Biden administration to regain the trust of its allies on climate after Trump’s previous withdrawal from the agreement.
“It’s a depressing story,” he said. “It’s a consequence of the United States, which has exercised a leadership role, abdicating that role.”
