Four years after failing to be re-elected against Joe Biden, Donald Trump will finally run for a second term as president of the United States. The climate-sceptical leader of the Republicans already intends to return to the ecological efforts of his predecessor.
This already poses a threat to global climate negotiations and policies, a few hours before the start of COP29 in Azerbaijan.
The future president has never hidden his climate skepticism. Global warming is a “hoax” according to the president-elect who is committed to relaunching oil extraction in the United States: “I make this promise to the great American people: I will put an end to the devastating inflation crisis and I will lower the cost of energy. We’re going to drill, honey, drill! »
“A climate of uncertainty”
Other promises include an end to regulations on car emissions and an end to standards to limit emissions from coal-fired power plants. All this while leaving the Paris Agreement, as during his first mandate. The United States, the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, would no longer respect the global objectives of limiting global warming, which risks weighing on the COP negotiations in Azerbaijan which opened on November 11.
“Pockets of resistance” to watch out for
Environmental advocates are dismayed by the outcome of this election. “This is very bad news,” reacts the Climate Action Network, which nevertheless puts the scope of this election into perspective. First of all, it is Joe Biden’s teams who will participate in COP29 in Azerbaijan and then Donald Trump does not make global climate policy alone. “On its own, there are all the other States around the table,” recalls Gaïa Febvre, responsible for international issues at the Climate Action Network. In the United States, certain progressive states, cities but perhaps also businesses will say that it is important to respect the Paris Agreement. These are all these pockets of resistance that will be created and that we will have to look at. » The Climate Action Network calls on the European Union and France to take part in this “resistance”. At this stage, there is no reaction from the Minister of Ecology Agnès Pannier-Runacher, responsible in particular for climate negotiations.
If Donald Trump keeps his climate promises and undoes the measures taken by his predecessor, his presidency could result in the emission, by 2030, of 4 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent more than if the policies implemented by Joe Biden were maintained – which corresponds to the annual emissions of Europe and Japan, according to Carbon Brief calculations.
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