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“We have overcome obstacles that no one thought possible and now it is clear that we have achieved the most incredible political goal. Look what happened. Is it crazy?”
Donald Trump’s re-election as president of the United States is raising concerns among environmentalists and climate scientists.
The former president, now president-elect, has called climate change an expensive hoax, labeled climate scientists “prophets of doom” and spoken out in favor of plans to scale back clean energy policy.
In the first six months of his first term, Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, a 2015 agreement signed by almost all countries, which promised to reduce emissions.
“The United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, thank you, thank you, but it will begin negotiations to rejoin the Paris Agreement or an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its its workers, its people, its taxpayers. So we’ll get out of this, but we’ll start negotiating and see if we can make a deal that’s fair and if we can, that’s great.
While Trump’s climate agenda in his second term has yet to be formally announced, it is expected to be very different from that of President Joe Biden’s administration.
“Folks, the evidence is clear. Climate change poses an existential threat to our lives, to our economy. And the threat is here. It’s not going to get better. The question: Can it get worse? Can we stop it from getting worse.”
With the COP29 UN climate summit set to begin in Azerbaijan this week, experts say any deal struck by the Biden administration will not be binding on the Trump administration.
Scientists and climate activists say Trump’s presidency will represent a major setback for U.S. efforts to address climate change.
Young people, in particular, fear that rhetoric about climate change and the facts behind it are enough to slow down progress.
Kayla Le is a 22-year-old climate activist and student from Arizona who says there’s no time to keep justifying facts in the middle of a climate crisis.
“Objectively, under Trump, he’s kind of facilitated a bunch of misinformation and made people very scared, not even scared but just very dubious about what facts and researchers who are dedicating their whole lives to actually showing us what’s going on on a larger plane. scale or as a microscale.”
While many fear Trump will undo important progress, some experts argue that while his power is broad, he cannot undo everything.
They argue that with investments in clean energy outpacing fossil fuels, the global trend can continue without American leadership.
Helen Clarkson is the CEO of Climate Group.
She says things will probably be different this time.
“As we go into the COP, and what makes the COP even more important this year, is that in the past the United States has withdrawn, we’ve seen other countries withdraw, but now there’s a lot of momentum in the climate system. it’s ongoing, and there are other factors that are driving it. Market demand, prices, renewable energy prices are going down, battery storage is going up. So, there’s a lot of momentum in the system, and I think what we don’t know is how other countries are doing So, the more importantly it will happen at the COP when we start to see other countries come out. They will have time to think about what they will do, and we will see and take a reading of the temperature at that point.”
Linda Kalcher is a climate policy analyst at Strategic Perspective.
According to her, Trump’s rhetoric and climate denialism will likely receive a stronger reaction this time.
“We look back at Trump’s last election, right after that the COP was held in Marrakesh. We saw a lot of uncertainty and concern in the early hours, and that’s natural. We see it again now. But after that, you saw countries coming in new together and willing to negotiate the results So this year too, now that we already have the result, I expect many leaders to come forward and say and feel the need to clearly distance themselves from the climate denialism that he advocates for and plans.”
The United States is one of the largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the world, accounting for approximately 13.5% of global emissions.
In late August, donation records showed Trump had received a record more than $21 million for his campaign from the oil and gas industry.
The president-elect in turn promised, as he put it, to “drill, baby, drill,” high-level fracking and to harvest more and more natural resources.
During his first term, Donald Trump told reporters that the United States has the cleanest air and water in the world.
“You know, in the United States we have the cleanest air in the world, and it’s gotten better since I’ve been president, we have the cleanest water, it’s crystal clear, and I always say I want crystal clear water, clean water and air so I haven’t heard the your comments but yes, we are setting environmental records.”
Rob Jackson, a climate scientist at Stanford University, fears the Trump administration will mean cutting funding to federal environmental agencies.
“As a climate scientist, I think it’s fair to use the term, the first administration was disastrous, at least in one sense. We withdrew from the Paris Agreement as a nation, the only country to do so. The administration has rolled back dozens of rules that made air and water cleaner and rolled back safeguards that limited mercury emissions from power plants. So I’m very concerned about air and water quality in the near term, and I’m concerned about agencies that monitor the health of the planet for the atmosphere and oceans like NOAA, particularly the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”
Despite this, other experts argue that a Trump presidency will mean that the climate movement in the United States could become more mobilized.
During his first administration, the movement developed policy proposals for a Green New Deal, some of which were later implemented under Joe Biden.
It is also argued that while politics at the federal level is important for climate action, local and state governments will continue to advance their own climate agendas.
California is the fifth largest economy in the world and plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045.
Carbon Direct policy analyst Zara Ahmed says climate action isn’t over in the US.
“The President has broad power to repeal through the proposed rulemaking process and existing regulations, including for things like methane emissions from power plants or vehicle emissions. However, at the same time, consumers can choose to purchase a vehicle at low emissions can choose to enact their own emissions regulations, as we see done in California. So, again, I think that while the federal government is an incredibly powerful tool, that doesn’t mean we’re at the end of climate action in the United States. United States.”