Germana Carillo World leaders gathered in Baku, Azerbaijan, for a global climate summit are already faced with a grim reality: The United States, among those responsible for putting most of the greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, will abandon the fight against climate change
@COP29 Azerbaijan
The 2024 edition of the COP climate conference in Baku will, without Biden, von der Leyen, Putin, Macron, and half of Europe, be hard-pressed to obtain any commitment toward the phase-out of fossil fuels. That uphill struggle has been compounded with the announcement of President-elect Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. once again out of the Paris Agreement.
Trump’s victory signals shift in U.S. climate priorities
With his election victory, the US will likely revisit this priority in short order, as it did under Trump previously. A vocal climate skeptic who has called the crisis “fake,” Trump is expected to withdraw the US from the 2015 international agreement aimed at environmental and planetary protection, as he did during his first term in office.
With nods to several of his campaign promises, Donald Trump is said to be ready to sign an executive order to exit the agreement once more on January 20, 2025, the day of his second inauguration. As he did in 2019, during his first term in office, the action was later undone by his successor, Joe Biden, on his own Inauguration Day, so goes the yo-yo like back-and-forth that reflects the divided stance within U.S. politics on climate action.
U.S. to revoke climate commitments as warnings of global warming mount
That would equate to America rowing back on its promise to reduce greenhouse gases at precisely the time when scientists are advocating quick, deep cuts in emissions from all nations. It also suggests that the U.S., being one of the world’s richest countries, may withhold financial aid from poorer nations that contribute a minimum toward global warming but bear the full force of intensifying climate-related calamities.
In other words, rather than moving away from fossil fuels as the U.S. and many other countries pledged last year, the Trump administration appears set to go in the opposite direction. Trump has promised “Drill, baby, drill,” export more gas, and ease regulations for burning coal. And there’s little doubt he will follow through.
