With Donald Trump winning a come-back victory as president of the United States and Republicans in a position to win both chambers of Congress, analysts and commentators around the world are offering their views on what this means for the world’s battle to tackle climate change.
At home, Trump – a climate-change sceptic – has promised to encourage the production of fossil fuels and rein in Biden’s green economy spending.
Internationally, he has said he would withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement, as he did briefly during his first term in office. He is reportedly also considering trying to quit the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the treaty that establishes the basic architecture for countries to work together to address climate change. He may also cut the US’s climate finance contributions to developing countries.
Climate Home is compiling reactions from climate experts in the US and beyond on the implications of a Trump victory for global climate policy and climate action in the United States:
Todd Stern, former US climate envoy
Speaking before the election, Todd Stern – who was former President Barack Obama’s chief climate negotiator, including on the Paris Agreement – said that if Trump blocks efforts to cut his country’s CO2 emissions, it “will be very disappointing – to put it mildly”. But, he added, “the machine is moving – the wheels that are spinning in all elements of clean technology are not going to stop”.
He said Trump would try to pull back Biden’s green spending through legislative mechanisms like the Inflation Reduction Act. But “in many cases, they won’t be able to do that”, Stern added, because a lot of the spending has been in states with Republican Congressmen and Governors who are “not going to want those things to be undermined because of jobs and employment”.
US climate envoy Todd Stern consults with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua in 2011 (Pic: IISD Reporting Services/2011)
Gina McCarthy, former US presidential climate adviser and Environmental Protection Agency administrator
Echoing Stern, McCarthy said “the shift to clean energy is unstoppable and our country is not turning back”. She added that the EPA and all public servants “stand ready to do their jobs, follow the science, and protect the rule of law”. “We all must stand ready to hold this administration accountable to do its job of protecting our people and our environment,” she added.
“Bloomberg’s America Is All In [a coalition of local leaders supporting climate action] will work with cities, states and the private sector to do everything in its power to stop this administration from unwinding the progress we’ve made on climate,” she said.
Jennifer Morgan, German government climate envoy
The US-born diplomat said that the German government would “work with the next US administration wherever possible to strengthen the international rules-based order and deal with shared security challenges, including the climate crisis.”
“For Germany and the EU the transition to climate neutrality is a cornerstone of our future competitiveness. We therefore will work with all partners towards a level playing field in the race for green industries,” she added.
Jennifer Morgan speaks at the World Economic Forum in 2020 (World Economic Forum/Boris Baldinger)
Christiana Figueres, former head of the UNFCCC
The Costa Rican diplomat, who oversaw the Paris Agreement in 2015, said the US election result was a “major blow to global climate action, but it cannot and will not halt the changes underway to decarbonise the economy and meet the goals of the Paris Agreement”.
She added: “Standing with oil and gas is the same as falling behind in a fast-moving world. Clean energy technologies will continue to out-compete fossil fuels, not just because they are healthier, faster, cleaner and more abundant, but because they undercut fossil fuels where they are at their weakest: their unsolvable volatility and inefficiency.”
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Izabella Teixeira, former Brazilian environment minister
Teixeira, Brazil’s environment minister from 2010 to 2016, said “there is no room for climate denialism in the context of the climate emergency”. “American society is co-responsible for global warming and, despite Trump’s victory, will undoubtedly be co-responsible for the solutions to the climate crisis,” she added.
Izabella Teixeira served as Brazil’s environment minister under ousted president Dilma Rousseff (Pic: Senado Federal/Flickr)
Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and architect of the Paris Agreement
The French diplomat said: “The US election result is a setback for global climate action, but the Paris Agreement has proven resilient and is stronger than any single country’s policies.”
She added: “The context today is very different to [when Donald Trump was first elected in] 2016. There is powerful economic momentum behind the global transition, which the US has led and gained from, but now risks forfeiting.”
Bill Hare, climate scientist and CEO of Climate Analytics
Hare, who has contributed to the flagship scientific reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned that “the election of a climate denier to the US Presidency is extremely dangerous for the world”.
He added: “We are already seeing extreme damages, loss of life around the globe due to human-induced warming 1.3C. President Trump will not be above the laws of physics and nor will the country that he leads. If Trump follows through with his threat to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the biggest loser will be the United States.”
Yao Zhe, global policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia
Zhe said: “China finds itself at a pivotal moment. Expectations are high that China will join key nations in reassuring the world that climate action will continue.” She added that, to reassure the world, China should submit a new UN climate plan “that outlines clear actions to transition away from fossil fuels”.
“Climate played a crucial role in stabilising US-China relations during the Biden time. The Trump administration may undo some of the climate diplomacy gains of recent years, but US-China climate cooperation will continue at the subnational level and among non-state actors,” she concluded.
Mary Robinson, former prime minister of Ireland
Robinson said: “I sincerely hope that the recent hurricanes in the United States have caused President Trump to rethink his belief that climate change will create ‘more oceanfront properties’. It will only bring more death and devastation.”
She called for a redoubling of efforts by those working to tackle global warming, adding: “The outcome of the US elections should not be used as an excuse by world leaders to avoid taking action against climate change.”
Mary Robinson is a climate justice campaigner, UN special envoy and former president of Ireland (Pic: twitter/ODI)
Collin Rees, Oil Change International’s US program manager
Rees called for Biden to “secure his climate legacy” by ending fossil fuel expansion, making permanent a pause on LNG gas exports, shutting down the Dakota Access oil pipeline and fulfilling the US’s commitment to stop financing international fossil fuel projects.
“What Biden does now will determine whether he’ll be remembered as the leader who did his utmost to limit the Trump administration’s damage and keep the world from hurtling towards climate chaos,” he said.
Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency
The Turkish energy analyst congratulated Trump in a social media post on X and said that, as during his first term, the International Energy Agency “looks forward to working closely with your new administration to support US energy policy goals and to advance global efforts towards affordable, secure & sustainable energy.”
IEA head Fatih Birol speaks at the Battersea power station shopping centre (Picture: Powering Past Coal Alliance)
(Reporting by Climate Home news team; editing by Megan Rowling)
The post US election: Climate experts react to Donald Trump’s victory appeared first on Climate Home News.
US election: Climate experts react to Donald Trump’s victory
Jacynta Fa’amau is a Pacific campaigner at global grassroots climate movement 350.org and a secretariat member of Pacific Climate Warriors.
The first thing that struck me was the sheer size of Queensland’s Saraji coal mine. Standing at the edge of the enormous pit, my brain scrambled for words as I scanned the earth’s open wound – a whole island could probably fit inside it.
Looking down, I noticed footprints of an emu and a koala, pressed and dried in what was once a puddle – signs of how drought had driven animals in desperate search of water, so dangerously close to the coal trucks and heavy machinery ahead.
Earlier this year, I joined a small group of Pacific Islanders on a journey through the Bowen Basin to learn from First Nations communities battling Australia’s mammoth coal industry. Of the more than 40 coal mines operating in the area, BHP & Mitsubishi Alliance’s Saraji mine is one of the largest. So it came as a painful shock to us when in August, the Australian government approved the mine’s extension just months after our visit.
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Witnessing coal extraction is devastating. It is bad enough to see what pillaging tonnes of coal can do to a mine’s immediate surroundings: dry creek beds, dwindling wildlife, denuded land. But to know that this coal will be shipped across the ocean, bring air pollution, and eventually lead to the destruction of Pacific islands thousands of miles away is another kind of heartbreak.
Rising ocean waters
I’m an Australian-born Samoan. In 2002, I visited my family home for the first time. My father took me to the rural community where generations of my family were raised. He did not have the words to describe how much has changed since rising ocean waters had taken away almost a third of the beach.
I learned of how we had to relocate my great‑great‑grandparents’ grave to higher ground twice in the last 15 years. Of how my cousins have to paddle out further to sea to catch fish, since warmer waters have destroyed much of the reef. Of how the ocean crashes so close to my uncle’s home that he had to build a new house further away.
We saw reflections of our own climate destruction in the Pacific when we shared these stories with our First Nations relatives at the edge of the Saraji mine. Murrawah Johnson and Teila Watson, both Birri Gubba and Gangulu women, made clear connections between their struggles and ours. “We don’t get to inherit our land and we don’t get to inherit our traditional roles. We are fighting a war on extinction,” Murrawah said.
Coal extraction devastated their lands and cultures – totems have disappeared, fresh water has become scarce – while the effects of using it have devastated ours. “King tide, cyclones, all the violence that has been enacted on your country and people is because of the violence that has been allowed here, to us and our country,” Teila said.
Wearing the mantle of climate leadership
This week, Australia is assuming the mantle of climate leadership as co-president and head of negotiations of this year’s UN Climate Change Conference, COP31. It will lead on deliberating the summit’s priorities as world leaders and climate negotiators descend on Fiji and Tuvalu for the pre-COP meetings.
Ironically, just days before the pre-COP began, the New South Wales Independent Planning Commission approved the largest-ever coal project the state has seen, set to emit an extra 800 million tonnes of carbon emissions. I joined the Pacific Climate Warriors and other communities in submitting about 4,000 appeals to oppose the project – yet these all fell on deaf ears.
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But the fight is not yet over. The project still requires federal approval to proceed, so every promise that Australia makes while at the helm of the climate talks counts. These promises will be measured against actual decisions it makes at home: to either lock us into more decades of climate pollution, or begin shutting down coal and gas once and for all.
Pacific leaders have made it clear that countries must align their policies with the 1.5-degree warming goal, a limit that we already know will be breached within the decade. Any chance of keeping this still within reach requires an immediate end to fossil fuel expansion and concrete plans to phase out existing projects. But success will be an uphill battle if COP31’s own head of negotiations refuses to lead by example.
Australia remains the second-largest coal exporter in the world. It is one of the very few industrialised countries under the Paris Agreement’s Annex I that still has no coal phase-out plan. Since 2022, the Albanese government has approved 37 new, expanded or extended coal, oil and gas projects. It is thus unsurprising that its own mitigation policies have been rated by Climate Action Tracker as “insufficient”, even without factoring in fossil fuel exports and related expansion.
Keeping 1.5C alive
Australia must course-correct to earn the mantle it has been given, especially by Pacific nations that backed the country’s bid for the COP31 co-presidency. As a first step, the government must end all coal expansion and explicitly declare a coal phase-out date. It’s the only way to show that it’s capable of leadership that moves beyond endlessly deliberating the “if”, and starts implementing the “how” of keeping the 1.5C target alive.
The dread I felt staring down at the abyss on the edge of that coal mine months ago still exists. I carry it with me as I show up at the pre-COP to demand that leaders heed the calls of Pacific people. But it is tempered with resolve to keep our lands and communities alive. We remain steadfast in our efforts to secure an outcome that protects people everywhere and brings us back below 1.5 degrees as soon as possible.
The post Coal mines and hypocrisy must not be Australia’s COP31 legacy appeared first on Climate Home News.
Coal mines and hypocrisy must not be Australia’s COP31 legacy
When José Antonio Kast took office as Chile’s new president in March, one of his first moves was to put the brakes on plans to expand two protected marine parks – raising doubts about the country’s high-profile bid to host the headquarters of the High Seas Treaty.
But during the UN General Assembly last month, the right-wing leader reaffirmed his leftist predecessor’s ambition for Chile to host the landmark global pact, which came into effect in January and provides a legal framework to protect the waters of the high seas beyond national jurisdiction that cover about two-thirds of the world’s oceans.
Hailing the country’s “maritime vocation”, Kast’s government said the bid to host the treaty’s secretariat in the port city of Valparaíso was state policy and testament to its commitment to multilateralism.
“For the government of Chile, it is of high interest to achieve this recognition, and we will carry out all the efforts to obtain the necessary support,” Foreign Minister Francisco Pérez Mackenna was quoted as saying by local media.
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Tough competition from Chinese, Belgian bids
But to garner the votes it needs, Chile must fend off competing bids by Belgium – which has proposed its well-connected capital, Brussels – and China, whose well-funded bid includes the provision of free premises in the coastal city of Xiamen and five years of free utility costs.
Parties to the treaty, formally called the Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), will choose the headquarters at their first summit (COP1), in New York from January 11 to January 22, 2027. They will seek consensus, falling back on a