Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States on Wednesday, following a campaign where climate change was virtually absent.
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The world is reacting to Donald Trump’s presidential election victory on Wednesday, with analysts and commentators weighing in on what a second Trump presidency will mean for the fight against climate change in and outside the US.
Trump’s triumph marks the culmination of an election campaign in which climate change was notably absent from the agendas of both the Democratic and Republican parties.
Vice-President Kamala Harris, who was defeated in Tuesday’s election, was mostly quiet on the issue, offering no hints on her climate plan, with some suggesting it was a political strategy. Trump adopted a similar stance, though he offered some remarks that reinforced his position as a climate denier. During his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in July, he notably declared his intent to “drill, baby, drill” for more oil and gas.
Fossil fuels – natural gas, coal, and oil – are the single-largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions, the primary drivers of global warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere and raising Earth’s surface temperature. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has urged countries to halt new gas and oil field projects, arguing that this is the only way to keep the 1.5C-compatible net-zero emissions scenario alive.
In a statement, the Green Party of Northern Ireland described the election’s outcome as “deeply troubling,” hinting at the “chaos and damage” of the last Trump presidency to climate action globally. Meanwhile, the Center for International Environmental Law said Trump’s victory will have “profound impacts” on environmental protection, climate action and human rights.
Dan Lashof, US Director at World Resources Institute, said in a statement on Wednesday that “[t]here is no denying that another Trump presidency will stall national efforts to tackle the climate crisis and protect the environment.”
A Carbon Brief analysis published in March found that a second Trump election win could add 4 billion tonnes to US emissions by 2030, the equivalent of the annual emissions of the EU and Japan combined.
“One can only hope that Donald Trump will put conspiracy theories to the side and take the decisive action to address the climate crisis that the American people deserve,” Lashof added.
The country would also miss on its emissions reduction pledge by a “wide margin,” according to Carbon Brief, with emissions set to fall just 28% from 2005 levels by the decade’s end. Under the Paris Agreement, the US is committed to achieve a 50-52% reduction by then.
Speaking before the election, Todd Stern – former United States Special Envoy for Climate Change and the United States’ chief negotiator of the Paris accord – said that if Trump blocks efforts to cut US 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.”
“We are poised to enter a much darker and much scarier time, whose consequences we will have be living with the consequences of that for the rest of our lives, even just from a climate perspective,” said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a leader of the progressive group of Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives known as “the Squad.”
“I wish I could say that we can undo all the damage that we are poised to endure but there are some things we will not recover from. We will not recover from blowing past 1.5 degrees centigrade, or 2 degrees centigrade of warming. And we will live with the consequences of that for the rest of our lives,” Ocasio-Cortez, who on Tuesday won reelection representing the Bronx in New York, said.
🧯 US EMBASSY PAINTED ORANGE AS WE REJECT FASCISM
— Just Stop Oil (@JustStop_Oil) November 6, 2024
This morning the world wakes to find it has slipped further into fascism as well as climate breakdown. Trump's win puts the lives of ordinary people at risk, everywhere.
Political systems that can be bought by big oil have no… pic.twitter.com/5OuFgH1B70
Meanwhile, Just Stop Oil activists in the UK on Wednesday protested Trump’s victory by spraying orange paint on a section of the U.S. embassy building in south London.
“This morning the world wakes to find it has slipped further into fascism as well as climate breakdown. Trump’s win puts the lives of ordinary people at risk, everywhere,” the activist group, known for its disruption tactics, wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter). Two men were arrested in connection with the attack.
More reactions (click to view)
Christiana Figueres, former head of the UNFCCC: “The result from this election will be seen as 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. Standing with oil and gas is the same as falling behind in a fast moving world. Clean energy technologies will continue to outcompete 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.”
Bill Hare, physicist and climate scientist: “Donald Trump’s re-election to the White House is a major setback for climate action but ultimately it’s the US that could end up losing out, as the rest of the world will move forward without it. The truth is that a second Trump presidency can’t stop climate action, just like his denial of human-induced climate change won’t spare the US from its impacts.”
Faith Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency: “Congratulations President Donald Trump on your election for a 2nd term As during your 1st term, IEA 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.”
Armond Cohen, Clean Air Task Force Executive Director: “The U.S. presidential election results are official, and the challenge just got more challenging. The winning candidate has pledged to roll back many landmark U.S. climate and clean air policies and to withdraw from global engagement on emissions reductions. While some may interpret this as the death knell for U.S. climate progress, or an invitation to push the issue aside for four years, that is far from inevitable. Clean energy, innovation, clean air, and climate action are broadly popular across the country, and they can and must progress regardless of who sits in the White House.”
Backtracking
A few months after taking office in 2017, former US president Donald Trump announced the country’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, a move that Joe Biden reversed in 2020. Last week, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned about the consequences of the US leaving the Paris accord for a second time, something that a Trump campaign spokesperson recently described as a concrete possibility.
“The Paris agreement can survive, but people sometimes can lose important organs or lose the legs and survive. But we don’t want a crippled Paris agreement. We want a real Paris agreement,” said Guterres.
Trump, who has repeatedly called climate change a hoax, has also pledged to reverse Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the largest climate bill in the country’s history, along with several other climate policies. While a full reversal of the IRA is unlikely, Trump could attempt to change tax credit provisions that have yet to be finalized and are still in progress.
Speaking about California’s ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035 on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast last month, Trump said he would “terminate the mandate immediately.” The state-wide plan, one of the first such regulations in the world, was approved in 2022 to tackle air pollution from vehicles, a pressing issue in California.
“That would be done I would say in my first day, maybe two days,” he said.
In April, a former Trump White House official said that Trump would take a “hard-nosed look” at any outcome of the ongoing negotiations for a Global Plastic Treaty, scheduled to be finalized by the end of this year, and be “skeptical that the agreement reached was the best agreement that could have been reached.”
Featured image: Wikimedia Commons.
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