For the second time in less than a decade, the United States is expected to retreat from one of the world’s most consequential challenges: limiting the deadly and costly wreckage of climate change.
The election of Donald Trump is not only a setback to the world’s ability to rein in dangerous levels of warming. It also signals to other nations that the new leadership of the richest country in the world, which is also history’s largest emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gases, is not interested in protecting the lives of people battered by extreme heat, fire and floods, and is dismissive of the economic opportunities of transitioning to cleaner technologies.
Mr. Trump, who has called global warming a hoax, is all but certain to pull out of the Paris accord, the global agreement among nations to confront global warming, as he did during his first term as president. He is also likely to reverse a raft of regulations to clean up climate pollution.
In addition to largely isolating the United States on the global climate-diplomacy stage, actions like these would also hand a geopolitical win to the country’s main rival, China, which has spent a decade building up a powerful clean-energy industry and is now increasingly exporting it worldwide.
“The U.S. has barely got on the court. With Trump, it will soon leave the stadium,” said Li Shuo, a China specialist with the Asia Society Policy Institute.
Mr. Trump has also championed increased production of oil and gas, the burning of which produces the greenhouse gases warming the planet. The United States is already the world’s biggest oil and gas producer, and new drilling licenses would lock in more greenhouse gas emissions, driving up the severity and frequency of extreme weather.
“It is a moment that calls on us all to exercise our moral duty to protect the planet and millions of vulnerable people from the consequences of pompous climate denial,” Mohamed Adow, a Kenyan who heads an advocacy group called Power Shift Africa.
But the world has also changed since Mr. Trump’s first term.
Solar and wind energy are cheaper than ever, and in some cases less expensive than traditional fossil-fuel energy sources. The Biden administration’s landmark climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, has drawn new manufacturing to American shores. While Mr. Trump has disparaged investments in clean-energy technologies, like batteries and electric vehicles, it would be difficult for him to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act altogether.
Ceres, a nonprofit that works with businesses, said that wholesale rollbacks would “put American investors, businesses, workers, and U.S. economic competitiveness at greater risk.”
The Trump victory is likely to embolden right-wing lawmakers in Europe to slow down European Union-wide climate targets, and some European lawmakers were quick to make the economic case for pivoting to clean energy. “The transition to climate neutrality is a cornerstone of our future competitiveness,” said Jennifer Morgan, the German climate envoy, speaking of the European Union as well as Germany.
The U.S. vote is certain to loom over the next round of international climate negotiations, set to begin in Baku, in the petrostate of Azerbaijan, next week. Mr. Trump’s pledge to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement (President Biden rejoined in 2021) would be “disastrous,” said Jairam Ramesh, a former environment minister of India. In practical terms, the Paris pullout would mean that the United States would lose its seat at the global negotiating table, and with it the ability to influence some of the most significant debates being hammered out among the nations of the world.
In addition, an oil-championing American President is likely to embolden other petrostates to take up his “drill baby drill” mantra and weaken environmental protections elsewhere, particularly in developing economies. “This may derail focus on renewable-energy projects in emerging markets, incentivizing Nigeria and other oil and gas producers to continue to prioritize oil and gas for short-term economic gain,” said Gbenga Oyebode, a lawyer in Nigeria who follows the energy industry.
It could also spur far-right Latin American leaders to “sideline environmental protections, fueling a race toward unchecked exploitation,” said Natalie Unterstell, a policy analyst in Brazil. That happened during the first Trump administration. In 2018, far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro became Brazil’s president, weakened environmental laws and allowed Amazon deforestation to rise to record levels.
Mr. Trump proposed, on the campaign trail, blanket tariffs on Chinese imports. That is a threat to China as it tries to boost its battered economy. But an American retreat from clean-technology manufacturing would open doors for Chinese exports elsewhere. It would also help promote a Chinese vision of economic development.
In Brazil, for instance, Chinese companies are now setting up electric-vehicle factories there to bypass tariffs on imported cars. A more isolated United States, said Ms. Unterstell, “would increase Chinese trade and investments in the region, but it risks deepening geopolitical rifts.”
The Trump win raises a fundamental question for every other country: How important is the United States in preventing climate catastrophe?
“The rest of the world will continue working,” said Tasneem Essop, a South African and the head of Climate Action Network, an activist group.
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