The Australians offered fresh brewed coffee on Saturday afternoon. The Singaporean pavilion had free beer. The American delegation was mostly offering assurances that all hope was not lost.
The election of Donald J. Trump has cast a pall over the U.N. climate negotiations in Azerbaijan, putting U.S. representatives, most of them Democrats, in an especially awkward position.
With less than 70 days until Mr. Trump is inaugurated for a second time, a collection of Democratic officials was pledging that the United States would continue working to limit global warming, even as the country’s next president threatened to do precisely the opposite.
“Effective in January, the United States government will be defecting from any position of responsibility,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, said on Saturday at the talks in Baku, Azerbaijan. “But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t going to be considerable activity coming out of the United States.”
President-elect Trump may have other plans. During his campaign, he threatened to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord, roll back environmental regulations and expand the production of oil and gas, the main drivers of global warming.
His early cabinet picks suggest that he is preparing to act on some of his most extreme promises to remake American environmental policy. Mr. Trump has tapped Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, who has deep ties to the oil industry, to run the Interior Department. Lee Zeldin, a former congressman and a loyal supporter, is in line to lead a far-reaching overhaul of the Environmental Protection Agency.
But to hear the Democrats in Baku tell it, these abrupt swings in policy won’t stop the United States from embracing clean energy.
“Just like climate change won’t be solved by any one president, climate action won’t be stopped by any one president,” Senator Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said on Friday.
The economics of the energy transition have changed over the past eight years since Mr. Trump took office for his first term.
Solar power is cheaper and more ubiquitous than ever, and electric vehicles are going mainstream. The Inflation Reduction Act, signed by President Biden in 2022, has set off a wave of investment in domestic manufacturing, with companies building battery plants and factories making other clean energy components around the country, including in many Republican districts.
But Mr. Trump has threatened to blunt these efforts, pledging to dismantle parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, eliminate a tax credit for electric vehicles and instead shift federal support to the oil and gas industry.
At the conference in Baku, the U.S. delegation was working to influence the summit’s talks on climate finance and carbon markets. It was also expected to set a new target to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, although it is highly unlikely that the Trump administration will seek to meet it.
Diplomats from other countries were expressing their concern to the United States.
“They are sharing their fear and apprehension with us, but it hasn’t really changed our approach to the issues,” said Sue Biniaz, the lead U.S. negotiator. “Part of the vibe I’m feeling is that there’s more of a sense of the unknown for next year.”
Among the main fears is that Mr. Trump will make good on his pledge to immediately withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, the only cabinet secretary to join the U.S. delegation, said that the Paris Agreement had endured a U.S. pullout before. Mr. Trump withdrew the country from the accord during his first term in office, only to see Mr. Biden rejoin.
“The future of U.S. climate policy may be less certain today than it was last week, but this moment is not unprecedented,” Ms. Granholm said.
She noted that after the Trump administration pulled out of the agreement in 2017, many states and cities increased their support for climate policies while technologies like solar and wind continued to expand.
“While the leadership of the country on energy and policy may be changing, what’s happening on the ground and what’s happening in the private sector will mean that the United States will continue to push energy policy,” Ms. Granholm said. “The private sector is all in, and so are many states across the country.”
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has been scrambling to lock in protections to the state’s climate policies before Mr. Trump takes office in January.
“This is not an issue of, like, benevolence, or, you know, environmentalism, even,” said Yana Garcia, Mr. Newsom’s secretary for environmental protection, who was attending her first U.N. climate summit. “It is a crisis of human survival.”
The American presence was muted at this year’s U.N. climate summit, known as COP29. Last year, Vice President Kamala Harris addressed world leaders at the event, which was held in Dubai. A year earlier, Mr. Biden spoke at COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.
This year, the work of speaking on behalf of the United States fell to John Podesta, the White House international climate adviser.
“While the United States federal government under Donald Trump may put climate action on the back burner, the work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States with commitment and passion and belief,” Mr. Podesta said at a news conference on Monday. “Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable.”
A few American conservatives were at the conference, including Representative August Pfluger, a Texas Republican, and Heather Reams, the president of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a nonprofit policy group that works on Republican efforts to address climate change.
Ms. Reams said she hoped Mr. Trump would not pull out of the Paris accord, a sentiment that was shared earlier in the week by the Exxon chief executive, Darren Woods. Ms. Reams also said she disagreed with Mr. Trump’s plans to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act.
“We don’t think we should pull out of Paris,” she said. “There’s a messaging game in this, too. How serious is the United States?”
On Friday, an otherwise subdued conference received a jolt of energy when former Vice President Al Gore took the stage in the main plenary hall and implored international delegates to move more swiftly to reduce planet-warming emissions. Although he did not mention Mr. Trump by name during an hourlong presentation that drew loud applause at times, the context was clear.
“Do not be discouraged by any temporary political setbacks,” Mr. Gore said. “We have to do this. We have no choice.”
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