The top US representative to COP29 defended his country’s progress in cutting planet-warming carbon emissions on Monday, insisting that much of it will endure despite President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to retreat from the fight against global warming.
Yet John Podesta, senior adviser to the president for international climate policy, also struck an apologetic tone at the start of the United Nations COP29 summit in Azerbaijan. The expected pullback by the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter, he acknowledged, comes even “as the dangers we face grow ever-more catastrophic.”
Trump’s return is already complicating negotiations in Baku over how much to boost funding for developing nations to green their economies and adapt to climate change. The president-elect has vowed to again withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement and roll back federal regulations that are critical to meet the country’s emissions-reduction goals. Even before his election, the US was viewed as an unreliable climate ally, having previously failed to ratify the landmark Kyoto Protocol more than two decades ago and deliver on promised financial contributions.
“It is clear the next administration will try to take a U-turn and reverse much of this progress,” Podesta told reporters. “I’m keenly aware of the disappointment that the United States has at times caused the parties of the climate regime, who have moved through a pattern of strong, engaged, effective US leadership followed by sudden disengagement after US presidential election.”
Negotiators representing the world’s richest countries are working in Baku to drum up more climate finance beyond the existing $100 billion annual pledge that expires next year. They now face the challenge of trying to land an ambitious commitment and offset any pullback in US funding, even as many developed nations face tight budget battles of their own.
Countries are also under pressure to advance ambitious plans to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. The US will hardly be leading by example — the likely reversal of many climate policies under Trump means the nation is unlikely to fulfill even its own 2030 pledge.
US emissions will probably still continue to fall — propelled by some popular policies that Trump is likely to leave alone, as well as action by states, local governments and businesses. Analysts also widely expect the US government to maintain some of the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies that are luring investment to decarbonization projects in areas represented by Republicans.
“The work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States with commitment and passion and belief,” Podesta said. “This is not the end of our fight for a cleaner, safer planet,” he said, adding that “the fight is bigger than one election, one political cycle and one country.”
After Trump announced he was withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement in 2017, no other country followed suit. Former diplomats and COP veterans say it’s unlikely nations would exit the accord this time either.
Health of Paris deal ‘still quite good’
Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s special envoy on climate, said that the health of the Paris Agreement was still “quite good” despite Trump’s threat to leave the pact again. She pointed out that the Earth is predicted to warm less this century than it would have before the Paris deal was struck, even if projections still fall short of the key goal of keeping temperatures within 1.5C of pre-industrial levels. “There are many questions regarding the US election,” Morgan said in a press conference Monday. “All my conversations are about how we move forward on implementing the Paris Agreement.”
At COP29, environmental activists were also seizing on Trump’s victory to bolster calls for President Joe Biden to use his waning weeks in office to cement his climate legacy. They urged him to reject pending applications to widely export liquefied natural gas and move against Energy Transfer LP’s Dakota Access oil pipeline.
“Biden needs to use the next two months to seal a climate legacy and put in a bulwark of protections against Trump,” said Ben Goloff, who works with the Center for Biological Diversity.
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