{"id":9643,"date":"2024-11-09T11:38:31","date_gmt":"2024-11-09T11:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/09\/donald-trump-is-likely-to-scale-back-americas-climate-targets-will-other-countries-follow-suit\/"},"modified":"2024-11-09T11:38:31","modified_gmt":"2024-11-09T11:38:31","slug":"donald-trump-is-likely-to-scale-back-americas-climate-targets-will-other-countries-follow-suit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/09\/donald-trump-is-likely-to-scale-back-americas-climate-targets-will-other-countries-follow-suit\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump is likely to scale back America\u2019s climate targets \u2013 will other countries follow suit?"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a year of ever more extreme weather and continually rising global temperatures, it’s no wonder this year’s UN climate summit has been called – once again – the “last-chance saloon”.<\/p>\n

Yet swaggering out through its swing doors goes president-elect Donald Trump<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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The timing of his election win, with its promise to withdraw the US<\/strong> from the global climate process, couldn’t be worse.<\/p>\n

Next year is forecast to exceed 1.5 degrees of warming for the first time – something the Paris Agreement<\/strong> is designed to prevent from becoming the norm.<\/p>\n

Despite that and nearly 30 years of talks, man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are still rising.<\/p>\n

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Yet just a handful of nations have committed to cut them enough to prevent close to three degrees of warming by the end of the century.<\/p>\n

So does America’s sudden departure, at this most precarious of moments, spell disaster?<\/p>\n

Under previous administrations, the US was a major diplomatic force at the talks – brokering significant concessions from more recalcitrant states, including the world’s largest polluter, China<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

It also set ambition, adopting carbon-cutting pledges and domestic policies like the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that sent a powerful message to others that if the US saw a future beyond fossil fuels, everyone could.<\/p>\n

As the largest shareholder in the World Bank, the US was also seen as key to brokering a new deal to finance the green transition in poorer countries: the main objective of the COP29<\/strong> talks in Azerbaijan.<\/p>\n

Now, although its negotiating team heading to Baku still serves President Joe Biden<\/strong>‘s agenda, it has lost its diplomatic leverage. In less than three months, they will all be out of a job.<\/p>\n

Will the departure of the US galvanise other leaders – threatened by increasingly right-leaning electorates at home – to scale back their ambition too?<\/p>\n

Or even follow its lead and ditch the “woke” jamboree of school-shy teenagers, indigenous groups and NGOs some have long perceived the UN climate talks to be?<\/p>\n

Not likely – at least according to Jonathan Pershing, former president Barack Obama<\/strong>‘s then-climate envoy.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump tried to reverse US climate policies when he last won control of the White House and it didn’t come to much, argues Mr Pershing.<\/p>\n

“Even with the shock, not a single other country followed the United States in withdrawing from the Paris Agreement,” he says. “I don’t think anyone will this time either.”<\/p>\n

His optimism stems from the fact the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement can ignore climate realities, but not economic ones.<\/p>\n

Despite a campaign slogan of “Trump Digs Coal,” more coal-fired power plants closed under Mr Trump’s last administration, for example, than under the climate-friendly one of Mr Obama.<\/p>\n

Alternatives to fossil fuels, like wind and solar power, are increasing in popularity and decreasing in price, a trend forecast to continue.<\/p>\n

This is the case even more so among America’s competitors like China which, according to Mr Pershing, saw 40% of its GDP last year come from shifting to clean technologies.<\/p>\n

“The idea that they would forego that growth just because the US has withdrawn seems not only implausible but highly, highly, unlikely,” he said.<\/p>\n

That may be the analysis from COP insiders. However, international agreements have long lagged behind the urgency of the climate crisis.<\/p>\n

The talks about to start in Baku were supposed to accelerate action.<\/p>\n

Instead, negotiators will arrive knowing that 72 million Americans voted for Mr Trump. It’s unlikely his denial of climate change was a major factor in their decision – but nor was it enough to deter them.<\/p>\n

His administration’s plans may turn out to be just another bump along the road towards an inevitable zero-carbon future.<\/p>\n

But any climate scientist will tell you that even the slightest delay on that journey is disastrous – and more than half of America just signalled it has no interest in going faster.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This post appeared first on sky.com<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a year of ever more extreme weather and continually rising global temperatures, it’s no wonder this year’s UN climate summit has been called – once again – the “last-chance saloon”. Yet swaggering out through its swing doors goes president-elect Donald Trump. The timing of his election win, with its promise to withdraw the US <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9644,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}