With the election of Trump, COP29 is far from being the only concern for the climate

CLIMATE – Bad timing. Less than a week before the opening of COP29 in Baku, Donald Trump has won his return ticket to the White House. During the UN climate conference which opens this Monday, November 11 in Azerbaijan, some 198 countries – including the United States – must agree on commitments to limit global warming. But for Donald Trump, these discussions have little importance: for the billionaire, the ” prank “ of climate change is “one of the biggest scams of all time”.

Consequently, upon his return to power, Donald Trump wishes to leave the Paris Agreement, a key text which aims to limit warming below 1.5°C and which he had already left during his first term. But that's not all: the ex-president also mentioned leaving the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which would allow the United States, the world's second largest polluter, to escape climate negotiations.

In this context, the discussions at COP29 promise to be more tense than expected, while countries must already address a very sensitive subject: financing the ecological transition. The American withdrawal from climate diplomacy risks encouraging other major polluters, such as China and India, to scale back their own commitments. A worrying prospect, which nevertheless constitutes only the first consequence of the re-election of Donald Trump.

4 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases

According to the calculations of the specialized site Carbon BriefDonald Trump's return to could lead to 4 billion additional tons of American emissions by 2030 compared to the current trend, under the mandate of Joe Biden. This is equivalent to the emissions of Europe and Japan combined, or those of 140 low-income countries combined.

Concretely, if the policies announced by the Republican candidate are applied, the United States risks only reducing its emissions by 28% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. This objective would be well below the reduction of 50 to 52% that the country committed to achieving in the Paris Agreement. And again, this estimate does not take into account the promise of “drill, baby, drill”, hammered home by Donald Trump throughout his campaign.

A good one in the exploitation of fossil fuels

It is a fixed idea with Donald Trump: to develop, the United States must exploit fossil fuels as much as possible, regardless of the consequences on global warming of the planet. “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world. More than Saudi Arabia or Russia »he recalled again in his victory speech.

The billionaire climate skeptic also wants to lift the moratorium on the construction of new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals and repeal recent regulations on vehicle emissions, put in place to accelerate the transition to electric. Furthermore, other recent standards, such as those limiting CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants, could be canceled without needing the approval of the US Congress.

Unraveling US climate policy

Donald Trump also wants to reverse course onInflation Reduction Act (IRA)historic climate law enacted in August 2022 under Joe Biden. The vote on this text made it possible to mobilize 369 billion dollars to support green industry over the next ten years. This money must be used to create jobs in the solar energy, wind energy and battery manufacturing sectors.

But the re-elected president completely disagrees with this law. For example, he wants to slow down the development of wind turbines as soon as “first day” in function, to ensure that they will not kill birds and whales.

This desire to unravel the country's climate policy is reminiscent of his first mandate. Between 2017 and 2021, Donald Trump repealed more than a hundred regulations from United States climate policy. This time, he also wants to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Observation Agency (NOAA), an essential institution in the study of climate and its developments in on a global scale.

Faced with all these promises, the climate future of the United States and the globe now hangs on what Donald Trump will actually implement during his mandate. “No one knows what will happen”declared to Politico Glen Peters, researcher at the International Climate Research Center, based in Oslo. “And that is perhaps what is most worrying. »

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