« Drill, baby, drill! » Dated 2008, this Republican Party campaign slogan could not be more relevant this November 6. “Drill, darling, drill!” » sums up the climate policy that Donald Trump is preparing to put in place. Always more gas and ever more oil to be found underground, and a denial of climate change and its human origins assumed with peremptory arrogance. We can already anticipate the moment when the restrictive regulations which prohibited hydrocarbon prospecting in certain areas of Alaska will be lifted. And we can safely bet that the EPA, the American Environmental Protection Agency, will be shaken up again, or even dismantled, as during Donald Trump's first term.
The man is not one of those climate skeptics who dress up their anti-science and anti-knowledge convictions with a moderate veneer. In June 2017, newly elected 45th President of the United States, he announced his country's withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, concluded at COP21 – the annual United Nations conference on climate change – which took place held in December 2015 at Le Bourget, near Paris.
According to UN rules, it needed three years from the entry into force of the treaty to request termination, and an additional year to free itself from it for good. This is how the American withdrawal took effect on November 4, 2020… the day after the election of Joe Biden, which immediately signified the return of the United States to the fold of international negotiations.
The United States, the second largest emitter in the world
Under the Paris Agreement, the United States committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52% in 2030 compared to their 2005 level. By 2023, this reduction had reached 18 %, according to the Rhodium Group research center. In 2021, the country occupied second place among the world's largest emitters, with 11% of the total, far behind China at 29%.
With 17.5 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per inhabitant (CO2 equivalent allows all greenhouse gases to be counted in a single unit), an American emits much more greenhouse gases than a Chinese (10. 8 tonnes) and, a fortiori, than a Frenchman (6.3 tonnes). Last spring, the specialized media Carbon Brief estimated that a victory for Donald Trump could lead to the additional emission, by 2030, of 4 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent compared to what the United States would do under Democratic administration, i.e. annual emissions from Europe and Japan.
Oil triumphant
With the return of Donald Trump to the White House, the United States will be able to paralyze or once again leave the confines of climate multilateralism and dismiss with a flick of the wrist all calls for a reduction in the exploitation of fossil fuels (coal , gas, oil). For the first time, a timid mention to this effect appeared in the final text of COP28, organized last year in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. A mention won by a hard struggle while the United States is, with Saudi Arabia, the largest global oil producers. In addition to the unabashed relaunch of the use of hydrocarbons, it is the entire fragile scaffolding of North-South financing for climate action that risks a giant breakdown.
It's a safe bet that, from Monday in Baku, that's all we're going to talk about. The capital of Azerbaijan is hosting COP29 until November 22. And if it is the Biden Administration that remains in place until the inauguration of the new president in January, the American delegation will be largely ineffective following the Democratic setback. This aspect escapes no one. Especially not to China which, despite its major differences, had resumed communication with Washington eighteen months ago to make progress on climate policy. In 2015, the diplomatic success of COP21 in Paris was dependent on the Obama/Xi Jinping agreement on the climate.
