A climate skeptic president who promises to bet everything on fossil fuels will return to the White House next January. Will the fight against climate change suffer from the return of Donald Trump? Answers and explanations.
Posted at 1:13 a.m.
Updated at 6:00 a.m.
Is the return of Donald Trump so catastrophic for the planet’s climate?
“Yes,” replies without hesitation Hugo Séguin, fellow at the Center for International Studies and Research at the University of Montreal and specialist in climate negotiations. “He promised to do it and he will do it: derail commitments on climate as well as those on the environment. He did it when he took power in 2016, he debunked Barack Obama’s entire environmental legacy. He pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement, he’s going to do the same thing again. »
Would it be limited to withdrawing from the Paris Agreement?
Donald Trump made it clear that he would go much further in a second term, recalls Hugo Séguin. “We’re going to drill, baby, drill. We have more liquid gold under our feet, more energy, oil and gas than any other country in the world. We have a lot of potential revenue,” the candidate said at a rally last February with Republican voters. Words that he repeated after his new electoral victory. He also called renewable energy the “new business scam.”
How could it further promote the oil and gas industry?
“He said that one of his first decisions will be to further develop oil and gas production in the United States, which has already become the most important in the world under the Biden administration,” recalls Hugo Séguin. We should also expect the federal administration to offer tax credits to the industry and even to authorize drilling in protected areas, he believes. Donald Trump would also have promised the industry to end fines imposed on emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas (GHG), the recently reported Washington Post. “There are truly good days ahead for the oil and gas industry in the United States,” says Hugo Séguin.
Do we have an idea of the impact of these possible decisions on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States?
In an analysis published last spring, the specialized media Carbon Brief underlined that the return of Donald Trump to the White House could result in an increase of 4,000 million tonnes of GHGs by 2030. An increase equivalent to annual emissions of the European Union and Japan combined. “In other words, the 4 gigatons of CO2 additional Trump second term would wipe out – twice as much – all the savings made by the deployment of wind, solar and other clean technologies around the world over the last five years,” Carbon Brief said.
How do we arrive at such precise figures?
Carbon Brief’s analysis was based in particular on a meta-analysis published in 2023 in the journal Science. American researchers then established that one of the flagship measures of the Biden administration, theInflation Reduction Acthad the potential to reduce United States GHG emissions by 43 to 48% by 2035 compared to 2005 levels. Remember that this legislation from President Biden aims, among other things, to increase investments in renewable energies and electrification of transport. However, Donald Trump has committed to putting an end to this measure.
How reliable are these numbers?
Carbon Brief’s two experts, Simon Evans and Verner Viisainen, acknowledged that their results could vary, both downward and upward, and that they did not take into account uncertainties about the economy or the price of fuels and technologies in the coming years. They also ignored Donald Trump’s promise to support even more fossil fuel extraction.
What impact will the new president have on the international community?
“In the rest of the world, it could have a ripple effect. From the moment you have such an important leader, who is also uninhibited in his anti-environmental attitude, that will uninhibit hundreds of politicians around the world, who will say to themselves: hey, this recipe works,” believes Hugo Séguin. According to the expert, we must also expect four years of squabbles in international trade, where “the climate will be excluded from these discussions”.
What impact will it have on global warming?
“We are heading towards a world of more than 2 degrees [de réchauffement]and the election of Trump reinforces the fact that we are moving towards a world of more than 2 degrees,” says Hugo Séguin. As GHGs do not know borders, other countries will have to compensate for the increase in emissions from the United States, which is far from certain. According to Mr. Séguin, we can nevertheless expect China, the world’s largest emitter of GHGs, to continue its decarbonization efforts, just like the European Union. “In several countries, decarbonization will continue because it makes sense for these countries. »
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