The setbacks on climate measures expected from Donald Trump could result in an additional warming of the planet of 0.04°C by the end of the century, as long as other countries do not take action. same meaning, according to a study published Thursday.
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Trump, who will return to the White House in January, has promised to reverse Joe Biden’s climate measures and take the United States out of the 2015 Paris agreement, whose most ambitious goal is to limit warming to 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era.
The return of Donald Trump will “affect the temperature levels that we present here, but to what extent is uncertain”, underlines the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) – a reference assessment tool for warming.
It could result in an additional 0.04°C of warming by the end of the century compared to the CAT projections of +2.7°C based on current policies, assuming that the rollback of green policies is limited to the United States, writes the CAT in its report. The warming could be “a few tenths of degrees” compared to its optimistic scenario assuming a definitive abandonment of the United States’ carbon neutrality objective, specifies the CAT.
Which would be “very detrimental to the prospects of limiting warming to 1.5°C”, underlines the text, “the wider the decline in policies beyond the United States, the greater the risk”.
“Clearly, we don’t know the full impact of the U.S. election until President-elect Trump takes office, but there is clean energy momentum building in the U.S. that will be hard to stop,” Bill said. Hare, head of Climate Analytics, one of the CAT groups.
“The damage in terms of emissions” of planet-warming gases, “confined to the United States and over four to five years, is probably recoverable,” he said. But the impact could be much greater if other countries use the declining ambitions of the United States, the world’s second-largest emitter, as an excuse to slow down their own climate measures, he added.
A “fundamental” question, underlines Bill Hare, will be the reaction of China, the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.
“Much higher” peak
The CAT’s projections based on current climate measurements of a warming of 2.7°C are at the same level as at COP26 in Glasgow three years ago. Taking into account the commitments of States by 2030, the projections suggest a warming of 2.6°C, compared to 2.5°C last year.
The organization points out that 2024 has seen little progress, with “almost no new national climate targets or promises of carbon neutrality”. And this while emissions linked to fossil fuels “continue to increase despite the fact that governments repeatedly agree to urgently strengthen their objectives for 2030 to align them with the objective of limiting to 1.5° C warming, the most ambitious target of the 2015 Paris agreement.
Signatory countries have until February 2025 to unveil their targets for 2035.
According to the report’s projections, peak emissions from fossil fuels will be reached by the end of the decade, but “at a much higher level” than projections made three years ago.
In a separate report on the plans of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, the CAT estimates that the United States would need to reduce its emissions by 65% this decade and by 80% by 2035 compared to 2005 to be in line with warming limited to 1.5°C.
China would need to reduce its emissions by 66% by 2030, and by 78% by 2035, compared to 2023.
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