What seemed morally impossible has happened.
So what does a second Trump Administration mean for global heating?
Obviously, it will mean U.S. carbon emissions will be higher in 2030 and beyond than they otherwise would have been, and the world will become hotter as a result. Trump has said climate change is a ‘scam’, a ‘hoax’, ‘created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive’.
He will repudiate the Paris agreement, repeating his withdrawal of 2017. The Trumpian vision of future America, Project 2025, calls for U.S. withdrawal not only from the Paris agreement but also from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change itself, the 1992 treaty from which the Paris agreement emerged.
The Heritage Foundation, responsible for Project 2025, has called for the purging of government documents of all reference to climate change. The Foundation’s president denies the existence of climate change and Project 2025 wants to clean out government of climate scientists other than those selected by the administration. The document describes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S.’s primary climate research agency, as ‘one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.’
The broad array of climate policies introduced by the Biden administration, and especially the Inflation Reduction Act that spends billions on facilitating investment in climate protection through subsidies and tax rebates, will be axed, courtesy of Republican control of both houses.
But a great deal has changed in the eight years since Trump was last in the White House. While the energy barons will be pleased (they invested heavily in a Trump victory), the clean energy revolution in the United States now has enormous momentum. This is part due to government support but more so to extraordinary advances in clean energy technology leading to rapid declines in the cost of clean energy compared to fossil fuels. Clean energy investment (wind and solar power, EVs, heat pumps) in the U.S. more than tripled from 2018 to 2023 and has accelerated in 2024.
Clean energy now has powerful supporters in the business community, not least the tech billionaires, and even with some Republican state governments that have seen the benefits of the investments it brings. Federal incentives may disappear, but businesses, banks, pension funds, state governments and cities will continue to push forward because they benefit from clean energy or believe it is the right thing to do.
Global impacts
The international ramifications of Trump’s anti-climate agenda are far-reaching. Being seen to be a leader in climate change action is a prominent part of competing for global leadership. (Regionally, Australia saw how damaging it was for its reputation and influence in the Pacific when conservative governments refused to take climate change seriously.)
U.S. renunciation of leadership will be welcomed by China as a further sign of America’s decline. China has been using its enormous investment in clean energy equipment as a means of gaining influence in developing countries. It’s true that China is undermining its credibility with its continued investment in fossil fuels. And the raw facts are that, while the U.S. share of global emissions stands at 11 per cent and falling, China’s share is 30 per cent and still rising.
So decisions made in Beijing count for much more than decisions made in Washington.
Climate change has become one of the central points of bargaining and leverage between China and the United States. By abdicating responsibility, the U.S. leaves the field open to China. The influence of the European Union has declined sharply from its hey-day in the early 2000s.
Trump’s refusal to back innovation in clean energy industries in the U.S. will mean that China’s domination of clean energy equipment is likely to grow. Already, 60 per cent of world supplies of solar panels are built in China, along with 45 per cent of supplies of wind turbines and 60 per cent of global sales of electric vehicles.
Global agreements like the one in Paris in 2015 are usually disappointingly timid. The effect of having the U.S. now sitting on the sidelines is unclear. The world of climate negotiations did not stop when the U.S. government was absent during the last Trump administration; nor did it stop when the Bush administration withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in 2001.
The U.S. has been a dominating presence at climate negotiations during the Clinton, Obama and Biden Democratic administrations, although it has at times held back progress and made agreement more difficult. However, the truth is that climate action has been business-led rather than state-led for some years, facilitated by the dramatic shifts in energy technologies.
The U.S. government can hasten or slow the domestic transition, but the clean technology revolution is now unstoppable. Of course, it arrived at least a decade too late to prevent severe climate change. Now that warming has taken a grip on the Earth no technology can turn the clock back. It’s going to be bad so we ought to prepare.
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