Back in November, just after the U.S. presidential election
delivered its surprise result, this page examined the likely consequences of
Donald Trump’s plans for energy and climate change in the United States and around
the world. With Mr. Trump's inauguration just over a fortnight away, this post will briefly examine what has happened since then in this regard.
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| A Trump campaign infographic with some colourful claims about Democrats' energy 'restrictions' (Source: Trump campaign) |
One conclusion of the post was that most or all action on
GHG emissions and climate change at the federal level could be expected to be
cancelled or reversed. This prediction appears to have been borne out, not
least by Mr. Trump’s cabinet appointments. His choice of Energy Secretary,
former Texas Governor Rick Perry, is a firm advocate of continued oil drilling and has expressed sceptical views regarding anthropogenic climate change. The
incoming head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma Attorney General
Scott Pruitt, is an even stronger climate sceptic, and is currently involved in a lawsuit against his new department which aims to scupper the Obama
administration’s Clean Power Plan. One possible exception to the rule is Trump’s
choice for Secretary of State – ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson has repeatedly asserted that climate change is real and man-made, and endorsed action to
combat it.
The original post also forecast that a lack of U.S. financial
contributions could derail the Paris Agreement, reached at the 21st
Conference of Parties at Paris in 2015. This may ultimately depend upon the
extent to which the new administration is able to extricate the U.S. from the commitments
which its predecessor made at COP21, which it is of course too early to know. Assuming
an absence of ongoing U.S. support, the success of the Paris and future
agreements will depend on the remaining signatory countries. Within a day of
Trump’s victory, countries restated their commitment to the Paris Agreement and
to COP22, which was underway that same month in Marrakech. At the same
conference, the then-Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon, expressed his view that global climate action had become ‘unstoppable’ despite Mr. Trump’s
pledges to the contrary.
A final prediction made in the post back in November was
that, with the disappearance of federal direction, including the Clean Power
Plan, states may take up the slack and introduce new action to reduce GHG
emissions. In California, ambitious legislative targets mean that the state is on track to return to 1990 levels of GHG emissions by 2020, with a further 40%
reduction by 2030. In the north-eastern U.S., several states have devised the
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a unified cap-and-trade programme aiming to
reduce emissions. However, other states continue to have no emissions-reduction
strategy and have indeed been campaigning for the Supreme Court to throw out
the CPP. With the election of Mr. Trump, they can likely abandon any and all
efforts to reduce GHG emissions or invest in alternative energy sources, which
may lead to significant increases in GHG emissions.
Hi Isaac,
ReplyDeleteRegardless of any prior US commitments to COP21 and the major role the US plays in global politics, do you think the strong opposition to climate change in Mr Trump’s cabinet will cause problems for any future climate agreements or will the agreements still be successful nevertheless? Thanks, James.
Hi James, thanks for your comment! Sorry for delayed reply. Your question is one which has been extensively explored in climate journalism in the months since Mr. Trump's win, and which some climate commentators have been working flat out to answer before inauguration day! On the one hand, it has become reasonably clear that the new U.S. cabinet is shaping up to be a climate sceptic's dream come true - coupled with a Republican-controlled (and largely climate-sceptic) Congress, this means that the U.S. leadership and financial support, which has been the driving force behind international climate agreements during the Obama years, is likely to evaporate once the new administration takes control. This will put the strength of international commitment on climate change to the test, particularly in terms of huge emitters China and India, the latter of which has already expressed exasperation at the level of emissions reductions which it has been asked to achieve. More positive signals have emerged from China, which has warned the U.S. against backing out of its Paris (COP21) commitments and is itself aiming for peak emissions of carbon as early as 2027. One particular area of concern is the probability that the incoming Trump administration will seek to withdraw U.S. funding from the United Nations Green Climate Fund, which will provide financial assistance for less economically developed countries to reduce their GHG emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change on their populations. Other developed countries, along with powerful economies such as China and India, must rise to the challenge of finding the political will and financial means to step in and fill the vacuum created by the U.S. absence from international action on climate change over the next four years.
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