Donald Trump’s re-election looms large as COP29 begins, with some experts warning of a toxic impact on climate negotiations, while others foresee the rise of a “coalition of the willing” led by China and buoyed by shifting markets.
Trump’s return to office “will drip poison into the climate talks,” Victoria Cuming, head of global policy at BloombergNEF told Bloomberg News. His vow to pull out of the Paris deal and possibly the entire United Nations process will widen a divide between industrialized economies and developing ones, potentially undercutting progress at future summits.
The stakes are high, with the UN Environment Program projecting warming of at least 2.6°C by the end of the century. “One of the most pressing questions for negotiators is how they respond to Trump’s election victory and the prospect of losing the world’s biggest economy in the fight against climate change,” Bloomberg writes.
A “clarifying moment” might arise, similar to COP22 in Marrakech, when nations braced for climate pushback from the United States under Trump’s first term, Camilla Born, independent climate advisor and a United Kingdom official at COP26, told a panel discussion hosted by Carbon Brief. But while major economies invested in climate action may press on, Trump’s return could dampen the resolve of countries still “on the fence,” Born added.
It is up to the rest of the world, especially Europe, Japan, Australia, and Canada, to provide the confidence that developing countries are seeking, said Mohamed Adow, founding director of Power Shift Africa.
Even under Democratic leadership, the U.S. was not a wellspring of momentum, he added, “so we’re not going to panic in Baku.”
But there is an opportunity for the emergence of a “coalition of the willing” to help fill the void and provide assurances, particularly in delivering on international climate finance goals, Adow added.
Climate Finance Takes Centre Stage
A top priority at COP29 is the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance, aiming to exceed the earlier target of US$100 billion per year proposed in 2009 and finally met in 2022. It must be replaced with something much larger, “possibly in the trillions of dollars per year,” says Bloomberg.
This will require a “multi-layered approach,” the news agency adds, with the pledged money coming not only from rich countries’ treasuries, but also from the private sector and multilateral development banks.
However, Trump’s election victory “is not good news for the climate finance issue” said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Still, he said he has confidence that COP29 will reach a finance deal—and that China will play a commanding role in the process.
China, Europe Can Shape the Future
Shuo said China understands the historical weight of this COP, especially the optics around “the way that they agree and make compromises with other countries.” The country’s response will be “the basis for the rest of the world to judge the future of global climate governance,” something China has heavily invested in over the last decade.
Shuo also suggested that the extensive climate consultations ongoing between the Joe Biden and Xi Jinping administrations may continue via back channel diplomacy—even after Trump is in the White House.
There is a larger story happening in the background, he added. A global green economic transformation is under way, led by China’s robust development of its cleantech industry, which itself is based on very basic market principles. “That logic will not be changed by the U.S. election outcome.”
As the world’s fourth top emitter after India, as well as a climate action heavyweight, the EU can be expected to step into the breach, Shuo added, suggesting efforts to repair strained relations between China and the EU are likely in the cards.
U.S. Faces Policy Setbacks, Disinformation
Months ago, Carbon Brief calculated that a second Trump presidency could lead to an extra four billion tonnes of climate pollution by 2030, negating “twice over—all of the savings from deploying wind, solar, and other clean technologies around the world over the past five years.” Report author Simon Evans, Carbon Brief deputy editor and senior policy editor, said only time will tell whether such projections become reality.
Some protection may come from provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that make it difficult to roll back, and evidence, especially in Republican strongholds, that the IRA is doing a great deal of good. But further emissions may be in the cards if Trump permits several new LNG export terminals and opens up federal lands for more drilling.
A rise in climate disinformation is a certain bet, Evans added. “Whatever stuff Trump says about climate, no matter how crazy it is, that is going to be in headlines, that’s going to be amplified and reflected in the media,” he said. “And so unfortunately, I think, for the likes of Carbon Brief, we are going to have a bit more of a job on our hands in terms of responding to that.”
