Climate Trumped?
THE inevitable has happened to a world which was bracing for the unpredictable. Trump 2.0 inauguration day was hyped with a flurry of executive orders — almost a fourth of them linked to climate change. The disturbing list includes reversing policies promoting electric vehicles, declaring an energy emergency, unleashing a new wave of oil and gas drilling while cancelling offshore wind power leases and for the second time in the last decade, announcing a US exit from the Paris climate agreement.
All these portend a precarious future for a world reeling under the effects of climate change. The science of climate change is clearer now than ever before, and just last month, leading climate scientists raised alarm bells as the world breached the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold for the first time and 2024 was logged as the hottest year in recorded history. At the same time, the stark reality continues unabated with climate-triggered super floods, raging forest fires, unlivable temperatures and freak cyclonic storms forcibly gate-crashing the resilience of most countries.
Most importantly, the associated economic costs of this unleashed fury are following suit by burdening impacted countries, like Pakistan, with billions in unbearable climate damages.
Amidst this raging whirlpool of interlinked consequences, the politics around climate change has remained lethargic. Like Covid, it demands a concerted and coordinated global consensus. The Paris Climate Accords of 2015 garnered it around a bottom-up model with each of the 195 countries, including the US, ‘voluntarily’ contributing towards the goal of trying to keep the global temperature rise below the consequential threshold of 1.5°C. The consensus was built on trust and a promise of climate finance and the momentum of delivery was just beginning to gather pace. The last thing it needed was a staggering climate reversal from the historically largest carbon polluter and one still recovering from the catastrophic California forest fires and the devastating storms, Helene and Milton, hitting it in 2024.
America’s exit from the Paris Accords will have serious consequences.
The announced US exit from the Paris Accords will, undoubtedly, have serious consequences.
Firstly, while it fractures the required global ambition for slashing emissions, it will also be interpreted as an abdication of responsibility, which stands to damage the integrity of the US leadership on the global stage. The erratic oscillation between the ‘green new deal’ and ‘drill baby drill’ will certainly not improve its international reliability.
Secondly, it will create a leadership vacuum on the climate stage. The previous exit of the US, although it got reversed before operationalising, clearly saw the rest of the world unifying with China as well as individual US states stepping up the leadership ladder to fill the vacuum. That, in all likelihood, will happen again.
Thirdly, the US risks losing out on the associated clean energy boom, estimated at over $2 trillion last year, as it sprints in the opposite direction to the electric mobility and renewable energy transitions happening across the world. Thus, the shock and awe attack on climate change may well backfire.
Another surprising aspect is that this reversal does not seem to be based on climate denial as other aspects of Trump 2.0 are actually premised on the acceptance of climate change. The Greenland push is based on the climate-induced melting of the region, opening up a race to control new trade corridors and the precious natural resources being unearthed.
Similarly, the control of the Panama Canal is necessitated by the acceptance of a climate-triggered drying up
of Lake Gatun, which has restricted ship movement and is, thereby, compelling prioritised control. The only logic driving this swift shift seems to be that more drilling will bring down gas prices and control inflation. However, if effective, it would have happened as the US is already the largest oil producer. While this flawed strategy can see many other slips between the cup and the lip, what it certainly threatens to exacerbate is the runaway global temperature rise.
It can only be hoped that a rethink will take place. The world critically needs the innovative leadership of the US, with its potential to unleash and globally drive a green and low-carbon transformation. The issue of climate change is not about political posturing or controlling inflation but an unwinnable confrontation between humanity and nature.
The world needs to collectively get off the warpath with nature and restore the delicate balance which has been disturbed. Otherwise, nature will relentlessly continue to react. This is not a war that can be won or a deal that can be sealed.
The writer, a member of the governing board, SDPI, is a former minister of climate change.
X: @aminattock
Published in Dawn, January 26th, 2025
