TThe United States will be absent from the main UN climate negotiations which begin on Monday, a further sign of Donald Trump’s contemptuous dismissal of the climate crisis. But Democrats’ landslide victory in the US midterm elections brought a timely dose of optimism to countries now looking beyond the Trump era of climate obstruction.
For the second year in a row, there will be no official U.S. government presence at the annual climate summit, known this year as Cop31 and being held in Antalya, Turkey. While almost every other country in the world is sending delegations to negotiations, Trump has ridiculed the climate crisis as a “hoax” and “bullshit” and triggered the withdrawal of the United States from the entire international climate framework.
“This summit rejects reality by failing to recognize that extremist climate policies are destroying countries around the world,” a White House official said, confirming that the administration would not send anyone to Cop31.
The snub is so severe that around 20 members of the US Congress traveling to the summit were refused the usual assistance from the State Department, forcing them to resort to philanthropic funding for their trip. “I’m glad we found a way to make this happen, but it’s insane,” said Sean Casten, a Democratic congressman who is attending Cop31. “We have a lot of rebuilding to do. It depends on Congress to maintain diplomatic continuities at Cop and minimize the damage until the adults are back in the White House.”
Trump’s active support of fossil fuels, gutting pollution limits and limiting clean energy projects have made the United States an outlier among wealthy countries, according to a recent UN report. While the other 20 major economies reduced or slowed their carbon pollution last year, the United States was a “major exception” by emitting an additional 133 million tons of planet-heating gases from burning coal, oil and gas, the report said.
Although the world quickly exceeded “safe” temperature thresholds due to this pollution and escalating heat waves, floods, droughts and other calamities, Trump remained defiant. “If you don’t move away from this green scam, your country is going to fail,” the US president told other world leaders at the UN last year, adding that the climate crisis was “the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the world”.
But Democrats’ resounding success in the midterms last week, wresting control from Trump’s Republicans in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, energized delegates gathered in Antalya. Although it was the last Cop with the United States as the official party, after Trump left the UN framework, the midterm elections reinforced international confidence in an imminent return and a new post-Trump chapter.
“This marks the beginning of the end of the Trump era,” said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa. “His hold on Congress has been broken and will hopefully pave the way for a Democratic president in two years. For all those fighting for a livable planet, this is a moment of renewed hope.”
Trump has done “tremendous damage” to the climate, but the midterm results, along with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s recent election victory in Brazil, provide a major tonic, Adow said. “This opens the door for America to return to the climate fight with the seriousness that its responsibility demands,” he said, adding that Cop31 would be the “perfect moment to accelerate climate action and reverse the trend of the Trump dark ages.”
The US lawmakers arriving at the COP, all Democrats, are aware that the world has long been subject to extremely inconsistent US commitment to climate action, Casten acknowledged. “We come at this with a certain humility: as important as we are, the United States has been an extremely unreliable partner on climate,” he said. “But going to Cop on the heels of these results is much better. It can be a much more positive process now.”
Spanning two weeks of negotiations between 197 countries, accompanied by a jamboree of pavilions and side events interspersed with demonstrations, the sprawling COP process requires a certain momentum. The electoral revolt in the United States, the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, is expected to provide such a boost, according to Susan Biniaz, a former longtime climate negotiator for the United States at the Cop.
“Much of the world is waiting for the midterm elections to be some sort of signal from the American electorate that they are unhappy with this administration,” Biniaz said. “It could boost morale. I don’t think the midterm elections will directly affect federal climate policy, but they will strengthen the spirit of the Cop.”
“There’s been a big change since the midterms. I’m certainly more optimistic,” said Catherine McKenna, Canada’s former environment minister. “The COP negotiations are important, but what’s happening at home is more important and Trump has been incredibly disruptive. Now we’ll have more Democrats taking action on climate and talking about solutions that will actually save people money.”
But what will an overwhelming Democratic majority in Congress be able to do about climate? Sweeping climate legislation, similar in scope to the Inflation Reduction Act signed by Joe Biden and then gutted by Republicans, is unlikely given Trump’s veto power. However, Democrats are exploring other avenues.
The investigative and subpoena powers will be used to probe parts of the administration, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, for staff cuts and what Democrats call “unlawful” withholding of climate and clean energy spending. Trump’s attempt to pressure Europe into buying American gas will be scrutinized, as will the vulnerability of the insurance sector to the climate crisis and concerns about the United States ceding its clean technology industries to China.
Democrats will dominate the budget process and will likely reverse cuts to environmental programs and rein in data centers, which have become highly controversial with the American public.
Some legislation, such as speeding up the permitting process to allow new clean energy production and transportation, could also be possible with Republican support. The midterm elections also yielded resounding Democratic victories at the state level, drawing new governors in states like Texas and Georgia, meaning widespread state-level action to move away from fossil fuels will be possible.
Many of these measures will likely be aimed at tackling the rising cost of living or government corruption, rather than the climate crisis itself. Some activists have criticized Democrats for so-called “climate silence” even though most Americans favor ending the fossil fuel era, but Casten said emissions reductions will matter more to the new Congress than rhetoric.
“We are going to do everything: surveillance, legislation and action in court,” he said. “There are things around the cost of gasoline, or housing and insurance, that are discussed about climate, even if we don’t mention climate. It’s our job to understand how all of these things are related, but we need to talk to people about climate change in a way that they care about. It’s not that we don’t want to talk about climate change at all.”
No matter how Democrats talk about the climate crisis, its effects are growing. Scientists have repeatedly warned that slow progress in reducing emissions leaves little time to avoid disastrous impacts.
The world is already poised to exceed the internationally agreed target of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C, which would spell turmoil for people, wildlife and ecosystems around the world, and any continued embrace of fossil fuels by big emitters like the United States will only compound that pain. When Democrats take power in Congress in January, their supporters will clamor for them to quickly make up for lost time.
“They need to do more than stay the course — this was a broad mandate for change,” said Rachel Cleetus, climate program director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The science is sobering. There is no need to wait until the next election cycle. This is a reality that people are facing right now and responsible lawmakers must recognize it. The world can’t wait for the United States to step up.”
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