As the United States abandons its position as key negotiator at COP30, which kicked off today in Belem, Brazil, sentiments among participants reveal curiosity about which countries will step forward to assume leadership at the talks and dismay about the negative impact of the current administration’s policies on the 30 year battle to combat global warming.
Despite an official invitation to Trump from Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the impetus to gain some momentum at this year’s COP falls to other countries. Many expect China, which leads the world when it comes to adopting clean energy and producing the equipment needed for the transition to a decarbonized economy, including solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles, will step up to fill this void. The world’s most egregious abuser of fossil fuels, China accounts for almost one-third of global GHG emissions.
“Without the US, there’s still a chance the world could come together in Belém,” says Claudio Angelo, the international policy coordinator at Observatório do Clima, a coalition of climate organizations, who is based in Brasília.
The White House addressed its absence from COP30 to CNN:
“President Trump will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told CNN.
The US will not send any high-level representatives to COP30, Rogers said. “The President is directly engaging with leaders around the world on energy issues, which you can see from the historic trade deals and peace deals that all have a significant focus on energy partnerships,” she said.
This practice of linking trade and climate so closely is an innovation of the Trump administration, said Kelly Sims Gallagher, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University who worked on US climate negotiations with China for the Obama administration. www.cnn.com/...
In lieu of participating in the COP, Trump is independently pursuing energy deals with other countries, with a pitch that urges them to abandon plans to utilize and increase dependence on renewables.
Again, from CNN:
America has demonstrated a trend toward behavior that undermines aggressive climate goals. This was the case last month at a meeting of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which regulates pollution from the international shipping fleet, where US diplomats acted in concert with major oil-producing nations to scuttle what would have been the world’s first carbon tax.
The long-heralded proposal would have imposed a tax on carbon pollution from global shipping to encourage a switch to cleaner-burning fuels. Officials in Washington — including President Donald Trump who released a scathing Truth Social post — were involved in turning up the pressure on diplomats at that meeting. The US threatened to retaliate via trade measures against countries who voted in favor.
“If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail,” the president told leaders at a UN speech last month. “You need strong borders and traditional energy sources if you are going to be great again.”
The Guardian reports on the US lack of presence at the climate talks, noting former lead climate negotiator Todd Stern doesn’t believe the US “would add anything useful. This is a much more aggressive administration now, across the board. I think the great majority of countries aren’t going to pay attention to that, they know climate change is real, you just have to look out of the window to see it is getting worse.”
“So at this point, I don’t think there’s any sign of [the administration attending], but who knows? This is a very mercurial administration. They can decide at the last minute to send a plane to Belém full of climate deniers and fossil fuel operatives.” [Sheldon Whitehouse, D., Rhode Island]
One former senior state department official, speaking anonymously, said that it was preferable that the US not attend the talks so that other countries can strike a stronger climate agreement.
“If the choice is no US or a US that is there as a spoiler, to wreck and disrupt things, then I think most countries would prefer there to be no US,” the former official said. www.theguardian.com/…
The US may not show up in Brazil but the number of fossil fuel lobbyists in attendance is expected to rival last year when 1,700 were on hand at COP29, down from 2,400 in 2023. Add to that the fact that Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which were due before the onset of the COP, are lagging, and even were they to be implemented fully, their effect on limiting global warming would reach 2.3 degrees Celsius. This is well above the calculation in Paris in 2015, which called for efforts to curtail warming to significantly below 2 degrees C, with a goal of below 1.5 degrees C.
Over 100 local leaders from the United States, including several governors and mayors, are participating in the conference, which kicked off earlier today.
Organized by America is All, Climate Mayors, and the U.S. Climate Alliance, the delegation is advancing international cooperation and will share “local climate solutions that are lowering energy costs, growing jobs, and cutting dangerous pollution.”
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that many who post in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table and hope to make some new friends as well.
