The Green Transition: A climate catastrophe
Weekly analysis of the shift towards a new economy.
Dear Readers,
Happy Thursday from the Spotlight on Policy team. And welcome to another slightly later edition of the Green Transition, delayed for us to take in the results from the US and bring you some top analysis from Megan Kenyon.
We’ll be back on our usual Monday slot next week, for Cop29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
New Statesman subscribers will be receiving the new issue of the print magazine from today - a historic, US election special. Do look out for our special Spotlight supplement on sustainability and climate in the centrefold, featuring comment from the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, the Green co-leader Carla Denyer, as well as our in-house journalists. Available on all good newsstands tomorrow.
Let’s get right into it.
***The “Champions of Change” - a group of progressive and ambitious businesses from around the world, have signed an open letter calling on the world’s governments to negotiate an ambitious Global Plastic Treaty that will cut plastic production for good - and make it easier for companies to do the right thing. These are companies who are aiming to operate without contributing to the plastic crisis.***
Donald Trump is a climate disaster
Donald Trump’s return to the White House is a disaster for global temperatures. During his last term in office, Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, ripped up environmental protections, and took a rash approach to fossil fuel extraction (“drill, baby, drill”). His second presidency will come at a moment when the global tide is beginning to turn against net zero, average temperatures are at their highest, and extreme weather events are causing untold damage in America and abroad.
The timing of this result is crucial; its effects will be ravaging. As the world’s second-largest carbon emitter, the US’s position on climate change has great influence over global temperatures. And though climate change barely featured as an electoral issue during the 2024 campaign, Trump’s position on this issue remains unequivocal. It’s clear the president elect doesn’t really believe in this unfolding disaster and during the campaign he could frequently be heard denying its existence (in September, Trump described the climate crisis as “one of the great scams”). His second term in office will likely be shaped by this indifference to global warming, even though it will take place amid increasingly apocalyptic storms, like Hurricane Helene, which devastated communities in Florida earlier this year.
His victory will also resume America’s Hokey-Cokey routine on the Paris Climate Agreement. First signed in 2015, Paris had committed all participating nations to legally binding emission-reduction targets. Trump pulled the USA out in 2020; Biden pulled them back in on the first day of his presidency in 2021. The UN general secretary, António Guterres has warned that a second US exit could “cripple” the process, accelerating the disintegration of global climate cooperation more generally. In fact, it could be argued that Trump’s re-election single-handedly kills off any chance of achieving the UN’s target of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees above industrial levels – a target that was already dubious in the extreme.
Next week, delegates from across the globe will arrive in Baku, Azerbaijan for Cop29 – the UN’s annual climate summit. It has been rumoured that Trump’s climate isolationism could extend further than Paris and lead to withdrawal from the founding treaty for these UN climate talks. Either way, Trump’s victory significantly raises the stakes for next week’s conference, and could have a domino effect on other climate policies across the globe. China pips the US to the post as the world’s largest polluter, but is currently a world leader in the development of renewables. One of two scenarios could unfold: China may either wind down their efforts, if they feel a Trump revocation absolves them of responsibility; or they could ramp up progress to capitalise on the gap left by the American void.
Whatever its global repercussions, Trump 2.0 will only stoke the US’s domestic emissions. According to analysis by Carbon Brief, a second Trump presidency could lead to the release of an additional 4bn tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2030, compared with Joe Biden’s climate plans. Put into a global context, this extra four billion tonnes of CO2 is the equivalent of the combined annual emissions of the EU and Japan, and will cause global climate damages worth more than $900bn according to US government valuations. The release of such massive quantities of carbon dioxide would negate all of the emissions-savings accrued from the deployment of renewable technologies across the globe in the past five years – twice.
This all makes for extremely bleak reading. But there is some cause for cautious optimism. Much of this depends on how successful Trump’s new administration is at reversing Joe Biden’s legislative agenda, namely, the much-lauded Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law in 2021 and saw the investment of billions into renewable technologies across America. During the campaign, Trump pledged to scrap the act. But this is a spindly, complex piece of legislation which will take time and effort to unpick. And more importantly, the act has succeeded at sparking a proliferation of blue-collar jobs in red states. Since its launch, the act has created over 334,565 jobs through clean energy projects, notably in crucial states such as Michigan, Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina. The revival of post-industrial communities is a central part of Trump’s sell – and that of his vice-president elect, JD Vance, self-proclaimed hillbilly. Getting rid of a piece of legislation which has been doing just that may prove more trouble than it is worth.
Nevertheless, this is a presidency that will remain insouciant in the face of rising temperatures, encourage the greedy extraction of more oil and gas and refuse to engage in international cooperation. Coming at such an important moment for the climate, its arrival could change the direction of world policy forever.
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The Green Transition is produced by Spotlight, the New Statesman's online policy section and print supplement. Spotlight reports on policy for the people who shape it and the business leaders it affects. Explore our in-depth reporting and analysis here.
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