Cox: The whiff of Donald Trump redux is hanging over COP26

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Former US President Donald Trump spoke with a member of the news media after attending a border security briefing with Texas Governor Greg Abbott to discuss security at the US southern border with Mexico in Weslaco, Texas, US on June 30, 2021 .

GLASGOW, Nov. 9 (Reuters Breakingviews) – Donald Trump has done his best to snatch America from the global effort to fight climate change. The former president was not really at COP26, the big UN climate conference in Glasgow, but his presence was remarkable. And not just because he owns a Scottish golf club not far away that hosted the Indonesian delegation. A potential return to the White House is lingering in the talks.

As countries sign up to long-term promises to reduce their carbon emissions, banks have pledged their balance sheets to help and multinationals are surpassing each other in brilliant promises to make it cleaner. and green their businesses, many attending COP26 are wondering if Trump will return to the presidency in 2024. Their concern is that he will try to undo many of the things agreed upon to try to prevent the planet from warming of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius at pre-industrial levels.

Those fears are legitimate. For starters, soon after taking over the Oval Office, Trump pulled the United States from the Paris Agreement, reached at the previous COP in 2015. There, the signatories agreed to curb the heating of world no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. . He then set about unwinding a lot of home environmental rules and regulations and peeking out loud for hydrocarbons. On the sideline of the 2018 climate shindig in Poland, he even tried to stage a glitzy pro-coal event.

The hope of business leaders and policy makers in Glasgow is that things will be too far to rest in case Republican Trump wins the American election in three years and renounces the promises made by President Joe Biden , who would be both his Democratic successor and predecessor. That should provide more urgency, as if the end of the human race is not enough motivation, in the negotiations in the second and final weeks of COP26.

For the private sector, little chance of an easy retreat is that Trump has become the first commander in chief since Grover Cleveland held two non-consecutive terms in office. The world’s largest banks and corporations cook up net-zero ambitions in their strategies, incentive structures and the composition of their balances and investment portfolios largely because customers, investors and employees insist that they do it rather than politicians.

Climate change is a political issue. Inequality is a political issue. And as a business leader, you need to take a position on those things. However, we are trying to stay on things close to our own business operations, said Alan Jope, chief executive of $ 135 billion consumer goods giant Unilever (ULVR.L), which aims for net-zero nirvana by 2039. The reason we care about climate change is because the burning or underwater world is a horrible place for Unilever to do business.

With the possibility of a Trump 2024 victory becoming more conceivable following a series of electoral cuts for Biden’s party last week in the state and local elections, particularly the Virginia governorship-the leaders of America, including Biden himself and Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama, is making further efforts to convince delegates in Scotland that the United States is serious about fighting climate change. This reflects the widespread lack of confidence that Washington will be able to keep its word, even as many of its multinational companies are more on board with the elimination of greenhouse gas emissions.

In fact, in a speech Monday, Obama described Trump’s tenure as four years of active hostility to climate science. That follows Bidens’s promise last week that the United States will not only return to the table but hopefully lead by the power of our example, adding my administration is working overtime to show that our commitment to climate is action. , not words. “

When photos surfaced showing Biden blindfolded during the conference, Trump lashed out at his followers with an email saying: Even Biden couldn’t bear to hear about the Global Warming Hoax, the 7th largest Hoax in America, followed by the 2020 Presidential. Election Scams, Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2 and, of course, the No Collusion finding of the Mueller Report. It’s fair to say that Trump’s description of global warming is not widely accepted by the tens of thousands of COP delegates.

This is not just a case of insignificant domestic American politics, however. U.S. moral leadership, combined with economic strength, is critical to climate laggers circling along with China, India, Russia and Saudi Arabia to accelerate their carbon reduction targets. Without America, it would be difficult for the remaining developed countries to get China, for example, to act more quickly on phasing out coal.

But it’s also about money. One of the major announcements in Glasgow is an $ 8.5 billion package of grants and concession loans and investments to support South Africa’s decarbonization efforts. The deal was reached after months of high -level diplomacy between Germany, France, the UK, the European Union and Washington, and could curb up to 1.5 gigatonnes of emissions over the next 20 years.

The agreement in South Africa, with strong US financial support, is being touted as a blueprint for luring other poor countries, such as Indonesia and Vietnam, to raise their ambitions in jumping on hydrocarbons. That provides an additional need for sealing some of these deals, with money firmly committed, ahead of the 2024 U.S. elections.

Although Trump ran and won, Americans ’attitudes toward the fight against climate change have changed since he stopped the Paris Agreement in 2017. There is also growing bipartisan support for certain policies, such as tax credit, to accelerate the adoption of renewable energy. And many states have moved to insulate their efforts to reduce carbon emissions from federal policy. That was according to David Livingston, senior advisor to U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, at a panel discussion on hydrogen hosted by Breakingviews last week in Glasgow.

One of the hidden benefits over the past four years has been the kind of reaction of most in the United States to the lack of leadership on the global stage under the Trump administration has been to create these kinds of antibodies state and local level and leadership of the corporation that we in the Biden administration are not trying to replace, Livingston said. We try to strengthen and empower (them) because we know we need a diverse fabric of allies and policies moving forward here.

So, while there is a strong breeze of Trump redux about the Glasgow proceedings, there is also a feeling that with effort and perhaps a little luck, the current US momentum will remain.

Follow @rob1cox on Twitter

Edited by George Hay and Karen Kwok

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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