Climate & environment
Three consequences of Trump's climate moves
Niclas Vent
Published 10.11
Quick version
- Donald Trump decided that the US will leave the Paris Agreement and dismantle Biden's climate policy, which could lead to 4 billion tons of additional greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
- Trump's inauguration as president has weakened the US's ability to contribute effectively in international climate negotiations, which risks deteriorating global climate cooperation.
- The US's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement could make it more difficult to achieve global emissions targets and increase the risk of serious negative climate effects, such as rising temperatures and extreme weather.
The decision has three enormous consequences.
- You are going in the completely wrong direction. It is not good. It is very, very serious, says climate scientist Michael Tjernström.
One of Donald Trump's first decisions as new president was to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. Trump called the agreement "unfair" and "unilateral".
Biden's environmental policy will be dismantled at the same time. The ban on new construction of gas export facilities will be lifted, restrictions on drilling for gas and oil in Alaska will be lifted and wind farms in federal waters will be stopped.
"We have larger reserves of oil and gas than any country on earth, and we will use them," said Trump in his inauguration speech (Venezuela and Saudi Arabia have larger oil reserves than the United States).
FACTS
"We have larger reserves of oil and gas than any country on earth, and we will use them," said Trump in his inauguration speech (Venezuela and Saudi Arabia have larger oil reserves than the United States).
FACTS
That is the Paris Agreement
In Paris in 2015, 195 countries agreed to limit the increase in global temperatures to "well below" 2 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels.Ideally, the temperature should not increase by more than 1.5 degrees.
The goal will be achieved by countries reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide.
The average temperature on Earth in 2024 was 1.6 degrees higher than pre-industrial levels, according to the EU's Earth monitoring program Copernicus.
Trump's decision will have at least three major consequences:
1) Major emissions
Just by destroying Biden's climate policy, Trump's USA will emit 4 billion tons more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by 2030 than the country would have done if Biden had won a second term.This was shown by an analysis by Carbonbrief this spring.
4 billion tons is as much as the EU and Japan currently emit together in a year, or as much as the emissions of the world's 140 least climate-damaging countries.
And it could be significantly worse than that.
The consequences of Trump policies that curb emissions – such as new drilling for oil and gas – are not included in the analysis, for example.
2) Poorer climate cooperation globally
Donald Trump's climate threats may have had an effect even before he took office.With Trump as president-elect, the United States did not have much to offer during the negotiations at the COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan in November, writes Reuters.
This may have contributed to Saudi Arabia being able to block proposed terms of phasing out fossil energy, and to the fact that rich countries' contributions to the climate transition of poorer countries were less than needed.
– When the situation is more serious than ever before, and in a situation when we really should be coming together internationally to address the issues, we are going in the wrong direction. It is not good. It is very, very serious, says Michael Tjernström, climate scientist and professor emeritus at the Department of Meteorology at Stockholm University.
– We should not forget the indirect effects this has on global cooperation. What China will do when the US no longer shows any interest is something we can speculate about.
3) Major negative climate impacts
More than a third (38.2 percent) of the reductions in emissions that the world's countries have jointly agreed to make will be erased if the United States does not participate in climate work, shows a research report in the European Economic Review.- The global climate goals assume that emissions will decrease much faster and much more than what has happened in recent years. Developments are already lagging behind what the goals assume, says Markku Rummukainen, professor at the Center for Environmental and Climate Science at Lund University.
Trump's announced policy thus increases the risk that we will not reach the climate goals, and that the climate impacts will be worse than they would otherwise have been.
- There are no safe limits to global warming. The effects will be worse at 2 degrees than at 1.5 degrees and so on. The later emissions start to decrease and the slower they decrease, the greater the effects will be, the more needs to be done for adaptation and the more things will become that cannot even be handled with adaptation, says Markku Rummukainen.
More greenhouse gases in the atmosphere contribute to increased average temperatures.
This has a multitude of consequences, in many cases difficult to foresee.
Some of them are drought, poorer harvests, rising sea levels, poorer water quality, floods, species extinction, the spread of diseases, acidified oceans and increased mortality due to heat waves.
FACTS
This is how climate work is going
In 2024, the 1.5 degree target was exceeded for the first time so far.The average temperature on Earth was then 1.6 degrees higher than pre-industrial levels, according to the EU's Earth monitoring program Copernicus.
All continents except Australia and Antarctica experienced their warmest years ever.
Global emissions have have increased from around 35 billion tons of carbon dioxide when the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 to around 41 billion tons in 2024.
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