UCS Comments on Repercussions of Trump Election on Global Climate Action in Lead Up to COP29

Donald Trump has officially been declared the winner of the U.S. presidential elections—an outcome with monumental repercussions on the international stage, especially given his withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement during his previous term. It also comes just days before the annual U.N. climate talks (also referred to as COP29), kick off in Baku, Azerbaijan. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) will be attending and joining officials from more than 190 nations—as well as representatives of subnational governments, businesses and other nongovernmental organizations—working to ensure all countries are on track to increase their climate ambition to keep the goals of the Paris Agreement in reach, with a heightened focus this year on the importance of international climate financing to help meet those goals.

Below is a statement by Dr. Rachel Cleetus, the policy director and lead economist for the Climate and Energy Program at UCS. She has been attending the U.N.’s international climate talks and has partnered with the international community on climate and energy policies for about 20 years.

“President-elect Trump ran a brutish campaign that disregarded or misrepresented scientific facts, while promising to boost fossil fuel companies’ fortunes. The nation and world can expect the incoming Trump administration to take a wrecking ball to global climate diplomacy. That will likely include the shameful act of taking the United States out of the Paris Agreement again. Many domestic climate policies aren’t safe either, though the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy provisions could prove durable as they’re delivering significant economic benefits to all states and have the support of workers, businesses and policymakers across the political spectrum.

“The fact remains that existing policies aren’t enough to help the United States meet its 2030 goal to cut emissions in half below 2005 levels, let alone deliver additional reductions by 2035. And with U.S. federal climate action expected to be derailed for the next four years, other nations, U.S. subnational governments and businesses will need to fill the void as much as possible. The science on climate change is unforgiving, with every year of delay locking in more costs and more irreversible changes, and everyday people paying the steepest price.”

These talks come during a year of record-breaking heat, and on the heels of a particularly deadly and dangerous spate of extreme weather and climate disasters fueled by climate change. Additionally, a flurry of scientific reports—including the International Energy Agency’s 2024 World Energy Outlook and the United Nations Environment Programme’s 2024 Emissions Gap Report—paint a picture of how far off track the world is currently from meeting global climate goals, how much higher global average temperatures could rise if nations fail to take urgent corrective actions to address the climate crisis, and what actions must be taken to make steep, rapid cuts in heat-trapping emissions and to transition to clean energy.

While the United States—the world's largest historical emitter of global warming emissions—has pledged to reduce its emissions by 50-52% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade, even with passage of the Inflation Reduction Act current policies remain insufficient to achieve this goal with the country on track to cut heat-trapping emissions 32-43%. Collectively, nations are on a path to meet or exceed between 2.6 and 3.1 degrees Celsius of warming globally, if pledges remain stagnant. To catch up, the United States and other major emitting countries need to put additional policies in place to rapidly increase clean energy deployment and phase out fossil fuels, and wealthy nations need to ramp up climate finance for lower income countries to also cut their emissions.