With less than one week to go until the US presidential elections, Americans and the world—including those getting ready for COP29 in Baku—are anxiously awaiting the results.
The election pits two somewhat known entities against each other in a high-stakes race that has implications for democracy, for the global economy, for peace, and for stability in the US—as well as implications for climate action.
The Biden administration, with Vice President Harris at its helm, has made climate change one of its cornerstone issues at home and abroad. Meanwhile, one of President Trump’s first moves in office was to remove the US from the Paris Agreement; backed by powerful conservative interests this time around, a potential second Trump term could bring even more damage to the world. In March, Carbon Brief estimated that a Trump win could increase US emissions by 4 billion tonnes by the end of the decade.
With the clock ticking on this crucial decade, experts are emphasising that, even if the US once again elects a climate denier, the world must remain committed to action.
“I don’t want this to happen, of course,” Laurence Tubiana, European Climate Foundation CEO and key architect of the Paris Agreement, told the New York Times last month about a potential Trump victory. “But I think there will be a sentiment that we have to double down on the Paris agreement framework. I think everybody’s preparing for that.”
What’s at stake for climate action in the US election—and how should the world get ready for what’s to come?
What They’ve Promised: Trump
Promises made publicly by the Trump campaign are bolstered by Project 2025, a nearly 1,000-page policy plan coordinated by the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, drafted as a guide for the next conservative president of the United States to “dismantle the administrative state” and fill federal jobs with like-minded conservatives. The document covers many climate issues and often uses polarising framing to discuss climate action, labelling mainstream corporate decarbonization and renewable energy trends as “extreme,” while demonising environmental protection.
The Trump campaign has said that if elected, the President would once again withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement; this time around, he may go a step further and remove the US from the UNFCCC altogether. Following VP Harris’s announcement at COP28 of a $3 billion pledge to the fund, Trump said at a rally he would immediately cancel “all climate reparation payments” once he is in office. The Trump administration did not contribute to the fund during his first term. Project 2025 also calls for withdrawing from the World Bank and the IMF — where the US is the largest shareholder —and ending financial contributions to these organisations.
The US is one of the top contributors to the Green Climate Fund. Revoking the remaining $2 billion that has been pledged but not yet allocated will put mitigation and adaptation projects for climate vulnerable countries in jeopardy. Any collective post-2025 climate finance commitments, including any made for the Loss and Damage fund launched at COP27, would also be jeopardised.
Trump has publicly criticised the IRA and pledged to dismantle it; Project 2025 makes explicit plans to repeal the IRA and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), a bipartisan bill that put over $1 trillion toward infrastructure and transportation projects in every state. Data shows that if the IRA is repealed, “the US is all but guaranteed to miss its [climate] targets by a wide margin,” Carbon Brief reported, with Trump’s policies possibly resulting in additional 4 billion tonnes of US emissions by 2030.
Fossil fuels would flourish under a second Trump administration. The campaign’s official plans for a second term include lifting restrictions on “American Energy Production,“ to “streamline permitting,” and to “end market-distorting restrictions on Oil, Natural Gas, and Coal.” Oil industry lawyers have prepared executive orders that promote the industry’s interests for Trump to sign if he wins the election, including “pushing natural gas exports, cutting drilling costs and increasing offshore oil leases.” Trump has offered preferable treatment for oil and gas executives in exchange for massive campaign contributions. During his previous term, Trump helped redirect federal COVID-19 relief money to bail out fossil fuel companies.
Defunding and reforming organisations focused on climate science and reducing regulations in the area are top priorities for the Trump administration. Project 2025’s policy plans suggest completely reorganising and weakening the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by cutting its budget, limiting its role in regulating pollution, and replacing personnel with staff who align with the administrations’ agenda.Project 2025 also calls to gut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); lays out plans to cut certain regulations governing air pollution; revisit “a 2009 scientific finding that says carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health,” and much more.
Some of the legality of the Trump campaign’s (and Project 2025’s) stated priorities is in question, and many of these policies could meet with significant pushback. It is possible that a withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, for instance, could be challenged in court; at minimum, would be challenged in the court of public opinion. During Trump’s first term, US state leaders stepped up and pledged to maintain the US’ commitment to the Paris Agreement. US law is murky on whether or not the executive branch can withdraw unilaterally from the World Bank—but Trump or Congress can choose not to allocate funding to multilateral development banks or to other climate finance mechanisms.
What They’ve Promised: Harris
In 2020, the Biden campaign made climate change one of its cornerstone issues, vowing to end drilling on public lands (which the president did not follow through with) and put the US on a path to net zero by 2050. While Harris has focused much less on climate on the campaign trail than her predecessor, her administration is expected to continue much of the work done by Biden over the past four years. Harris has called climate change “an existential threat.”
There’s some good signs for international climate cooperation, especially when it comes to climate finance. The Democratic party platform, for instance, states “that [the] United States has an indispensable role to play in solving the climate crisis, and we have an obligation to help other nations carry out this work.” The platform affirms support for developing nations’ efforts to tackle climate change, including a continuation of PREPARE, an initiative launched by Biden at COP26 that supports developing nations at the frontline of the climate crisis in their efforts to adapt and manage climate impacts.
The party platform also states that it will “work through the Multilateral Development Bank to elevate climate and clean energy priorities within the global development finance system.” The Biden administration has already taken on the task by replacing the former World Bank president, a Trump appointee who made comments that seemed to undermine the human impact of climate change, with Ajay Banga. Under Banga’s leadership, the World Bank has announced plans to allocate 45% of total financing to climate projects by 2025. The Democratic party’s platform includes further support for debt-for-nature swaps and accelerated investments in sustainable and resilient food systems. However, the plan does not address any solutions around the debt crisis facing about 60% of low-income countries.
Representing the Biden administration, Vice President Harris pledged an additional $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund at COP28 in Dubai. She also announced the country’s commitment to triple renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency by 2030.
In terms of domestic policies, the Inflation Reduction Act is one of the Biden administration’s cornerstone achievements, and the Harris campaign has leaned on the success of the IRA on the trail. The IRA and Bipartisan Infrastructure Act has created over 300,000 jobs in both Blue and Red States and injected $361 billion in new investments, and is expected to create millions more jobs and increase economic growth by hundreds of billions of dollars by 2030. The Harris-Walz campaign has emphasised that more than 3.4 million American families have saved $8.4 billion from the legislation, thanks to consumer tax credits on home energy technologies.
When it comes to fossil fuel production, Harris’s campaign has taken a more conservative turn. During her 2020 campaign, Harris promised to ban fracking and fossil fuel leases on public lands, to “hold Big Oil accountable for its role in the climate crisis” through enforcement and prosecution, and to block new fossil fuel infrastructure. She spoke of making climate polluters pay, supported a carbon tax, and promised a focus on frontline communities. However, Harris has now said she will not ban fracking and the platform appears silent on her previous promises.
Under the Biden administration, the US boosted global oil supply. For the last six years in a row, the US produced more crude oil than any country ever, with record-breaking average production of 12.9 million barrels per day in 2023, according to the Energy Information Administration.
What Happens At COP?
It’s not an exaggeration to say that another Trump presidency would be disastrous for the planet. And there is a decent chance that in Baku, the world will not know who won the US election. Over the past four years, President Trump’s supporters have infiltrated state bodies that uphold election integrity and plotted extensively with the Republican party to form strategies to question a Trump electoral loss. Some experts predict that the election could drag on for weeks as Trump’s allies attempt to force a victory through the legal system, forcing the ultra-conservative Supreme Court to weigh in in an echo of 2000’s contested election.
Regardless of the outcome of next week, the Biden administration is the one that will be on the ground in Baku next month. The current administration is clearly committed to climate cooperation, as are the majority of Americans. Even with an uncertain—or disastrous—election result, the Biden administration can still help other world powers deliver success in Azerbaijan.
There is cause for optimism, even with a potential Trump victory. Plans to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, research has found, would have zero short-term impacts on US emissions, even as it prolongs larger action. The climate crisis will not stop for a climate denier—and the energy transition is inevitable and accelerating in many countries, regardless of US political winds. US clean energy investment is up 36% this year over last, while congressional districts that favoured Trump in the 2020 election received three times as much clean energy and manufacturing investments as those that leaned toward Biden. Globally, 61% of the global south has passed the renewable energy tipping point.
“What we have now is actually unstoppable,” Christiana Figueres, former UNFCCC chair, told the Times. “The direction is unstoppable. What we’re all focused on is scale and speed, but not direction.”
