EU warns of ‘serious blow’ from Trump on climate change

The EU’s chief of climate change policy has warned that if US President-elect Donald Trump withdraws from the Paris Agreement again, global efforts to combat climate change will suffer significantly. According to team sources, Trump’s transition team is preparing executive orders to remove the United States, the world’s second-largest polluter behind China, from the primary global climate change deal.

“If that were to happen, that would be a serious blow for international climate diplomacy,” EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told  in an interview.

Another U.S. exit from the Paris Agreement would require other countries to “double down on climate diplomacy” in response, he said.

“There’s no alternative to make sure that, in the end, everyone chips in, because climate change is indiscriminate,” Hoekstra said of the U.N. climate talks. “This truly is a problem that the world needs to solve together.”

The Paris Agreement is the centerpiece of United Nations climate discussions, in which nearly 200 nations negotiate methods to reduce emissions and financing to support these efforts. The United States has taken an active part in the discussions, including laying the framework for recent global climate agreements with China, the world’s largest polluter and second-largest economy. A turnaround is predicted under Trump, who will return to the White House on January 20. He has labeled climate change a hoax and pulled out of the Paris Accord during his first term, which ran from 2017 to 2021. Last month, he warned the EU that it needed to buy more US oil and gas or face tariffs.

Hoekstra stated that the EU will “constructively engage” with the next U.S. government on subjects such as climate change. He stated that the Commission is reaching out to contacts in the United States at all levels of government, including non-federal organizations.
“Making sure that our American friends, as much as is possible, are actually staying on board and are working on this together with us, is clearly something I will strive for,” according to him.

Even as Brussels is under pressure to step up its climate leadership to cover a potential US vacuum, the EU is on track to fail a February deadline for all nations to submit new national climate plans to the United Nations. The contribution from the United States has already been released by the outgoing Biden administration.

Hoekstra said the timings of the EU’s political cycle did not line up with the U.N. deadline but that Europe would have its 2035 climate plan ready by this year’s U.N. climate summit in November in Belem, Brazil. “The important thing here is to make sure we have an ambitious number before we walk into Belem,” he said. “I can promise you that we will have.”