Climate pact withdrawal breaks trust in US

This year will see countries finalize their national plans to meet their emissions reduction targets by 2035, the focus of this November's COP30 global climate talks in Brazil.

Many of those countries' 10-year climate strategies — which will guide how aggressively they can curb their greenhouse gas emissions — are dependent on the funding the developed countries have promised to provide.

The United States' withdrawal from the Paris Agreement that the new US administration announced on Monday shortly after President Donald Trump began his second term has therefore undoubtedly dealt a heavy blow to the world's efforts to fight climate change at this crucial stage.

Even though the US Climate Alliance, a coalition of governors from 24 states that represent nearly 60 percent of the US economy, has pledged to meet the previous US administration's climate target of cutting the country's emissions by 66 percent by 2035, the US walking away from the pact necessarily calls into question a host of other US commitments, such as providing billions of dollars to support the climate actions of poorer nations.

Trump accompanied his pullout from the global climate pact for the second time — which will take effect in a year, after the official notice period — with a barrage of executive orders, including one declaring a national energy emergency that Trump said would unlock what he called America's "liquid gold" by expanding drilling in the world's top oil and gas producer.

With his re-embracing of fossil fuels and revoking of his predecessor's climate actions, certain vested interest groups in related industries will benefit tremendously from his winding back of the clock. No wonder Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, accused the Trump administration of further enriching billionaire oil and gas donors, saying "the US is producing more oil and gas than any country in history", rightly pointing out that "There is no energy emergency. There is a climate emergency".

Trump tried to justify the move by claiming "the United States will not sabotage our own industries" while some major developing countries pollute "with impunity".

But as Ani Dasgupta, president and CEO of the World Resources Institute, said in a statement, "Walking away from the Paris Agreement won't protect Americans from climate impacts, but it will hand China and the European Union a competitive edge in the booming clean energy economy and lead to fewer opportunities for American workers."

The need to realize the global green transition means that the clean energy sector and the green economy have become engines of growth around the world, a central topic in the ongoing Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

That explains why about half of Americans "somewhat" or "strongly" oppose US action to withdraw from the climate accord, and even Republicans aren't overwhelmingly in favor, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Only about 2 in 10 US adults are "somewhat" or "strongly" in favor of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, while about one-fourth are neutral.

Although the US is the second-biggest source of carbon emissions after China, carbon dioxide lasts in the atmosphere for centuries, and the US has put more of the heat-trapping gas in the air than any other nation if its accumulative historical emissions are taken into account. The US is responsible for nearly 22 percent of the carbon dioxide put in the atmosphere since 1950, according to a Global Carbon Project report. And US carbon emissions fell just 0.2 percent last year. The US had already been slipping behind its 2030 climate targets despite hundreds of billions of dollars in clean-energy spending by the former administration.

Unlike the US, China has never ceased its efforts to realize green development. China's carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP decreased by more than 50 percent in 2021 compared to 2005, with its forest stock up by over 6.49 billion cubic meters, the report said. As of 2023, nonfossil fuels accounted for 17.9 percent of China's total energy consumption, while by October 2024, the total installed capacity of wind and solar power in the country had reached 1.28 billion kilowatts.

And China's commitment to the global low-carbon transition remains unwavering. "Climate change is a common challenge faced by all of humanity, and no country can remain unaffected or solve the problem on its own," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said.

China is willing to work with all parties to actively address the challenge of climate change.