President Donald Trump has taken a “scorched earth” approach to climate policy by going far beyond his first-term actions, a former diplomat said Tuesday during the POLITICO Energy Summit.
Trump is moving to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, as he did during his first term, but this time the U.S. has also skipped attending environmental conferences that are used to help shape international agreements, according to Sue Biniaz, former principal deputy climate envoy at the State Department. Last time, for example, officials participated in meetings that helped write the rules of the Paris Agreement, despite Trump announcing a move to exit. The first Trump administration also left the states largely alone, she said.
“This time it’s more like scorched earth, if you will, which is not participating really in anything that has the word climate related to it,” said Biniaz, who worked closely with former Secretary of State John Kerry when he served as climate envoy under President Joe Biden.
Allowing those other processes to continue kept climate diplomacy going during Trump’s first term, said Biniaz, arguing that it showed that the U.S. wasn’t “necessarily monolithic” on climate issues.
