BAKU, Azerbaijan — The U.S. and other countries sought to reassure the rest of the world Monday that whatever happens when President-elect Donald Trump takes office, global efforts to arrest climate change will continue.
But lying underneath the show of resolve at the United Nations climate summit was a sense of real worry about how the absence of U.S. leadership will impede the effort — even if Trump’s ascension to the White House is less of a shock than it was eight years ago.
Unlike 2016, when Trump’s first victory lobbed a stun grenade in the middle of that year’s climate talks in Morocco, diplomats are more aware now that he could make real on his promises to walk away from the Paris climate agreement. He has also vowed to gut President Joe Biden’s climate law, which represents the United States’ most extensive effort to deliver on its goals for cutting planet-warming pollution.
That Trump won again wasn’t shocking, said many of the people POLITICO spoke with as the COP29 summit opened Monday in the capital of Azerbaijan, a Eurasian country that relies on the sale of oil and gas to drive its economy.
