Climate leadership, reordered

 

Climate leadership, reordered

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By Claire Brown

NYT-Newsletter-SO-Headers-Climate Forward

 

In the weeks following President Trump’s re-election, there was a lot of talk about who would fill the global climate leadership vacuum left behind by the Biden administration.

 

Some would argue this was a flawed premise. The United States has long been an at-best-unreliable presence in global climate negotiations. It is the only country to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, in which 194 other governments pledged to keep global warming to relatively safe levels. The U.S. left the agreement in President Trump’s first term, only to rejoin under President Biden and it is now in the process of withdrawing again.

 

Regardless, as international negotiators gather in Belém, Brazil, for this year’s U.N. climate talks, known as COP30, there are a few early indicators about who’s stepping up on the global stage and who’s stepping back.

 

Here’s where things stand.

 

Next up: China

Cheap green tech exports out of China are starting to substantially change the economic development trajectory of some countries, Somini Sengupta and Brad Plumer report from Belém.

 

“China has sought to cast itself as a pillar of global stability,” they write, “particularly after the Trump administration said it would withdraw the United States from the annual climate talks.”

 

The result is that drivers in countries like Vietnam, Nepal and Ethiopia are opting for electric vehicles over combustion engines, and places all over the world have begun installing solar arrays made with Chinese equipment.

 

(We’ve been reporting all year about China’s clean energy boom, including how it’s leaving the U.S. behind in nuclear development, clean energy patents and building out ultra high-voltage power lines. Read more from our series.)

 

Yet much of China’s clean tech manufacturing boom has been powered by a parallel expansion in coal, so its emissions have continued to increase.

 

But the rapid pace of China’s clean energy installations may be flattening that curve: its emissions are projected to rise by just 0.4 percent this year, or even fall slightly, Plumer reports.

 

The newcomer: Gavin Newsom

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat, has seized on the Trump administration’s absence at the conference to show up at U.N. climate talks in person for the first time, pitching himself as a “stable and reliable” partner to the world, Somini Sengupta reports.

 

“Donald Trump didn’t show up at COP30 but California did,” Newsom said.

 

The likely 2028 presidential hopeful drew big crowds at COP, where he encouraged climate advocates to reframe climate issues in terms of affordability.

 

As Sengupta pointed out, though he was a strong critic of the oil and gas industry just a few years ago, Newsom this year made it easier to drill for oil in California, a move he defended as “pragmatic” when pressed about it at COP.

 

The pragmatist: Brazil

Another government that has tried to balance promises to slash emissions with its sizable fossil fuel revenue is Brazil, the host of this year’s talks.

 

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called for leaders at COP to build a road map to overcome dependence on fossil fuels, building on promises made in previous years. By 2025 global climate diplomacy standards, it is a bold idea, and will undoubtedly face opposition from some countries.

 

In recent years, Brazil has significantly reduced deforestation, Ana Ionova reported. But just weeks before the summit began, Brazil paved the way to allow oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon River.

 

This decision drew blowback. Dozens of Indigenous protesters burst into the conference venue on Tuesday, demanding preservation of their land and criticizing the oil exploration plan.

 

Not in the room: U.S. Corporations

It wasn’t so long ago that leaders of America’s biggest companies were proclaiming their commitments to climate issues.

 

That’s not the case anymore, Ivan Penn and David Gelles report. Whereas past COPs have drawn top executives from Apple, Exxon and Bank of America, this year’s summit has drawn no prominent American leaders.

 

Some of what’s driving the corporate absence at COP is fear of retribution from the Trump administration, experts told Penn and Gelles.

 

Under the surface, the picture is a little more complicated. Some companies are proceeding with business as usual, pursuing the same climate commitments as ever minus the flashy marketing push, Harvard researchers Neil Hawkins and Kelly Cooper found in a paper published in June. A smaller number are walking back their sustainability goals.

 

Still, by now it’s clear that mainstream corporate America is not rushing to position itself as the antidote to U.S. climate retrenchment. As one expert told my colleagues, the risk of drawing the ire of the Trump administration seems to outweigh the benefit of trumpeting climate progress on the global stage.