US PRESIDENT JOE Biden’s top climate advisor has said that Donald Trump’s election win is “bitterly disappointing” for climate action – but that it is “not the end” of the fight for a safer planet.
John Podesta made the remarks to media at COP29, the international climate conference taking place in Azerbaijan.
The COP, which involves countries sending delegations of ministers and officials to negotiate decisions on important climate issues, is happening under the shadow of the US presidential election that took place last week.
Donald Trump is set to be sworn in for a second term as the US president in January. His return to the White House, along with Republican majorities in the US Senate and Congress, gives him massive power to influence climate policy – which he intends to do by cutting support for decarbonisation and ramping up fossil fuel extraction instead.
Biden, who remains in office for another two months before the inauguration, is not attending the climate conference in Baku but a large US delegation is representing the country in negotiations and at sideline events.
A press conference by John Podesta, Biden’s senior advisor on climate, on the first evening of the COP drew dozens of journalists, packing the seats (except for the front row, which was taken up by US officials, who also spilled over to line the walls of the room).
Podesta pulled no punches behind the podium.
“I want to address a topic that is on everyone’s mind: the US election. For those of us dedicated to climate action, last week’s outcome in the United States is obviously bitterly disappointing,” he said, “particularly because of the unprecedented resources and ambition President Biden and Vice President Harris brought to the climate platform”.
“It’s clear that the next administration will try to take a U-turn and reverse much of this progress,” Podesta said.
John Podesta, senior advisor on climate to US President Joe Biden, answering the question on everyone's mind at #COP29 - says US election outcome was “bitterly disappointing” for climate
— Lauren Boland (@laurenanna_1) November 11, 2024
“It's clear that the next administration will try to make a U-turn and reverse progress” pic.twitter.com/1NFC5gF9W0
Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement on climate action and is determined to do the same again when he’s back in power.
His campaign platform paper promised, in all capital letters, that the US “will DRILL, BABY, DRILL” and end any restrictions on the use of oil, gas or coal.
Climate scientists from around the world agree that phasing out fossil fuels must be done as quickly as possible in order to stop climate change from escalating further.
Burning fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal is a primary source of the greenhouse gas emissions that are trapping heat inside the atmosphere, causing global average temperatures to rise and destabilising the world’s delicate climate.
A powerful country like the US moving away from climate action at an executive level is a blow for global efforts to fight the crisis.
Podesta said he is “keenly aware of the disappointment that the United States” has caused to other countries in the COP process that have “moved through a pattern of strong, engaged, effective US leadership, followed by sudden disengagement after a US presidential election”.
I know that this disappointment is more difficult to tolerate as the dangers we face grow ever more catastrophic.
“But that is the reality. In January, we’re going to inaugurate a president whose relationship to climate change is captured by the words hoax and fossil fuels. He’s vowed to dismantle our environmental safeguards and, once again, withdraw the United States from Paris Agreement. That is what he has said, and we should believe it,” Podesta said.
“Our administration is working with the incoming administration to ensure a peaceful, orderly transition of power. But what I want to tell you today is that while the United States federal government under Donald Trump may put climate action on the back burner, the work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States with commitment and passion and belief,” he vowed.
“As President Biden said in the Rose Garden last week, setbacks are unavoidable but giving up is unforgivable. This is not the end of our fight for a cleaner, safer planet.
Facts are still facts. Science is still science. The fight is bigger than one election, one political cycle in one country.
“This fight is bigger still, because we are all living through a year defined by the climate crisis in every country of the world.”
Podesta said that “many Republicans, especially governors” know that clean energy investments into their districts and states are good for their local economies and that the energy transition, as well as emissions reductions in agriculture in the US and electrification of transport, are “not going to be reversed”.
“Are we facing new headwinds? Absolutely. But will we revert back to the energy system of the 1950s? No way.”
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