Diplomats are fretting over what Trump’s win means for the planet

 America’s allies and foes alike have spent the past five days speculating about what Donald Trump’s re-election will mean for their economies, security and the world’s grinding wars.

Similar anxieties are brewing among diplomats gathering in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, today for the COP29 climate talks. Trump has vowed to again pull the United States from the Paris Agreement, which binds nearly all the world’s countries to dramatically slash carbon pollution. Instead, he is poised to revive his “drill baby, drill” agenda to cash in on more American oil and gas.

A U-turn on US climate policy could be disastrous for the planet, as it raises the risk of emulation. When America does something on the world stage, at least some countries tend to follow.

“Paris is one of those agreements where you need a critical mass of economic powers and emitters, past and present, to actually be able to address this challenge,” said Oli Brown, an associate fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House.

Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, negotiators will ramp down their expectations in terms of what’s possible at the talks, he said.

The sheer amount of extra carbon pollution from an America unbound by any climate agreement is worrying enough. America is the second-biggest polluter of planet-heating carbon and it produces more oil than any other nation.

But the real sting is, that as the world’s biggest economy, the US has more power than any other country to fund climate change action in the developing world. Even if it stays in the Paris Agreement, an “America First” Trump administration is unlikely to be more generous with grants and loans for other countries’ green transition.