The two main candidates for the presidency of the United States, <a href="http://www.world-today-news.com/donald-trump-whats-behind-the-us-presidents-baltimore-attack/" title="Donald Trump: What's behind the US President's Baltimore attack”>Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, have diametrically opposed views on the climate, turning the November elections into a choice between energy transition or climate skepticism.
Neither the Democrat nor the Republican have shown a complete program on this issue, which is far from being at the center of the campaign in the United States, despite the fact that the country is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world behind China. .
But their positions have no mystery. The former president calls climate change a “hoax” and has promised to extract fossil fuels “at all costs” if elected.
If his threats are carried out, the Republican’s victory will mean more US greenhouse gas emissions and the country’s disengagement from climate diplomacy, a setback for progress against fossil fuels.
In the event of Trump’s victory, American negotiators will lose weight at COP29, which begins six days after the November 5 elections.
The commitment of rich countries like the United States against global warming will be decisive in increasing financial aid to vulnerable countries.
During his term (2017-2021), the Republican withdrew Washington from the Paris Climate Agreement, and has promised to do so again if he is re-elected after his successor Joe Biden reversed the decision.
Under this agreement, the United States has committed to halving its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, compared to 2005.
In 2023, it had only reduced its emissions by 18%, according to the Rhodium Group research center.
To reach 50%, “we really need to stay the course” in this administration’s policies, but if Trump wins there will be “a 180-degree turn,” warns Leah Stokes, a political scientist specializing in climate. “The US elections will have repercussions for the entire planet.”
– “Green Scam” -Harris, who attended COP28, where the United States played a key role, has pledged to “continue and expand US international leadership on climate,” according to his campaign website.
As a senator, she supported the “Green New Deal,” a resolution that called for a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. With his usual sarcasm, Trump dubbed this measure “Green New Scam.”
Harris supported in 2019, when she was a candidate for the Democratic primaries, the ban on hydraulic fracturing, a highly polluting method of hydrocarbon extraction.
However, he backed down on this position because it hurt him among voters in the key state of Pennsylvania, where this sector has an important presence.
The Democrat did not say much about the climate in this campaign.
During his debate with Trump, he defended the need for “diversified energy sources,” although he went so far as to boast that the country had “seen the largest increase in domestic oil production in history.”
It is a position that has been received with veiled criticism from some quarters. But much of the environmental movement supports the Democrat and her record of environmental fight.
They cite his work against oil companies when he was Attorney General of California. And, above all, his decisive vote to approve the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a federal law that allocates a strong investment for the energy transition.
Trump has not stopped attacking this law, and has already announced that he will “cancel all unspent funds” provided for in the text.
But reversing a law is complex, and even some Republican legislators have spoken out against it.
– Electric vehicles -Trump has also promised to end what he considers the “mandatory purchase of electric vehicles,” in reference to a regulation approved by the Biden administration on automobile emissions, aimed at accelerating the shift from combustion engines to electric ones, although their purchase is not required.
Other recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules, such as limits on CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants, could also be affected.
But “any attempt to repeal these rules will lead to numerous appeals,” says Fatima Ahmad of the climate consultancy Boundary Stone.
“Local governments and the private sector will continue to push their climate commitments,” as they did “during the first Trump administration,” he explains to AFP.
According to a study by the specialized media Carbon Brief, Trump’s victory will mean that the United States will emit some 4 billion more tons of CO2 by 2030, the same amount that Europe and Japan jointly emit in a year.
