As news of US president-elect Donald Trump’s victory reached Marrakesh on Wednesday, the many thousands of diplomats, climate advocates, young people and business groups gathered in the city for the UN’s annual climate conference were left in shock and disbelief that the US could elect a climate-change denier as president.
Some of the younger advocates were in tears.
“My heart is absolutely broken at the election of Trump,” said Becky Chung, a delegate for young people’s advocacy group SustainUS from California. “We will see a rising-up of people’s movements committed to mass civil disobedience to keep fossil fuels in the ground. The next four years will be critical. We have to get to zero emissions by 2050.”
The delegates from about 200 nations, many of whom had spent 20 years negotiating the complex Paris agreement that aims to limit global warming to a 1.5?C rise, were tight-lipped, but clearly nervous. The US delegation went into a huddle, meetings were canceled and talk centered on whether Trump would fulfill his often-repeated threat to withdraw the US from the UN’s Paris agreement — blitzing decades of fraught, but ultimately successful global negotiations.
“No one thought this could happen. Everyone here is in shock,” Bangladeshi scientist and diplomat Saleemul Huq said. “No one had anticipated this result and, hence, there was no plan B. We will have to think about what happens next.”
Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs Salaheddine Mezouar, the meeting’s president, put on a brave face.
“We are convinced that all parties will respect their commitments and stay the course in this collective effort,” he said.
However, few people agreed with him, because Trump has consistently denied 40 years of climate science — and he claims that global warming due to human activity is a Chinese hoax.
Ditching the Paris treaty, is his No. 1 environmental priority, he has said.
Withdrawal from the treaty, which was crafted over years by US diplomats, often against developing countries’ wills, would take four years to complete and would outrage world opinion. Many delegates in Marrakesh privately think it more likely that a new US administration would choose to ignore it. Because the Paris treaty is voluntary, the US would face global opprobrium, but no sanctions or fines.
Instead of reducing US emissions by a quarter to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, as the US has pledged, Trump would support US coal, gas and fracking and halt payments aimed at helping developing countries adapt to rising sea levels and temperatures.
The result would be to increase US emissions, set back attempts to hold temperatures to a 2?C rise by years, put a brake on the world’s “renewable” energy industries and consign poor countries to deeper poverty, businesses and activists say.
The UN, privately rattled but publicly calm in Marrakesh, fervently hopes that the reality of power, diplomatic pressure and business self-interest will keep Trump in the fold.
At stake is not just the treaty, but the whole UN system, which is based on consensus between countries, officials said.
Erik Solheim, head of the UN environment program, told the Observer that Trump’s pragmatism was likely to score over ideology.
“It’s clear there is uncertainty because of some of the statements made before the election. But I am certain we have crossed the Rubicon. There is no way back on climate change,” he said.
Should the US leave the treaty, Solheim said that some of the biggest losers would be US workers.
“They would lose out on all the new ‘green’ jobs. The thinking that climate is a cost is wrong. It is a business opportunity,” he said.
Other diplomats and politicians claim that the US would lose important allies if it chose to become the world’s only climate rogue nation.
“The signal of Trump for climate and energy policy internationally is about as bad as it could get. [British Prime Minister] Theresa May has to ask that before he withdraws from any UN agreements, he consults and discusses this with allies,” said former British secretary of state for energy and climate change Edward Davey, who was in office from 2012 to 2015.
“Trump has to acknowledge the reality of climate change. He has a responsibility as president-elect now,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The deep fear in Marrakesh is that US opposition to the Paris agreement would signal to other countries that they need not meet their voluntary pledges, with the result that global emissions would soar and climate change could become unstoppable.
Withdrawal would also undermine relations with China.
“Climate cooperation between the US and China will need a new strategy with new priorities,” China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy Deputy Director-General Zou Ji (鄒驥) said.
Developing nations were particularly nervous last week because Trump has also vowed to stop contributions to the Green Climate Fund, set up by the UN to distribute an eventual US$100 billion per year to help them reduce emissions and adapt their infrastructure to climate change. The US, which is expected to be the biggest contributor to the fund, has pledged US$4 billion over four years.
“We will not give up. We will work even harder and invite people to join this powerful movement. The stakes are too high,” Greenpeace International codirectors Jennifer Morgan and Bunny McDiarmid said.
As the Marrakesh meeting prepared to enter its second week, Jean Su of the US Center for Biological Diversity sought to quell fears.
“I do believe that climate progress will not crash and burn because of one single man. One single man cannot ruin a whole 20 years of progress on climate change,” she said.
Michael Brune, director of the Sierra Club, the US’ largest environment group, was adamant.
“It would be very difficult for Trump to remove the US from the Paris agreement. If he tries to ... he will run headlong into an organized mass of people who will fight him in the courts and in the streets,” Brune said.
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