The global climate community will have to pay close attention to the fact that the administration of US president Donald Trump "may do whatever they can to undermine global co-operation in the energy transition" in forums such as the G7 and the UN Cop 30 climate summit, former US government climate advisor John Podesta told the Financial Times Climate and Impact Summit Europe today.
"I hope people will resist them," he said, after pointing out that during Trump's first term, the US administration was "essentially… passive" on the climate on a global stage.
Podesta said that through Trump's attacks on former president Joe Biden's clean energy-supporting Inflation Reduction Act, the US has "handed a victory particularly to China". The act had become an energy transition model around the world, Podesta said, pointing to the EU's Green Industrial Deal. "The way to decarbonise and deal with climate change is through investment, innovation and technology… and what we have done is thrown in the towel and thrown in the hand", he said.
"There was I think, bi-partisan consensus in the US and consensus in Europe that we need to react to [China's domination in the green industry sector]," he added, saying that there is an economic security dimension with leaving China in a dominant position.
Clean energy deployment in the US is likely to stay robust in the short term, he said. Some Republican state governors have raised objections to the administration's rollback of clean energy support, but business investing in that area is keeping its collective head down, Podesta said, largely because "the administration has been engaged in a process of intimidation". Podesta said that there remains significant sub-national action in the US, but warned that the Trump administration is trying to undermine that too.
The administration has moved to "attack the underlying science" and the "human capital" in institutions such as US climate and weather agency the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Podesta said. "If you eliminate all the information sources maybe the problem goes away", he added.
The government has already pulled the US out of the Paris climate agreement and could withdraw from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — the UN's climate body. But there are legal issues around this, including whether the government may need a "supermajority" in the Senate, Podesta said.
"The law has not been a constraint on this government," Podesta added.
