The climate crisis has become a key issue not just for American voters in this US election — but people across the world. What the next president does or doesn’t do over the next four years will have a profound impact on the whether the world is able to avert the worst effects of climate change, scientists, policy makers and activists say. They say the world needs a US president who cares about climate change, for two main reasons. First, many nations take their cue from US policy, particularly on issues such as the climate crisis, meaning Washington has a unique opportunity to influence. Second, the US is the world’s second-biggest polluter after China, meaning it has a moral obligation to act.
President Donald Trump, during his current administration, has gutted domestic environmental regulations and policies designed to limit global warming. Internationally, he has pulled the US out of the landmark Paris climate accord, the only global pact that seeks to avoid dangerous heating of the planet. And he’s doubted the reasons for climate change. During the final presidential debate on Friday, Trump falsely claimed said the US has “the cleanest air” and “the cleanest water,” and called India and China “filthy,” a skewered rendition of reality.
His Democratic challenger former Vice President Joe Biden, said at the same debate that “global warming is an existential threat to humanity. We have a moral obligation to deal with it.”
Biden’s comments echo what the scientists are saying. Global carbon dioxide concentrations — the main culprit warming the planet — are at higher levels than at any time in human history. It’s too late to stop all the impacts of climate change. They are already happening. Wildfires have torched homes across the Western US this year, unprecedented floods have inundated large swathes of Asia, and the past decade featuring deadly heatwaves and droughts — was the hottest ever recorded. The ice caps that bookend our planet are also seeing rapid loss and glacial melt.
Under a US president who pushes for climate policies, however, the world could work toward “marginal, incremental damages” rather than catastrophic ones, said Jonathan Pershing, program director of environment at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, who was the former special envoy for climate change at the US Department of State during the second term of the Obama administration. Pershing added: “Every succeeding election becomes more and more urgent because the time is shorter to manage those really grievous damages.” The coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 230,000 and infected 9.1 million people in the US, has exposed that Trump’s administration is hostile to science and decades of research. That endangers lives and livelihoods, according to Kim Cobb, a professor and researcher of paleoclimate and climate change at Georgia Tech. “It’s not really the planet anymore. It’s really about people. And that’s something that we all have to wake up to. It’s not about saving polar bears and coral reefs, it’s about us,” Cobb said. “We can simply not afford to put our heads in the sand about this other lasting global challenge which is a direct threat to our country.”
The Paris Agreement, a pact signed into effect in 2016 by almost all the world’s countries, seeks to limit global warming to well below 2°C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. To do so, countries need to reach net zero emissions by 2050. When Trump announced in June 2017 that the US would be withdrawing from the agreement, it signaled that America would no longer lead the global fight against climate change. Studies have shown the so-called “Trump Effect” has made it easier for other countries to renege on their climate commitments. “It’s critically important for the entire movement that the US be a part of it,” said Lois Young, Belize’s ambassador to the United Nations. “Other countries that are big emitters are saying, Well if the United States is not accountable, why should I be?”
At UN climate talks in Madrid last year, Young, who is also head of the Alliance of Small Island States, accused big polluters like the US of “ecocide.” She said the Trump administration’s policies on climate have been “a total disaster.”
They have closed their eyes to the science,” she said, adding that fossil fuel emissions pollute and impact the whole world. “Emissions don’t have borders. We are all in this together, as we are with Covid. So what happens in America doesn’t stay in America. We all pay a price.” Over the past three-and-a-half years, the Trump administration has rolled back fuel efficiency standards, loosened restrictions on methane emissions, approved the largest reduction in the boundaries of protected land in US history, and made changes to Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act protections. In fact, researchers at Columbia University in New York have tracked 100 environmental rules that have been or are being reversed. Trump’s staunch backing of the fossil fuel industry has earned him nearly $13 million in campaign donations from individuals at oil and gas firms, according to OpenSecrets, a research group that tracks money in politics. The industry has sent $976,000 to Biden.
But Trump’s mission to revive America’s coal industry is failing, as coal keeps losing ground to cleaner and cheaper alternatives. Biden, meanwhile, has laid out a $1.7 trillion climate plan focused on clean energy, green jobs and with a goal of carbon free electricity by 2035 and net-zero emissions by 2050. Biden would also re-enter the Paris climate accord and has promised to stand up to polluters by banning new oil and gas drilling on federal lands and requiring methane emission limits for new operations. “If Trump wins again, the chances of achieving anything like Paris compliance are very, very low. That’s the level we are at already,” said Tim Benton, who leads the Energy, Environment and Resources groups and the British think tank Chatham House. “If Biden wins, there is much more space for ambitious climate action on a global basis,” he said, but warned it’s so late in the day for action to reduce the required emissions that “we still might not get to Paris levels.”
