Climate officials in the Biden administration and around the world are working overtime to “Trump-proof” the United Nations “climate” process ahead of the upcoming UN COP29 summit in Azerbaijan. But despite their best efforts, President-elect Donald Trump’s historic return to power next year is already dramatically shaking up the whole summit and the broader movement it represents.
At the very least, Trump’s well-known hostility to globalism and the “climate scam” will overshadow the alarmism pushed by the UN, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Joe Biden, and many others. Some analysts believe it could even kill the whole movement that rests on an increasingly discredited hypothesis that Trump has repeatedly described as a “dangerous hoax.”
During his last term, Trump famously ended U.S. involvement in the controversial UN Paris Agreement. Under the scheme, Barack Obama pledged that the U.S. government would decimate the American economy while Communist Chinese rulers vowed to keep building coal-fired power plants until at least 2030. Trump’s second term is likely to be even more brutal to the “climate” agenda.
What Will Trump Do?
Former Trump EPA Chief of Staff Mandy Gunasekara warned that the gloves would be coming off on the climate front in Trump’s second term. There is even serious talk of a U.S. withdrawal from the underlying treaty that the Paris accord was built on, the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Discussing her new book Y’all Fired on The Liberty Report last month, she explained:
I do think that President Trump will understand and not be burdened by insignificant arguments that, “Oh, we need a seat at this table,” or, “Oh, this is really going to matter in terms of our relationship for other international issues.” I think the gloves will absolutely come off.
“The Paris accord is a subcomponent of something called the UNFCCC, an actual treaty that went through the Senate,” she continued:
We need to get out. And Trump has the tools to get out of that treaty, which is going to shut down a lot of the derivative shenanigans, including things like the Paris climate accord being used to push onerous regulations on the United States, again, while the rest of the world gets a free pass.
With significant GOP majorities expected in the Senate and likely in the House as well, climate alarmists in Congress and worldwide are right to be worried. While a handful of liberal “Republicans in Name Only” (RINOs) have jumped on the global-warming bandwagon, they represent a fringe view within the party and are likely to be under tremendous pressure from their unbelieving constituents and colleagues.
Trump has also been clear that the climate “hoax” will be a top target of his next term. In a 2022 talk in Florida in which he lambasted “green” energy and the alarmism surrounding CO2, he argued:
One of the most urgent tasks, not only for our movement, but for our country, is to decisively defeat the climate hysteria hoax.
The president-elect also ridiculed sea-level prognostications, saying:
The ocean is rising. It’s rising. It’s coming. It’s within 300 … years. We’re going to gain one-hundredth of an inch in the ocean and have a little more beachfront property. It’s going to be a terrible thing. No, it’s a hoax. The whole thing is a total hoax…. It’s so crazy.
Activist Hand-wringing
There was no shortage of activists warning of imminent doom due to the election. Comments by policy director Rachel Cleetus with the far-left Union of Concerned Scientists were representative of the movement’s despair. “The nation and world can expect the incoming Trump administration to take a wrecking ball to global climate diplomacy,” she said.
Some of the hand-wringing bordered on the hysterical and outright ridiculous. After the election, global “climate” leader Michael Mann of ClimateGate infamy claimed Trump’s victory showed that the United States was officially a “failed democracy” (it’s actually a republic) that now poses a “major threat to the entire planet.” Critics in the scientific community have described his posts as increasingly “unhinged.”
The Fix Is In
Still, despite the doom and gloom, U.S. climate activists even at a high level have indicated that the fix is in. Last year, this writer asked a delegation of seven U.S. senators at the UN climate summit in Dubai about how they could make credible “climate” pledges considering the prospect of Trump returning to power and the fact that most Americans reject the man-made warming hypothesis.
Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), who responded to the question at the urging of Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Ben Cardin (D-Md.), touted the “tens of billions of [tax] dollars” flowing to GOP-controlled states under the deceitfully named “Inflation Reduction Act.” He also pointed to tax money flowing under the “Infrastructure” bill that will supposedly keep Republican states hooked. Said Coons:
Am I suggesting that, were the former president to be our next president, everything would be fine? No. But I’m saying that there is a broad enough and deep enough support for continuing investments to combat climate change and for the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure law.… We’ll continue to move forward regardless.
Other climate activists take the same tone. For instance, World Resources Institute U.S. Director Dan Lashof noted:
There is no denying that another Trump presidency will stall national efforts to tackle the climate crisis and protect the environment, but most U.S. state, local, and private sector leaders are committed to charging ahead.
Indeed, last time Trump was president, a significant coalition of alarmist governors, mayors, and business leaders from across the country — almost exclusively left-wing Democrats — formed a coalition called “We Are Still In” to continue playing along with the UN climate process. While it did not totally fill the gap left by federal money and power, it helped keep spirits high at the UN summits.
Alarmists Vow to Continue Even Without the U.S.
Former EPA boss and Biden climate advisor Gina McCarthy, who serves as co-chair of the “America Is All In” coalition of alarmist state and city governments, vowed that nothing would stop the climate juggernaut now — not even voters or those they elect:
No matter what Trump may say, the shift to clean energy is unstoppable and our country is not turning back.
Our coalition is bigger, more bipartisan, better organized, and fully prepared to deliver climate solutions, boost local economies and drive climate ambition. We cannot and will not let Trump stand in the way of giving our kids and grandkids the freedom to grow up in safer and healthier communities.
The CCP is also hoping to make the best of the new paradigm by strengthening its “climate leadership” alliance with the European Union. China Climate Hub boss Li Shuo lamented the loss of “U.S.-China political leadership” at COP29. He said that gap would need to be “filled” by the CCP and the EU, telling Reuters:
A strengthened climate alliance with Europe and China at the center is our best hope for the next few years.
Architects of the Paris Agreement also sounded optimistic about the prospect of keeping the alarmism going even without the U.S. government funding it all for the next four years. “The US election result is a setback for global climate action, but the Paris agreement has proven resilient and is stronger than any single country’s policies,” said European Climate Foundation chief Laurence Tubiana.
Claiming recent hurricanes highlight the seriousness of alleged man-made climate change, she said the “transition” would continue with or without Trump. “The context today is very different to 2016,” said Ms. Tubiana, who played a key role in creating the Paris scheme. “There is powerful economic momentum behind the global transition, which the U.S. has led and gained from, but now risks forfeiting.”
Damage Control
Efforts are already underway to keep the United States ensnared in the UN’s climate scheming despite the election, too. Bloomberg News, founded by radical climate alarmist and CO2-spewing billionaire Mike Bloomberg, noted that “worried stakeholders” are working frantically to mitigate the damage Trump might be able to do ahead of COP29:
Officials from Maryland and California have met with Chinese officials to discuss continued climate collaboration at the subnational level, allowing state and local governments to pick up any slack. Some state representatives were part of meetings in Beijing in September while the chief US climate negotiator, John Podesta, engaged in talks with his Chinese counterpart.
Scientists Back Trump
Over a decade ago, Trump warned that the “global warming” narrative was a “hoax” to benefit the Communist Chinese. Ironically, Dr. William Happer, who served as Trump’s climate advisor in his first term, told The New American last year that the “climate” movement was not about saving the climate, but about controlling people — a sort of throwback to Soviet tyranny.
“CO2 is actually good for the world, so people ought to be encouraged to make more of it,” he explained. Some of those promoting the UN narrative have been “misinformed, badly,” and there are also others who simply need “something to believe in,” he said. But ultimately, “it’s the same evil fanaticism that has plagued mankind since we began.”
Numerous leading climate scientists were excited about the effect the election will have on the summit and the broader climate debate. Longtime Harvard astrophysicist Willie Soon, who broke away from Harvard and co-founded the independent Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences and was recently a guest on Tucker Carlson’ show, celebrated the news of Trump’s win.
He also told The New American that Trump should work to reset the whole “climate” discussion. “It is clear that the endless climate alarmism and faulty climate science need a forceful reset,” said Soon, who has authored numerous studies highlighting the role of the sun in warming. “The 47th President of the United States ought to provide such a critical boost for climate science to be great and real again.”
Soon also blasted the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):
The UN IPCC COP29’s climate science activists ought to come out from the comfortable air-conditioned computer game rooms to debate some of us who have worked diligently and correctly for the past 30+ years to show that it is the Sun that is controlling the world’s climate rather than carbon dioxide.
Western Funding the Priority This Year
Wealth redistribution from middle-class taxpayers in the West to kleptocrats in the Third World — dubbed “climate finance” by governments — is set to be the primary item on this year’s climate summit agenda. Indeed, governments from around the world were already lining up to extort Americans. However, with Trump taking over the White House in a few months, everyone at COP29 knows American funding will not be forthcoming.
In the end, losing American tax money may end up being the least of their worries as America moves away from supporting tyranny and globalism masquerading as pseudo-environmentalism. If the whole climate “hoax” comes crashing down — a very real prospect — there will have to be a reckoning of historic proportions. Citizens from around the world will want real answers, and even accountability.
The New American will be at COP29 in Azerbaijan providing exclusive coverage as the process unfolds, so stay tuned.
