The late John McCain — a member of the shrinking tribe of climate-forward Republicans — once griped, “It’s always darkest before it’s totally black.” His gallows humor quip seems apt right now when it comes to the defining challenge of our time: the fight against the climate crisis.
That fight suffered a one-two punch over the past month as the stakes grew more dire. Here in North America, we recently saw the destruction caused by hurricanes including Helene and Milton, which have been made more deadly by human-caused warming, as well as wildfires stretching from the West to the East Coast.
Yet despite the blinking-red global danger sign, the needed action seems more out of reach than ever. Limiting planetary warming below a truly dangerous 1.5 degrees Celsius (almost 3 degrees Fahrenheit) feels less attainable than it did just a few weeks ago. Physically, it’s still within reach: The “carbon budget” we have for keeping planetary warming below that level has not yet shrunk to zero. Existing renewable energy from wind, solar and geothermal sources, combined with energy storage, also makes it technologically feasible. But the political obstacles seem nearly insurmountable.
To start, the U.S. election placed control of our entire federal government in the hands of oil-and-gas-friendly Republicans, likely constituting an end to meaningful climate action from the world’s largest legacy polluter for at least four years. President-elect Donald Trump said that he plans to exit the Paris agreement again. He is poised to work with congressional Republicans to gut government agencies and programs focused on renewable energy and climate action — including the Inflation Reduction Act, which has put the U.S. on track to nearly halve our carbon emissions by 2030 — in line with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
Trump’s choices to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy and Department of the Interior — all seeming likely to be confirmed — constitute a dream team of fossil fuel industry shills.
Former congressman Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), tapped for the EPA, has pushed a friendly version of climate denial that champions adaptation and resilience to justify business-as-usual fossil fuel extraction. For energy czar, Trump picked Chris Wright, who is the CEO of natural gas fracking giant Liberty Energy (and once drank fracking fluid on live television). Wright too practices the kinder, gentler form of denial, insisting he believes climate change is real while dismissing its impact on natural disasters. Rounding out the triumvirate is North Dakota Republican Gov. Doug Burgum, who has favored unproven carbon-capture technology as an excuse for continued fossil fuel extraction and would likely open up public lands for oil and gas drilling. Collectively these three would help implement a “drill, baby, drill” agenda.
Then came the second blow: the disappointing U.N. global climate summit, known as COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan, in late November. The reverberations of the unfavorable U.S. developments were apparent. Trump had, after all, signaled to the rest of the world that the U.S. will be disengaging from global climate negotiations.
Polluters at the conference were emboldened. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who has called his country’s fossil fuels a “gift from God,” used his opening address to scold fossil fuel industry critics that “we must be realistic.” As the United Arab Emirates did last year, Azerbaijan exploited its host status to promote fossil fuel deals ahead of the climate summit, reports show.
The agreement reached at COP29 was unsurprisingly disappointing. While industrial countries did increase the “loss and damage” funds they will pay to assist developing countries with adaptation and building green economies, the $300-billion annual amount was much less than the likely trillions of dollars needed. And although the delegation reached an agreement on international carbon pricing — an important tool to incentivize emissions reductions by rewarding them with credits — the rules lack accountability and allow trade and offset mechanisms that may undercut the environmental goals.
Most disappointing of all, COP29 punted on an agreement to phase out fossil fuels and end new fossil fuel infrastructure, both of which are necessary to stabilize warming. These matters were deferred until next year. But we don’t have time to spare, and last week, petrostates led by Saudi Arabia and Russia blocked a United Nations climate resolution from mentioning a transition away from fossil fuels.
Carbon emissions must now drop precipitously, around 10%, every year if we are to maintain hope of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Indeed, with emissions failing to drop now for years in a row, that strict goal might soon be off the table, and we’ll have to move the target to keeping pollution as low as possible while adapting to the damage we’ve failed to prevent.
COP29 was the second fossil-fuel-happy conference in a row. It seems clear that the current U.N. climate negotiation framework is broken and needs a change of rules, such as preventing any single country from unilaterally blocking an agreement, and also reconsidering awarding hosting privileges to petrostates such as Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, the COP27 host, that they can exploit for oil and gas profits.
Such procedural changes could help get COP back on track. But we will also need to fill the vacuum created by the loss of American leadership. China appears ready to step up to the plate. Is it possible that an authoritarian power could recognize its self-interest in saving its billion-plus population from the devastating impacts of unmitigated climate change?
It is not just reasonable for us to hold out hope that China and other nations remain committed to good-faith engagement on climate — it’s necessary.
There is simply no other choice in the face of our climate reality, no matter how much the incoming U.S. administration tries to deny it.
Michael E. Mann is presidential distinguished professor and director of the Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania. His most recent book is “Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis.
