{"id":246852,"date":"2025-11-06T07:17:27","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T07:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/246852\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T07:17:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T07:17:27","slug":"how-the-us-could-shape-the-cop30-climate-summit-without-even-being-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/246852\/","title":{"rendered":"How the US could shape the COP30 climate summit without even being there"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n The Trump administration does not intend to send a high-level delegation to the COP30 climate summit<\/a> \u2014 or possibly any delegation at all. But that doesn\u2019t mean the country\u2019s influence won\u2019t be felt at the talks.\n <\/p>\n

\n As nations prepare to gather in Bel\u00e9m, Brazil, for the negotiations, which begin on Thursday with the leaders summit, the US is set to play the part of the elephant in the room. Even operating from afar, the US could have the power to blow up a deal in Bel\u00e9m. The Trump administration has recently taken aggressive stances to try to influence other countries\u2019 climate policies, mainly by threatening hostile trade measures.\n <\/p>\n

\n The US has estranged itself from official international climate negotiation processes while simultaneously exerting pressure on trading partners to water down or reject climate commitments. This paradox could have an impact on COP30, experts tell CNN.\n <\/p>\n

\n It is not known whether the US will simply ignore COP or try to intervene to secure preferred outcomes.\n <\/p>\n

\n The administration has publicly criticized the COP process and stated it does not plan to participate. \u201cPresident Trump will not jeopardize our country\u2019s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries,\u201d White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told CNN.\n <\/p>\n

\n The US will not send any high-level representatives to COP30, Rogers said. \u201cThe President is directly engaging with leaders around the world on energy issues, which you can see from the historic trade deals and peace deals that all have a significant focus on energy partnerships,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

\n This practice of linking trade and climate so closely is an innovation of the Trump administration, said Kelly Sims Gallagher, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University who worked on US climate negotiations with China for the Obama administration.\n <\/p>\n

\n In the absence of US leadership, she said that China, which is the world\u2019s top emitter, may seek to assume more of a prominent, steering role at the talks. The European Union is also likely to take a strong role, though internal rifts have emerged within the EU regarding how aggressively to cut its own emissions.\n <\/p>\n

\n Other countries have not followed the US out of the Paris Agreement, but the abrupt shifts in policy in Washington have affected the global mood. An administration that now heavily favors fossil fuels over renewables has reduced the incentives for other countries to submit ambitious plans for cutting emissions through 2035, experts said.\n <\/p>\n

\n These plans were supposed to be delivered by virtually every country in the world in the run up to COP30. However, only about 60 countries delivered theirs to the UN on time, and the actions they outline fall far short of achieving the temperature targets contained in the Paris Agreement.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI think there\u2019s an undeniable fact, which is that with the US withdrawal for a second time, it\u2019s definitely seeming to undermine ambition,\u201d Gallagher said. \u201cI think it\u2019s just getting harder to make the case that global ambition is going to rise without pretty substantial engagement from the United States,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n And now, instead of constructive engagement or simply disengagement, America has demonstrated a trend toward behavior that undermines aggressive climate goals. This was the case last month at a meeting of the International Maritime Organization<\/a> (IMO), which regulates pollution from the international shipping fleet, where US diplomats acted in concert with major oil-producing nations to scuttle what would have been the world\u2019s first carbon tax.\n <\/p>\n

\n The long-heralded proposal would have imposed a tax on carbon pollution from global shipping to encourage a switch to cleaner-burning fuels. Officials in Washington \u2014 including President Donald Trump who released a scathing Truth Social post<\/a> \u2014 were involved in turning up the pressure on diplomats at that meeting. The US threatened to retaliate via trade measures against countries who voted in favor. Neither Gallagher nor other experts expect similarly disruptive behavior from the US during COP30, but they couldn\u2019t rule it out, either.\n <\/p>\n

\n However, Kaveh Guilanpour of the nonprofit Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, for one, thinks any US intervention would be less effective at COP30 than it was at the shipping meeting.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe rest of the world continues to be committed to the Paris Agreement. Countries realize that it is ultimately in their long-term interest that the Paris Agreement succeeds,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe situation [with the global carbon tax] is very different from that of the Paris Agreement,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was a very specific normative proposal under the IMO that the US pushed back against. Negotiations under the Paris Agreement, on the other hand, are largely over. It is now about implementing promises already made.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Despite those differences, the IMO episode is an example of the US prioritizing its own trade interests over global interests to cut planet-warming pollution. Gallagher said it\u2019s possible that the Trump administration will again seek to disrupt negotiations, from the sidelines of COP30. Only this time, the point of contention would likely be climate finance: Funding climate adaptation and renewable energy in the developing world is a big topic at COP30.\n <\/p>\n

\n America\u2019s options for swaying the negotiations themselves, however, are ironically limited, she said, because of the Paris withdrawal and lack of attendance.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThere\u2019s very little that the Trump administration could do in Brazil,\u201d Gallagher said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration does not intend to send a high-level delegation to the COP30 climate summit \u2014 or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-246852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}