In 2024, temperatures have skyrocketed and records have continued to fall. The year should soon be declared the hottest on record, to the point of having already exceeded the threshold of +1.5°C of warming – compared to the pre-industrial era – enshrined in the Paris Agreement. Despite these alarming data, and ever more intense disasters, the fight against climate change seems to have taken a backseat due to wars, conflicts, elections or social movements, sometimes leading to a setback on certain issues. promises or goals.
What will it be in 2025? The dynamic hardly seems more encouraging a few days before the return to power in the United States of a notorious climate skeptic: Donald Trump. Pierre Blanc, teacher-researcher in geopolitics at Bordeaux sciences agro and Sciences po Bordeaux, author of Geopolitics and climate (Presses de Sciences po, 2023, second edition to be published in February 2025), deciphers for L’Express the major challenges of this pivotal year.
L’Express: In 2025, the Paris Climate Agreement will celebrate its 10th anniversary. Donald Trump, who will return to the White House on January 20, will probably remove the United States for the second time. What could be the consequences for the global fight against climate change?
Pierre Blanc: It’s a safe bet that he does. This decision will first have consequences in the United States: a clear slowdown, if not a halt, of low-carbon transition policies, and a relaunch of the mobilization of fossil fuels. Assessments made during the presidential campaign, in the event of Donald Trump’s victory, showed that the United States could significantly increase its greenhouse gas emissions. And then, beyond the national aspect, we can fear the mimetic reflex of those who identify with it, that is to say the populist national sphere and climate skeptic – which assumes itself as such. For example, Argentina, where President Javier Milei has an elective affinity with Donald Trump. It is certainly not a major nation emitting greenhouse gases, but it could become part of this kind of “climate-killing International”.
There is also the risk that this practice of denial of the climate issue by the greatest world power will have a negative impression even within Europe. I am thinking in particular of Slovakia or the Netherlands. Being aware of the incandescence of public opinion, Ursula von der Leyen, who is beginning her second term, could put a little more muted on the Green Pact – which has not yet been widely deployed. This is what we can fear: the reverberation of Trump’s policies on democracies that are economically developed, but politically tired, and which are not neutral in terms of CO2 emissions.
In the United States, damage linked to climatic disasters, such as fires or hurricanes, cost several billion dollars last year. Can Donald Trump still continue to minimize these phenomena?
I’m not in Donald Trump’s head and, besides, who can claim to be? We guess that he is not an ideologue, which does not prevent him from being surrounded by certain people. Above all, we see that he has a clear propensity to transform reality to achieve his political agenda. Extreme climatic phenomena do not escape this truncated reading. Even though they are now very clear in the United States, I am not sure that Trump considers them as such. From the actions he took during his first term, to his statements during the presidential campaign, he confirms his denial of the anthropogenic origin of climate change. Or even the latter.
His appointments in key positions in energy and environment are not very reassuring…
The signals sent, even before he took office, are very worrying. They clearly show that he is in complete break with the presidency of Joe Biden on this level. It remains to be seen what he will do, among other things, with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which is partly committed. It is interesting to note that, even if the program was launched by the Democratic administration, this massive investment aid benefits Republican states in particular. Nearly four out of five projects are carried out by territories led by them: for example, solar in Texas. So Republican elected officials, Trumpists, could also be penalized by a total shutdown of the IRA. Another element to take into consideration: how will certain personalities of the tech right, first and foremost Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla, flagship of the electric car, accommodate policies that could harm their business? Tensions cannot be ruled out between personalities with egocentric and predatory attitudes.
The Trump case is part of a fairly generalized movement of greenlashpositions taken against the environmental movement and green policies. In Europe too…
The 2024 European elections have shifted the political center further to the right, with possibilities for new coalitions between the EPP and the nationalist right. The first signals sent are not very encouraging. For example, the hearing of Teresa Ribera, executive vice-president of the Commission for a Clean, Fair and Competitive Transition, was extremely difficult: the EPP threatened not to confirm it. There was also this vote aimed at delaying the initiation of the text on imports of products resulting from deforestation, where the EPP aligned itself with currents of the nationalist right. This new alliance can set back ambitions. However, the European Union can become a climate power, as the previous mandate had envisaged. Being at the forefront of mitigation policies will not be neutral in terms of influence.
What are the biggest climate challenges of the year?
After the COPs in Dubai and Baku, which showed the difficulties of climate multilateralism, COP30 must constitute a real relaunch of the ambition drawn up in Paris in 2015. Certainly, the latter two have further explored the idea of the fund “loss and damage”. But in terms of mitigation, the result has been modest, particularly on the reduction of fossil fuels. The fact that Brazil, which wants to be a power for the climate, is the organizer of the next COP, is promising. It promises to be all the more strategic as each nation will have to submit its new contribution plan. We will then have a more precise image of commitment desires country by country.
And if we return to Europe, at a time when Donald Trump risks initiating a retreat, we will have to observe how it will act or react. Does it still want to be a climate power? This is the question it must ask itself in 2025. It is the same for China.
China is the world’s largest emitter, and paradoxically a driving force in many key sectors of green industry. Can it take the lead in climate diplomacy?
The question arises all the more as the Sino-American confrontation tends to intensify. However, if Trump acts excessively, China can highlight its repertoire: investments in low-carbon energies, solar in particular, wind power, but also hydroelectricity, with a major project announced a few years ago. days… Will she use it in her power rivalry with the United States? Asking the question is partly answering it: in my opinion, yes. Except that Beijing is absolutely not clear on the subject. Certainly, it is a country that prides itself on its status as a climate power, but we know the contradictions behind this assertion. Let us think of the Uyghurs who work in quasi-slave conditions, both in silicon mines for solar panels and in the companies that assemble them. At the opening of coal mines. Or the fact that it finances mines of this order on the Silk Roads…
Can other states play a major role?
Brazil has assets, particularly in renewables. It also has on its territory a significant part of the Amazonian forest, which appears even more as a common good serving climate regulation. India also wishes to play this role, even if it is difficult to perceive the reality of its commitment. Other countries can assert themselves, but more modestly in view of their contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. The United Kingdom, for example, is getting back into the race: the new government has stopped the last coal mine and is committed to favoring low-carbon energies, relying in particular on wind production in Scotland. . But it is an overall movement that we must hope for.
The Mediterranean area, a climate change hotspotwas particularly affected by disasters in 2024. Will this cycle continue?
Given the current trajectory, the effects of climate change will not improve in this region, at least in the short term. And unfortunately, the situation of political governance in the Maghreb and the Middle East is far from optimal – to say the least. An example: the failure of dams following storm Daniel in Libya, in 2023, is certainly linked to a warming sea, but it is also and above all an effect of the civil war, and even before that of the bad governance that reigned in the country. In the context of fragile or failed states, we may fear that certain territories will be even more exposed. In other words: the state of nature is all the more worrying since the nature of States is hardly improving.
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