Shift Shaping

Trump’s election deals a fatal blow to the climate change agenda.

“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.” – Donald J. Trump

The next United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference (COP29) kicks off on Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan—not that anybody would know it. A record-shattering 86,000 attendees participated in last year’s meeting in the United Arab Emirates, but the upcoming event will be lucky to attract half that number. Government and corporate leaders alike are finding creative reasons not to attend. Late last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced his decision to skip the meeting, citing the recent collapse of his coalition government as the proximate cause. Here’s more from Politico:

“Scholz’s withdrawal adds to a growing list of leaders deciding to miss the talks.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also reversed her plans to attend this week, citing the ongoing hearings to confirm her EU’s executive branch team. France's Emmanuel Macron, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, the United States’ Joe Biden, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese are also not scheduled to attend.”

COP flop | Getty

While the opening quote to this piece could likely serve as an expression of Trump’s sentiment on the event, the statement itself was made back in 2012. He occasionally softens his stance in the name of political expediency, but the demands of the Church of Carbon™ are wholly incompatible with his agenda to catalyze a domestic investment boom in energy, heavy industry, and advanced technology. If carbon emissions are among the other numbers that go up, so be it.

Taken together with his rather consistent view that China has taken full advantage of naïve US leadership for decades, one can model what Trump’s return to office might entail on the environmental front. As we recently noted, “China has been happy to nod along with the West’s rejection of coal while gorging on the stuff itself,” a pattern that has generated significant advantage for its domestic industrial sector while serving as the dominant source of incremental global carbon emissions for the past 25 years. The blatant hypocrisy of it all is plain as day to the displaced working class in the US, something Trump tapped into with a stunning vigor. If anyone wonders why the pickup truck demographic in flyover country turned out in droves to vote last Tuesday, this chart should prove instructive:

A tree is known by its fruit.

With final votes still being counted and the Washington establishment in between the second and third phases of grief, the Trump transition team is spooling up to hit the ground running on January 20, 2025, after having had four years to ponder what went wrong in his first term and plan for a bigger, more lasting impact. We suspect the whirlwind that is about to befall the progressive environmental left will reverberate for decades. Let’s ponder the big moves Trump is most likely to make in the early days of his new administration.