Is the world falling behind in climate efforts? Signals from around the world suggest so. Mikael Karlsson, scientific advisor at 2050, sheds light on the dire situation in the US, and climate policy uncertainties in the EU, but also on positive signals and trends.
“I might lose my job this afternoon.” Working with climate issues in the USA now involves uncertainty about the future.
Mary tells me this at a café in Washington D.C. early one morning. We sit a few kilometres west of the White House in an area where I assume neither she nor her colleagues live. The music is playing, and a steady stream of people buy coffee to drink on their way to work. The buzz makes it easier to talk about what more and more people dare to mention, how the despot of a president rapidly dismantles federal climate policy and undermines the country’s credibility on the issue.
“But what drives much of what companies and individuals do in the climate field comes from the development in California and the EU.”
This is what most people say, when I conduct a series of research interviews in the USA, earlier this year. For cars and many other products, and even for climate reporting, it is progressive states like California, Colorado, and New York that often set the standards. Trump has tried to block that as well, but has met strong resistance. And behind the bombastic rhetoric from the president and his lackeys, even some Republicans at federal level seek to promote certain climate policy initiatives, including increased ethanol blending in fuels and subsidies in Biden’s climate plan, the Inflation Reduction Act. What Trump does is a climate policy disaster, but crucial climate requirements are still being maintained. And Trump’s trade war may even reduce production and consumption and thus emissions, although a policy that creates environmental benefits through crisis is far from desirable. Nevertheless, no one knows how it will end, not even if Trump will respect the outcomes of the many legal processes that are likely to follow, and what that means for the states and their climate requirements.
The situation within the EU is unfortunately also unclear. Last year’s Draghi report on EU’s competitiveness contains points of relevance for climate policy, and the Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, still says that EU should be a world climate leader, but much political practice since then creates uncertainties. Proposals to simplify and delay environmental requirements within the EU are frequent. While there is room to streamline regulations, backtracking is not acceptable. It is bad for the environment and sends the wrong signal to the many companies now developing their sustainability reporting.
When some commissioners also hesitate on the issue of the EU’s climate target for 2040, it gets even worse. The Commission is now sending the wrong signals not just within the EU but to the rest of the world as well. The rationale for an ambitious 2040 target is well articulated in the European Climate Law:
” In order to provide predictability and confidence for all economic actors, including businesses, workers, investors and consumers, to ensure a gradual reduction of greenhouse gas emissions over time and that the transition towards climate neutrality is irreversible, the Commission should propose a Union intermediate climate target for 2040, as appropriate, at the latest within six months of the first global stocktake carried out under the Paris Agreement.”
That stocktake was presented at COP28, the climate conference in Dubai in December 2023. In other words, the Commission’s proposal is almost a year late. The stance hardly inspires confidence that the transition is irreversible…
At the same time, the Commission is pushing for a Clean Industrial Deal, based on the insight that competitiveness and climate measures go hand in hand. The proposals include support for energy-intensive industries and environmental technology, as well as measures for energy supply, circular economy, and employment. Among other things, massive investments of 100 billion euros are to be mobilised, making the program the largest of its kind in EU’s history. Details and implementation remain to be worked out and assessed, but the deal may indeed boost climate transformation.
This signal is far more timely than the Commission’s rollback of certain environmental requirements. The reason is that two underlying trends seem inevitable.
The first is climate change itself. Nothing in science suggests that climate damages will be less severe than what studies have pointed at. On the contrary, research increasingly shows that the consequences of a given level of warming are more severe than previously thought. Extreme weather events resulting from climate change illustrate the problems for companies and citizens here and now, an illustration that is likely to become more frequent and more damaging. These increasingly alarming signals are unlikely to be talked away even by the clowns in the White House.
The second trend is positive, the rise of renewable energy. According to a new report from IRENA, renewable electricity – almost exclusively wind and solar – accounted for as much as 92.5 percent of the world’s capacity increase last year. The growth is almost on par with what is needed to meet the goal from COP28 in Dubai, to triple renewable capacity by 2030. And the costs for both solar and wind, as well as batteries, continue to fall rapidly, which is not the case for fossil energy or nuclear power. This renewable trend cannot either be influenced by Trump. However, the USA risks falling behind as the energy systems around the world transforms.
In a climate of political uncertainty, there are, in other words, two clear exclamation points – the climate crisis and the renewable energy revolution. There are both moral and business reasons to develop policies in line with these trends, to counteract the former and utilise the latter. As the USA now goes astray, the motives for the EU to do both are strengthened, to take responsibility for both the planet and an energy supply that reduces climate damage.
It is regrettably problematic to work with climate issues in Washington D.C. nowadays, but it should not be on our side of the Atlantic.
P.S. The name Mary and the location are fictitious.
