The United States is now a failed Democratic state. With the reelection of Donald Trump, a candidate who has flaunted his desire for autocracy—aided and abetted by a Republican-controlled Congress that will not constrain him with guardrails—the United States is now poised to become an authoritarian state ruled by plutocrats and fossil fuel interests. It is now, in short, a petrostate.
The oligarchs who control the Republican party do not intend to waste valuable time—as they did during Trump’s first term—in implementing their fossil fuel-driven agenda. They already have a blueprint—Project 2025—ready to go on day one, which will gut government agencies and programs focused on renewable energy and climate action and double down on fossil fuel infrastructure and production.
What does this mean for global climate action, on the eve of the 29th UN Conference of the Parties (COP29) to be held next week in Baku, Azerbaijan (yes, a petrostate), following yet another devastating summer of record heat waves, droughts, and wildfires and a devastating Atlantic hurricane season that continues on into November?
It means, for one thing, that other major polluters, like China—currently the world’s largest climate polluter (the United States leads in total cumulative greenhouse gas emissions)—will regard the United States as a bad actor with neither the capacity or willingness to make good on its previous climate commitments. Yes, there will be a US delegation in Baku representing the Biden administration, which has demonstrated a commitment to international climate policy engagement. But given that any climate-forward actions adopted by the United States will invariably be reversed in a few short months, China, India, the European Union, and other major industrial nations will not pay much attention to what US negotiators have to say.
It seems likely that the United States will, in short order, join an alliance of petrostate bad actors, including Russia and Saudi Arabia, to block meaningful progress in the COP process including, but not limited to, a commitment to phase out fossil fuels on the timeframe of the next decade or two that is required to avert a catastrophic 1.5-2 degrees Celsius (3-4 degrees Fahrenheit) warming of the planet.
-BULLETIN OF ATOMIC SCIENTISTS