Global efforts to address climate change will be dealt a severe blow if U.S. President-elect Donald Trump again pulls the country out of the Paris Agreement, the EU's head of climate change policy has warned.
Trump's transition team has prepared executive orders to withdraw the United States - currently the world's second-biggest polluter, after China - from the main global treaty on climate change, according to sources in the team.
"If that were to happen, that would be a serious blow for international climate diplomacy," EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told Reuters in an interview.
Another U.S. exit from the Paris Agreement would require other countries to "double down on climate diplomacy" in response, he said.
"There's no alternative to make sure that, in the end, everyone chips in, because climate change is indiscriminate," Hoekstra said of the U.N. climate talks. "This truly is a problem that the world needs to solve together."
The Paris Agreement is the centerpiece of United Nations climate negotiations in which nearly 200 countries discuss steps to curb emissions and funding to pay for these efforts.
The U.S. has played a central role in the talks, including by working with China - the world's biggest polluter and second-biggest economy - to lay the groundwork for recent global climate deals.
A turnaround is expected under Trump, who returns to the White House on Jan. 20. He has called climate change a hoax, and withdrew from the Paris Accord during his first term from 2017 to 2021. Last month he warned the EU it must buy more U.S. oil and gas or face tariffs.
Hoekstra said the EU will "constructively engage" with the new U.S. administration on issues including climate change. He said the Commission is reaching out to U.S. contacts across the political spectrum, including at the non-federal level.
"Making sure that our American friends, as much as is possible, are actually staying on board and are working on this together with us, is clearly something I will strive for," he said.
But even as Brussels faces pressure to step up its climate leadership to fill a potential U.S. vacuum, the EU is set to miss a February deadline for all countries to send new national climate plans to the U.N. The outgoing Biden administration already published the U.S.'s contribution.
Hoekstra said the timings of the EU's political cycle did not line up with the U.N. deadline but that Europe would have its 2035 climate plan ready by this year's U.N. climate summit in November in Belem, Brazil.
"The important thing here is to make sure we have an ambitious number before we walk into Belem," he said. "I can promise you that we will have."
© Thomson Reuters 2025.
4 Comments
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Bret T
Trump is correct to at least threaten to withdraw. Once again, the US taxpayer is being fleeced. China, the EU and other major polluters are "set to miss a February deadline" to submit their plans that are due. The US has submitted our plans, yet all the focus is on the "cash cow" US, and whether Trump will withdraw because others are not carrying their burden. Same as NATO alliance.
The US does not have limitless money as the world seems to think we do. Our national debt is staggering ($36T and climbing). The remora countries need to find a new host to cling to.
Climate "change" is real and timeless. The nature and severity of human activities as a contributor to climate change are debatable. We are no doubt impacting climate change, but do we need to bring down the world economies by overreacting?
Pukey2
As if the current US regime cared that much, They don't even want to promote EVs or solar panels - overcapacity, they call it.
GBR48
The US is on hiatus from climate change mediation until the next regime and anything Biden prepared will be ditched by Trump. Accept it and move on. China can take the global lead for the next few years. So stop sanctioning and tariffing their green tech. It is just delaying the green transition in the West. Leave Trump to hike his tariffs to his heart's content. The American people will take the majority of the hit. The Rest of the World is a big enough marketplace to function without the US for a few years.
Maybe list some 'aspirational behaviours' that American millionaires can fund if they have some loose change, and don't want to be as widely reviled as Glorious Leader.
The future targets set at COPs are irrelevant as they are political fictions. Governments can only do what is politically viable. Push too hard and sitting regimes will be replaced by populist Neo-Nazis. Both France and Germany are now looking vulnerable. They really need to make life a little easier for their citizens and find some talent to benefit the environment in ways that are not politically suicidal. The problem is that there is very little talent and too much corruption in mainstream political regimes.
Each time 'Private Eye' notes a position in the UK government being filled by a donor or a friend or a lobbyist, you know that the sum total of talent, competence and trustworthiness goes down. This is undermining the survivability of regimes across Europe. Political skills matter, and they lack them.
Instead of grand plans and targets, none of which will be met, and jaunts around the world to conferences, perhaps pop up on the web an official list of things individuals, households, companies and local groups could do instead. Not just the big stuff, but small changes too, that everyone could make.
And connect wealthy people to on-the-ground projects in the Global South that would benefit the environment and local communities, excluding governments and third parties that will simply leech any donations into their own pockets.
TaiwanIsNotChina
It's just a polite way to say "enough with subsidized China trash".