At the United Nations’ COP29 climate conference being held in Azerbaijan, President-elect Donald Trump’s recent victory threatens efforts to set a new financial goal for climate action and adaptation in developing countries. The U.S., previously considered a global climate leader, is also expected to again pull out of the Paris climate agreement.
“The United States’ absence from the deal would put other countries on the hook to make bigger reductions to their climate pollution,” wrote Politico’s Sara Schonhardt. “But it would also raise inevitable questions from some countries about how much more effort they should put in when the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas polluter is walking away.”
A November 11 segment of Fox Business’ The Bottom Line focused on these potential changes under the incoming administration, with the chyron “Trump fears cast shadow over COP29 summit.”
Co-host and former GOP Rep. Sean Duffy said, “Every year, our favorite climate alarmists will have a meltdown at the COP summit, and their fears are greater than ever knowing a Trump administration 2.0 is brewing.”
The segment then featured a clip of U.S. climate envoy John Podesta saying, “In January, we are going to inaugurate a president whose relationship to climate change is captured by the words ‘hoax’ and ‘fossil fuels.’ He has vowed to dismantle our environmental safeguards and once again withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement.”
After guest Alex Epstein, pro-fossil fuel advocate, suggested that humans “can thrive at many different levels of CO2 in the atmosphere,” Duffy went on to ask, “If you say the climate’s changing, is it coming from CO2 or is it coming from the sun? Where is — why is the climate changing?”
“And you would then say, well, let’s have a rigorous debate about what’s causing it or what are all the factors that bring us to climate change,” Duffy continued. “And when you have the left that says we’re going to shut down alternative science or science that challenges our narrative, it — I think it makes people go, well, maybe there’s a different set of priorities here as opposed to climate change. Maybe it actually is an agenda of control.”
Duffy’s climate denial talking points seemingly reflect the president-elect’s attitude toward the issue. At a November 3 rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania, Trump said, “We don't have a global warming problem. … It's not global warming because, at certain points, it starts to cool a little bit.” He then repeated the false claim and right-wing media lie that wind turbines (which he referred to as “windmills”) are causing whales to “wash ashore and die,” adding, “It’s all a big hoax.”
