Trump did not damage climate change efforts: US official

Despite its opposition to fighting climate change, the Donald Trump administration did not do serious damage to long-term climate commitments, a senior US State Department official said.

Dr Jonathan Pershing, a senior advisor to the State Department’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, said that despite the United States withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord in November 2020, that the world did not cease working on climate change mitigation measures.

“The absence of US engagement had global implications, not just national implications. Having said that, two other things are also true. The first is that the world did not stop working because the US withdrew. It perhaps moved a little bit less slowly than it might have moved with US pressure. Europe was a leader during this period. But a number of other developing countries also stepped forward,” Pershing said, speaking during a specially organised and ongoing three-week virtual briefing for foreign journalists by the Foreign Press Center of the US State Department on combating the climate crisis.

At the same time, Pershing, who was also a political appointee during the Obama administration, said that the withdrawal from the Accord had left him extremely disappointed. However, domestic work on climate change did not stop, he added. “Under the last administration, we had as much as 70 per cent of the US GDP in states that felt this was a priority and took steps to reduce their emissions. Programs led to not just things like renewable energy, but vehicular transport and investments in buildings. This meant that targets and the commitments that the US had announced in earlier years were largely met even though President Trump did not think they mattered, even though he didn’t support them,” Pershing said.

Consequently, according to Pershing, the Biden Administration believes it is on a trajectory to achieving a 26 per cent to 28 per cent in emissions reduction by the year 2025. His comments came as the US seeks to re-engage the world community when it comes to climate change.

Support for India

Pershing said that the United States was re-committed to providing technological support to India to help achieve its renewable energy goals.

While India has committed to install 450 gigawatts of renewable energy (primarily solar) by 2030, Pershing said that the country nevertheless does not have the wherewithal to act on this. “They are still trying to figure out how to raise the capital for that. They are trying to figure out when they’ve got that much solar on their electricity grid, how do they ensure continued reliability? Because at night there isn’t the sun, and so how do you maintain the capacity to give people power 24 hours a day instead of just while the sun is shining?” he said.

“That kind of a structure is doable. We have battery technologies and backstop generation capacity and what they call spinning your reserves. You can do it, but it requires some redevelopment and redesign,” he added.