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When Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Paris climate accord exactly a year ago, many worried about whether the voluntary global deal to avoid catastrophic climate change could survive.
The Paris accord requires countries to negotiate every few years to form more ambitious goals on reducing emissions. In the lead-up to the latest talks, doubts about the long-term survival of the Paris accord are getting stronger. The agreement needs the participation of 55 countries putting out at least 55% of the world’s emissions. With the US gone, the accord could easily fail if China were to pull out now.
It’s not quite come to that, but it could. “Just as the ‘China card’ is played on the Hill in Washington, US inaction is also used in Beijing for not doing more,” Li Shuo, senior global policy adviser at Greenpeace East Asia, told Climate Wire (paywall). “There is indeed skepticism from the strategic community—the ones that are nationalistic and view US-China relations as a zero-sum game.”
In any case, the Paris agreement’s goals are doomed without the US, the world’s second-largest emitter. To keep global warming in check, the world as a whole must reach zero emissions before the end of the century.
Can we imagine the US rejoining? So far, Trump’s Republicans have not paid a political price for their climate-denying stance. But there’s a growing divide between Republican voters, who largely believe in the scientific consensus that climate change is being driven by human activity, and the party’s fossil-fuel funders, who deny the consensus view.
That’s one reason why lobbyists are looking to align the party’s agenda with clean energy and convert fence-sitters in swing seats during the US midterms later this year. “Clean energy…doesn’t alienate the base,” according to Jay Faison, CEO of ClearPath, a lobbying group that had 13 out 15 Republicans it supported win seats in the House and Senate in 2016.
And there are some hopeful signs coming from within the Republican Party, which hasn’t always (paywall) been an enemy of the environment. Over the past few years, unusual coalitions have formed between climate-denying Republicans and climate-championing Democrats. They are visible in bills introduced or passed that support nuclear power, energy storage, carbon-capture technology, and even renewable energy. And they show up when the US Congress, against Trump’s wishes, continues to grow budgets for science, climate, and energy research.
It’s not impossible to think that Trump’s own party could end up restoring the US to its position at the head of the table for fighting climate change.—Akshat Rathi
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Our best wishes for a relaxing but thought-filled weekend. Please send any news, comments, secret NBA tweets, and Lamborghini Countachs to hi@qz.com. You can follow us on Twitter here for updates throughout the day, or download our apps for iPhone and Android. Today’s Weekend Brief was edited by Kabir Chibber.