How The World Can Respond To Trump & Rubio’s UNFCCC Idiocy

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

After taking over control of Venezuela, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio’s decision to pull the United States out of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) may not seem like the biggest news, but it is a huge deal and it’ll be interesting to see where things go.

Across the climate and cleantech space, there’s massive criticism, disappointment, and warning about this. I agree with the points that have been expressed in that regard. However, I do wonder about a potential silver lining. Potential is the key word here.

The United States is a petrostate. It is heavily influenced, or controlled, by the oil & gas industry. Therefore, it has never really been a climate leader. Alongside petrostates like Russia and Saudi Arabia, the USA has typically tried to weaken global commitments and partnership on climate solutions. It’s challenging enough for most countries eager for climate action to deal with Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the like, but the United States has been the most powerful country in the world over the last several decades, so its weak, laggard approach and desire to water down commitments has often dragged the whole world down.

Perhaps, just maybe, with the USA’s influence void thanks to Donald Trump pulling us out of the UNFCCC, the remaining countries of the world can work together on stronger, more serious, more impactful climate policies and commitments.

The US wants to be the fringe renegade? Let it be the fringe renegade. Make stronger climate commitments together. Make greater climate treaties and bigger cleantech commitments. The US wants to ostracize itself? Let it be ostracized and move on without it. Build up the cleantech industries of the coming years, work together to make those more efficient and help them grow faster, and take the benefits from that.

China has already grown into a behemoth of a leader on solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles. It would benefit from even more of the world turning to it for climate leadership. And why not? Who has been faster to roll out the clean technologies we need? Europe has been a leader, but also has its own struggles and has long bent the knee too willingly to the US. Get aggressive, agree on more powerful leadership, and move on. Much of the world would like stronger international agreements. Without the US watering those down, perhaps they can do more without us.

As we’ve said before, the US is bound to lose economically from splitting itself off from friends. This move will push even more countries away, but maybe that’s for the best. Rather than playing the role of Captain Planet, we’ve been playing the role of Captain Pollution.

Of course, there are concerns that other countries will just follow us out the door after pulling out of the UNFCCC, or won’t take their commitments seriously. There are concerns that the US dropping its climate commitments will result in drastically higher CO2 emissions. Perhaps that is indeed what we’ll get. But there is this alternative possibility.