Donald Trump’s Republican allies in Congress showed up at UN climate talks to tout natural gas and nuclear energy, but they tiptoed around the elephant in the room: a looming US withdrawal from the Paris agreement.
President Joe Biden’s climate envoys have sought to reassure delegates in Baku this week, telling them that Trump’s planned pullout from the pact would have little impact on the global battle against climate change.
The handful of Republican lawmakers who made the trip to Azerbaijan’s capital on Saturday represent states that are home to oil fields, coal mines and auto manufacturing.
Morgan Griffith, a congressman from Ohio and member of the House energy committee, told AFP that he has supported the Paris agreement in the past.
Asked if he would back a withdrawal, he said: “We don’t want get in front of the president.
“It just depends on, you know, what we deem is in the best interest of the United States,” he added.
Under the Paris agreement, signatories aim to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 in the hope of reaching the ideal target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.
The Republicans, with their backing of the oil and gas sectors, offered a contrasting vision of the fight against climate change to many of the delegates and activists attending the COP29 conference.
“In our country there’s a blind rush just to eliminate all fossil fuels and I don’t think that’s practical for the developing world or the already industrialised world,” Griffith said.
Texas Congressman August Pfluger, who led the House energy committee delegation, said the US election had sent a clear signal.
“The people in the United States overwhelmingly supported President Donald Trump and his promise to restore American energy dominance,” Pfluger said at a news conference.
When asked about the Paris agreement, Pfluger said American voters “spoke very loud and clear” about their desire to see inflation come under control when they elected Trump on November 5.
“Energy is the foundation of that,” he added.
“If an agreement is going to hurt, if something is going to actually decrease our ability to do that, then we would want to look at that. But that’s for the president to say.”
At the US pavilion in the cavernous stadium housing the conference, Griffith and two other congressmen, including a Democrat, sang the praises of nuclear energy as part of the solutions to lowering global emissions.
Heather Reams, president of the Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a conservative non-profit that engages Republicans on climate policy, moderated the panel.
She told AFP that her organisation wants the United States to remain in the Paris agreement as it was “symbolic in a lot of ways for the United States to be a leader” on climate.
US officials and Democrats told COP29 delegates that the hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits and clean energy investments in Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, would cushion the blow from Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris pact.
“We are very supportive of those tax credits,” Reams said.
“We intend to try to protect them and make the case to… the new administration and with Republicans in Congress.”
Pfluger said any parts of the IRA incompatible with the goal of lowering prices for Americans would be “looked at” by the next Republican-led Congress in January.
On the other side of the US political divide, Democratic Senator Ed Markey said the Biden administration could “get as much of the IRA money out the door as it can” before handing the White House keys to Trump in January.
Fellow Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said the United States could also deliver its new emissions-reduction target for 2035 to the United Nations before Trump takes office.
But Trump will still have a “negative” impact on climate, the senator told reporters.
Democrats in Congress will have a hard time blocking Trump’s nominees for energy and environment posts as the minority party.
“A good deal of it is out of our hands,” Whitehouse said.
