It’s perhaps an understatement to say that the election of Donald Trump will seriously complicate international efforts to combat climate change.
Trump has called climate change a “hoax,” he pulled the United States out of the 2015 Paris climate accord during his first term and has said he would do so again. He has also pledged to expand oil and gas production, eliminate subsidies for clean energy and electric vehicles, and roll back regulations aimed at reducing planet-warming emissions.
Without American leadership on these issues, many countries around the world may be less likely to invest in the energy transition and to try to reduce emissions.
On Wednesday morning, I spoke to Ajay Banga, the president of the World Bank, to get his response to the news and his view on where the world goes from here. The bank, which is overseen by big countries — including the United States, Russia and China — distributes tens of billions of dollars in loans each year to help developing nations build their economies and adapt to climate change.
Banga said in the wake of Trump’s re-election, making strides in the rest of the world will be more important than ever. “It was never an America-only game,” he said. “It was always a developed world and middle-income-country game.”
If countries like India, Brazil, Indonesia and Vietnam don’t rapidly reduce their emissions, Banga said, the world will keep heating up, regardless of what happens in the United States.
Banga has focused on accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels in the developing world during his time at the World Bank. Just how committed the rest of the world is to this effort will be on display next week, as the United Nations climate conference, COP29, begins in Baku, Azerbaijan. This year, the main issue on the table is how to make more money available for poor countries to adapt to a hotter planet.
Banga, who was previously chief executive of Mastercard, knows Trump well, and knows that, despite his talk on the campaign trail, it’s not yet clear what policies he will actually pursue.
“We don’t know exactly what he’s going to do once he’s in there,” he said. “We should wait and see what actually comes out the other end of this.”
In his experience, Banga said, he found Trump to be a practical negotiator. “If you speak to him with facts and speak to him without trying to spin, he listens,” Banga said.
Since taking over the World Bank last year, Banga has instituted a series of changes aimed at helping developing countries around the world adapt to climate change. Nearly half of the bank’s funding is going to climate-related projects. It has begun new efforts to reduce methane emissions. And the bank has also allowed some countries to pause debt repayments after natural disasters.
Banga said that was an agenda he believed had bipartisan support in the United States.
“I don’t see how whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, or Trump, or Kamala Harris, or Biden, that should change,” he said.
Whether the World Bank still has Trump’s support remains to be seen. Project 2025, a blueprint for a Republican administration developed by the Heritage Foundation, calls for the United States to withdraw from the bank. Trump has disavowed Project 2025.
Were Trump to do so, Banga said, it would be a blow. The United States is the bank’s largest shareholder, providing 17 percent of its capital.
“It’s a hypothetical, but if the U.S. were to withdraw from multilateral institutions, the multilateral institutions would have a very difficult challenge trying to fill up that funding,” he said.
Banga said that when he sees Trump next, he will make the case that the work of the World Bank — and, by extension, the work of addressing climate change — is squarely in America’s national interest.
If developing countries are able to grow their economies with clean energy and be resilient in the face of natural disasters, Banga said, they will be better positioned to buy American products and services.
“That’s how the world develops,” Banga said. “So I’m just going to try and argue that logic.”
For those working with the Trump administration in the years ahead, even global climate policy may be an America-first conversation.
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