There Can Still Be Global Climate Ambition Without the US

The world’s biggest economy may have abdicated any leadership role in the fight against climate change, but the wheels of the international process will in fact keep turning. And while the long-term effects of Trump’s move to pull out of the Paris Agreement are definitely not positive and debatable in the details, other countries can just do what they were going to do anyway; sometimes those things are pretty good.

The United Kingdom formally submitted its new emissions pledge under the Paris Agreement this week, known as a Nationally Determined Contribution or NDC, though it had already announced the headline figures back in November: the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution promises to cut its emissions by at least 81 percent below 1990 levels by 2035. The country has already halved its greenhouse gas output, with 2023 emissions at 53 percent lower than in 1990.

Not bad. The UK also became the first G7 country to completely phase out coal power last year, shuttering its last plant in September. And on Thursday, a Scottish court blocked the continued development of two huge offshore oil fields, under development by Shell and Norwegian company Equinor, until their impacts on climate change could be assessed; they were slated to begin producing oil in 2026 and 2027. The newly submitted NDC hedges a bit on this issue, but it’s still in there: “We will consult on not issuing new oil and gas licenses to explore new fields.”

The UK’s submission should precede an avalanche of these: countries have a deadline of February 10 to submit their updated pledges, to cover the 2031 to 2035 period. A few from smaller emitters have already come in — Uruguay, Switzerland, Botswana. And of course, there it is on the NDC registry site, submitted on December 19: The United States of America, pledging to reduce emissions by up to 66 percent below 2005 levels by 2035. It will probably stay up there on the site for a bit, given the various rules about how long it takes for a country to formally extricate itself from the international agreement; a taunt from beyond the administrative grave, though hopefully one that many other countries see as more legitimate and motivating than its eventual disappearance.