U.N. Climate Talks Start in One Week. The U.S. Election Could Determine The Outcome.

The international climate negotiations process that takes place at the meetings known as COPs every year is, in theory, a truly multilateral one. One country, one vote — the agreements that emerge from each of the conferences must be agreed upon by every nation in attendance. Of course, some countries carry a bit more weight than others.

The U.S. remains the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and is still the world’s largest economy. Along with other emitting and economic behemoths including far-and-away GHG leader China, India, the European Union, Japan, and a few others, what the U.S. says and does still determines a lot of what happens behind the scenes of a U.N. negotiation. This year, COP29 begins in Azerbaijan only six days after Election Day; it isn’t much of an exaggeration to say that Americans are also voting on the success or failure of that negotiation.

“The outcome of the US elections will clearly influence the negotiations,” said Harro van Asselt, a Cambridge University professor of climate law. The primary goal of COP29 is a new climate finance pledge, a number well into the hundreds of billions or even trillions to replace a 15-year-old version of $100 billion from rich to poor countries annually — the pre-COP talks have already been rocky, and one outcome on Tuesday certainly wouldn’t help.

“The election of Donald Trump – or allegations of rigged elections by his supporters, whether justified or not – would cast major doubt on whether developed countries could live up to a new pledge that would need to go well beyond the currently pledged $100 bn/year, given that the US contribution would constitute a significant part of that,” van Asselt told me.

The negotiations will take place in the sort of liminal space after the election but before the administration actually turns over. Christina Voigt, a professor and expert in international climate law at the University of Oslo, pointed out that a potential Trump administration move to once again withdraw from the Paris Agreement couldn’t actually take effect until a year after its announcement, likely in early 2026 — but that doesn’t mean its shadow won’t loom large this year.

“Withdrawal (and even the prospect of it) would most likely have repercussions on other states – in particular on G77 members,” she told me. “If the biggest economy and second biggest emitter turns its back on the UN climate regime, this would impact the delicate balance reflected in that regime. It can be expected that some states might not be wiling to commit to ambitious climate action in such a scenario.”

Still, the Biden administration isn’t gone just yet, and Voigt said the current government has been “participating actively and (in my view) constructively” in the pre-COP talks. Of course, those talks have yielded worries of an “extremely bleak” result in Baku, and concerns that the push for a big climate finance pledge will simply die on the vine. Finance institution leaders have elected to skip out on the COP, likely joining a host of major world leaders including Biden himself, Xi Xinping, and Narendra Modi. The outcome is hanging in the balance anyway, even without an American electoral Sword of Damocles.

Aside from the finance challenge at COP29, countries are also now in the midst of — theoretically — crafting new Nationally Determined Contributions, their emissions reduction pledges under the Paris Agreement. Given how far off track the world currently is in terms of meeting the temperature goals set out in Paris — a “human and economic trainwreck,” is one way to put it — the jump in ambition in those NDCs will be a critical measuring stick for what we collectively might accomplish over the next decade. Voigt said other countries will be watching what the U.S. does, and who wins the election will mean everything, with Harris likely to largely continue Biden’s trajectory.

“An engaged and constructive US is very important and this crucial point in time,” she said. “The deadline for communicating those NDCs is Feb. 10th, 2025 – i.e. after the inauguration.”

The U.S. is still only one of almost 200 countries participating in the COP next week. But just as the American delegation helped shepherd the Paris Agreement through in 2015, and how it was then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton who announced the original $100-billion climate finance pledge in Copenhagen in 2009, the U.S. will continue to shape COP outcomes.

And so, a Trump win “will make it even harder to agree on an outcome in the form of a new quantified commitment,” van Asselt said. But if Harris wins? “If Kamala Harris is elected, I expect slightly more ‘business-as-usual’ negotiations. Agreeing on a new climate finance goal will still be challenging, however.”