Maybe Trump did deserve the Nobel Peace Prize

I recently caught up with a dear friend & ex-girlfriend who now lives in Canada, where she works to develop climate resiliency projects as a water engineer. Among other things, we discussed current events, international diplomacy, the climate crisis that has largely defined her work, and the continuing constitutional crisis in the United States, where she grew up.

When I shared with her my most recent thinking, she suggested that one thesis might be funny enough to justify a stand up routine. I share an appreciation for its irony, while intending the analysis sincerely.

Where is the line between observations of ironic reality and outright comedy?

You be the judge.

Hurtling into an abyss

This weekend, a beleaguered global climate summit concluded after high drama almost brought ​​it to a premature end. More than 190 countries participated, while the U.S. conspicuously abstained due to President Trump’s conviction that science is a hoax.

On the one hand, Cop30—the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference—reflected seemingly important progress.

For example, this “Conference of the Parties” to the U.N. Convention on Climate Change was hosted for the first time in Brazil, where substantial deforestation in the Amazon has accelerated changes to the Earth’s atmosphere that could (likely?) prove catastrophic to humanity in the not-so-distant future. But while Brazil is the site of activity that continues to crucially exacerbate the global climate calamity, the site of the discussion appeared more ironic than symbolic in the wake of the convening’s results.

Solidarity, but not enough to meet the need

Several agreements emerged from Cop30, including a critical new agreement related to adaptation finance, through which wealthy countries most responsible for the climate catastrophe pledged to pay more to poorer countries bearing the brunt of its impacts.

Less than two weeks before Cop30 began, Jamaica was pummeled by Hurricane Melissa, a once-rare Category 5 storm that brought winds up to 185mph and 30 inches of rain. At least 32 Jamaicans died in the storm, before a deadly outbreak of leptospirosis, a bacterial disease incubated by stagnant water that has killed at least half a dozen more.

The challenges confronted by Caribbean countries recovering from hurricanes illustrate the troubling human impacts of climate chaos. Natural disasters amplified by climate change have wrought tremendous devastation across the region—with more on the horizon, and no end in sight.

Even Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States, continues to recover nearly a decade after Hurricane Maria, which killed thousands and prompted $34 billion in recovery assistance from Washington. Most parts of the Caribbean, of course, have not enjoyed anything remotely resembling such support.

These challenges confronting the Caribbean help explain why a compromise reached on Saturday was so significant. It aims to increase the financing available to poor nations confronting the impacts of global warming, while remaining vastly inadequate relative to the expanding need.

For instance, at COP29 last year, wealthy countries agreed to provide $300 billion to the Global South by 2035. But that amount aims to cover not only climate adaptation, but also mitigation, and loss and damage funding—and is envisioned as a target for wealthy countries to reach in a decade, while poor countries are already (in some cases, literally) underwater.

According to a representative who attended Cop30:

The needs for adaptation are huge and growing—about $210 billion to $360 billion a year is estimated.

You can get private sector money for things that make a profit, like clean energy; the banks will give you money for that because they make the investment back. No private sector company will invest in the things we need for adaptation, like ways to store water from the rains, or helping farmers to grow different crops.

Developed countries don’t want to give us the money, but they are supposed to. Under the Paris agreement, they agreed in article 9.1 to pay us. We know that we did not create this crisis—they did—but we are the ones who are suffering.

Ignoring the death trap of fossil fuel dependence

Over 80 countries advocated at Cop30 for an agreement that would help support a global transition away from fossil fuels, but they were blocked by an equal number of others: the U.S., which refused to even attend; China, which attended but declined to take a leadership role given the absence of the U.S.; and petrostates including Saudi Arabia and Russia, which economically depend on fossil fuel exports and have widely been spared by natural disasters fueled by the climate crisis.

As a result, the agreements emerging from Cop30 omitted any reference to the fossil fuels driving climate chaos.

A member of the European parliament’s delegation to Cop30 named Bas Eickhout explained the dynamic in simple terms:

[N]o deal is better than a bad deal. Failure to reach an agreement on a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels would not only be a big win for petrostates, but also for Trump and his hard-right allies. No one can seriously expect us to win the fight on the climate crisis if we don’t deal with the elephant in the room: phasing out fossil fuels.

Latin American countries including Colombia, Panama and Uruguay also objected to the process, which Colombia’s negotiator characterized as “[a] consensus imposed under climate denialism…a failed agreement.”

Colombia joined the Netherlands in announcing plans to host a separate conference next year focused on the transition away from fossil fuels. Maina Talia, the environment minister of Tuvalu (an island nation in the South Pacific) said, “We have taken this step because, simply, we cannot wait any longer. The Pacific came to Cop30 demanding a survival roadmap away from fossil fuels. Yet this text does not even name the threat to our existence. This process is failing us so we will not wait.”

Share

A saving grace?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, global trade briefly ground to a halt, leading to a measurable reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. For instance, one study estimated that, in April 2020, daily carbon dioxide emissions declined 17% from the preceding baseline.

This relationship between economic recession and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions is consistent. Another study established that greenhouse gas emissions fell by 1.3% during the global depression following the 2008 financial crisis, but then increased by nearly 6% in 2010, bringing CO2 emission rates back to their preceding level.

These studies suggest that the most meaningful acts promoting climate justice are those that undermine industrial economies, erode capitalism, and build sustainable alternatives. As long as I’m on that subject, I urge every American to participate in a consumer boycott this holiday season and beyond.

Meanwhile, as it happens, nothing in the past half century has done as much to devastate the global economy as the policies of the Trump administration. As part of an ongoing series, I’ve written three posts this year exploring Trump’s impact on the American economy. From ham-fisted tariffs to labor shortages driven by lawless immigration enforcement, Trump has done more to stop greenhouse gasses—by undermining the American economy—than any president in history.

Share

Abundant ironies

Of course, the president is a relentless capitalist. His focus on wealth is so extreme that it appears to frequently eclipse his presidency, or alternatively explain it.

But while the figure of the president might be no less committed to capitalism than his supposed antagonists who have enabled him for years, his policy legacy appears to be at odds with his personal aims.

Despite being a wealthy president who identifies primarily as a capitalist, Trump has done as much to diminish greenhouse emissions as any political figure in the world.

It is certainly ironic that someone widely described—even by himself—as a fascist would prove so inadvertently helpful in the global struggle for climate justice. But, given the scale of his (even unwitting) contribution, few figures seem to have done as much to deserve the Nobel prize committee’s recognition.