BAKU, Azerbaijan — U.S. diplomats here are stuck in a tricky spot: They’re fighting to implement President Joe Biden’s climate agenda — knowing it could all be smashed with a Trump sledgehammer in two months.
President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to unravel climate investments at home and withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the global deal in which every nation on Earth pledged to limit warming.
That means the points U.S. officials are negotiating at COP29 — hundreds of billions of dollars in global climate assistance, the rules governing a worldwide carbon market and reaffirming a fossil fuel phasedown — are ones the U.S. likely won’t be working to deliver on. At least for the next four years.
Still, Biden remains president, and a steady stream of American officials from agencies in tumult have been seen in the hallways of the conference center. Political appointees will leave the government, while career diplomats face the unknown: working for a president who continues to call climate change a hoax, being reassigned or, potentially, being fired.
