One year ago, in an inaccuracy-laden speech in the Rose Garden, President Trump announced his intention to pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement. The announcement shook international climate politics to its core, leading many to question whether international momentum on climate change would grind to a halt.
In response, a groundswell of non-federal leaders has emerged, vowing to support the goals of the Paris agreement despite the actions of the federal administration. Governors Jerry Brown of California, Jay Inslee of Washington State and Andrew Cuomo of New York launched the US Climate Alliance, which now has 17 member states. Meanwhile, US businesses, universities and local governments launched the “We Are Still In” coalition, which now has more than 2,700 members.
The growing sub-national climate movement has been welcomed as providing much-needed counterbalance to the inactions of the Trump administration. Still, during the latest round of UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany, tension rose over one significant oversight. While US business, city and state pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions were laudable, the sub-national movement was not working to address the gap in funding to developing countries that the Trump administration opened.
When Trump pulled out of the Paris climate agreement, the administration also abandoned the US’s pledge to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) — a key channel for international climate finance, which helps developing countries adapt to climate change and pursue low-carbon and climate resilient development. The US had pledged $3 billion in 2014 and, under Obama, had delivered only one-third of that pledge. As such, Trump’s actions have left a $2 billion gap that will limit the important work of the GCF and leave those most vulnerable to climate change without support.
To fill that gap, the We Are Still In Coalition and US Climate Alliance have pledged approximately $0. The closest thing to action came from Massachusetts, which is attempting to establish a fund to help least developed countries, and Seattle, which passed a resolution I helped write, recognizing not just the responsibility to reduce carbon emissions, but also to address the gap in climate finance. But now, Seattle leaders say they’re not willing to act unless others act with them. So far, the response from the rest of the “We Are Still In” movement has been silence.
Some non-federal government officials claim that they don’t have the money, but if leaders within the richest country and biggest polluter on Earth are not willing to pay, then how can we fairly ask the poorest countries to pay to reduce their emissions?
The least developed countries, which are least responsible for causing climate change yet most vulnerable to its impacts, must be watching in disbelief. While the US ignores its climate debt to the developing world, 11 relatively wealthy US cities and counties that are among the largest emitting jurisdictions in the world have launched legal cases claiming climate reparations from fossil fuel companies.
While I hope they win their justified lawsuits, if they do so without also addressing their own climate debt, climate justice will be turned somewhat on its head.
The Paris climate agreement recognizes that developed countries, which have emitted more than their fair share of carbon emissions, have a moral responsibility to not only reduce their emissions, but also to help those who are impacted by their emissions both to adapt to climate change and to pursue resilient low-carbon development. With the Trump administration’s immoral behavior, that responsibility now falls to those who claim they are “still in.”
In a few months, leaders from the burgeoning US sub-national climate movement are meeting in San Francisco at the Global Climate Action Summit, a summit meant to celebrate and spur on sub-national climate action. If they meet without addressing international climate finance, they will abdicate their moral responsibility to help those who are harmed by the US’s carbon pollution. If they are really “still in” the Paris climate agreement, then it’s time they showed us the money.
Note: A version of this article appears in the journal Ethics, Policy & Environment.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 350 new monthly donors in the next 6 days.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy