Check out the real story on US climate action beyond Trump

Since Donald Trump entered the White House for his second term as president in January 2025, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the US has abandoned all action on climate change and is working aggressively to undermine other countries’ efforts.

This week, at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington DC, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent questioned the scientific consensus on global warming and the world. he put pressure on both institutions to reverse what he called “mission creep” and “myopic focus” on climate.

But this hostile rhetoric from the Trump administration and the UN climate regime – along with support for fossil fuels – does not tell the whole story of what is happening in the US, according to Lou Leonard, the first dean. School of Climate, Environment and Society at Clark University.

At the state, city and community levels, as well as in business and higher education, efforts to reduce global-warming emissions, promote clean energy and adapt to climate shocks are continuing strongly, Leonard, an environmental attorney, said in an interview with Climate Home News in Massachusetts.

Thanks to the momentum of coalitions like America Is All In (which helped launch its predecessor), the US can still make significant strides toward its 2035 emissions reduction goals. research shows. Leonard, who served as senior vice president for climate and energy at the World Wildlife Fund for more than a decade, explains how US climate action and the Paris Agreement can survive Trump’s wrecking ball.

Q: Has the Trump administration’s ability to undermine global climate action and the impact of the UN climate process been worse than you expected?

A: One thing that strikes me is that, looking at the decade of the Paris Agreement… that decade, the United States had the leadership of the enemy in Washington, and that the agreement has lasted.

And it has survived in spite of the United States, not because of the United States, at least from a federal perspective. The US was very important in the formation phase, but it has not been so crucial to the survival of the agreement.

Q: Isn’t it fair to say that the US leaving the UN climate process today could reduce the impact and impact of the Paris Agreement?

A: The nature of the international cooperative framework means that the aggregate ambition is only as strong as the countries that make it up, right? I’m not saying that, in the dream scenario where every country was in a very aggressively positive place, we wouldn’t have benefited more from the international arena. There is no doubt that this is true.

I think that when we’re thinking about the unique role of a country – even the United States – there’s a lot more at play than this theory of how things would work here; the centrality of the United States in all of this, especially at the Washington level. I think that was wrong, at least in the longest progress we’ve made.

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I think the reason what’s happening in Washington hasn’t had as much of an impact on the world as it could have is because the story of what’s happening in the United States is not limited to what’s happening in Washington.

And that’s the second part, which is about the American political system that sometimes frustrates people, the sharing of power and the federal system, and all those things that are purposefully built into the US system.

In these moments, that structure has helped create a reality… and then the rest of the world can see for themselves that all these efforts exist. America Is Everyone and bringing those actors elsewhere and that leadership and analysis of the impact of that effort to the rest of the world. I think that has been an important part of the story of why the Paris Agreement has survived.

Q: What do you think have been some of the most important of those sub-national efforts?

A: California is the most prominent example because it is the sixth largest economy in the world and certainly one of the most aggressive states moving forward on climate action. But it is more than that: if you look America Is All In study that was released at COP30 In Belem, he lays out a road map for maintaining US tracks as a way to keep things from really falling apart when you have these changes in federal leadership.

There is a parallel with what is happening globally: it is a divided effort. We need the whole of society, all over the world, to move in this direction to achieve our most ambitious goals.

And I think the fact that the US is over half the economy, at least, really leaning in that direction really helps. And then if you look at the energy transition in the US, we’re starting to get to this tipping point where the role of markets and the role of politics are changing to some extent.

We really needed policy incentives, and (earlier) a lot of that signal was that the penetration of renewable energy coming from Washington and then from the states was significant enough to start being a push on its own, and I think we’re starting to see that. Over the past two years, more than 90% of new generation capacity in the United States has been renewable.

Q: Where do you see the real momentum for US climate action continuing or picking up the pace despite what Washington is doing?

A: What I really think is going to take us to another level beyond relying on state governments… is to encourage more of a collaborative “whole of society” approach here.

That led me to higher education. I felt there was an understanding and an alignment of the importance of these issues in higher education, and then the higher education desk is filled with some of the world’s leading climate experts who were already involved in climate science and talking about the issue. But if we could take that capability and bring it into more direct relationships with businesses, municipalities and states, then that has the potential to unlock greater influence for those actors… that’s the reason I made the move.

The thing that attracted me (Clark) was that you had a small university that really had a national research capacity. And in Massachusetts, you have the only state in the country with a chief climate officer who reports to the governor. You have policies that have been put in place related to zoning regulations related to green banks and decarbonization of buildings. And state-based climate law that aligns with the goals of the Paris Agreement and includes decarbonization or net zero emissions by mid-century. You’ve got that piece of policy in place, and then how can you begin to catalyze some more of the collaboration that’s going to be needed to actually accomplish those goals? I think that’s really exciting.

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Another place where we are bringing these ingredients together is Pennsylvania. Just a month ago, the state of Pennsylvania created a new program called prepare PAthat is, preparing for climate impacts and reaching goals related to the energy transition and the like. And they’re putting Penn State University at the center of an attempt to help implement a plan involving businesses and the city. I think you’re seeing more and more of that kind of experimentation.

… This was always going to be the effort of the whole society, and the more we can see, and the more real we can make it: how we all have roles at the local level, at the state level, in the private sector, in universities, in civil society, the more chance we have to avoid that sense of helplessness (about climate change) that can lead us to nihilism.