What has Trump done to net zero?

27th Jan 2025

 

Thousands of words will have been written about this, so I’m not going to repeat them all but for those of us who want to see climate change tackled let’s just acknowledge, it’s been a difficult week.

It was painful to see, with literally one signature, the second biggest emitter of carbon just walk away from climate action. And before we start to beat our chests and proclaim that “we’ll show him” let’s take a dose of realism pills.

Five countries, yes, just five are responsible for over 60 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions – China 33 percent; USA 13 percent; India 7 percent; Russia 5 percent and Japan 3 percent, (2023 figures). If you have never heard of Pareto, it’s time to search. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that unless these five countries take immediate action and make serious inroads into cutting emissions, then net zero is over, whether Trump signs a piece of paper or not. Ironically, the USA has seen the biggest reduction in emissions of these major polluters.

Here in the UK, I’ve seen politicians with schoolboy excitement, proclaiming the UK to be the world’s leader in carbon reduction (true for production but not consumption). But I have a different take on what leadership is.

Global leadership, because that’s what is needed, would be doing all we could to help these five countries reduce the carbon they pump into the atmosphere. It is not grandstanding or shouting “look at me, look at me.” It won’t be easy, given the obvious political tensions with some of those listed, but leadership isn’t easy.

It’s been a few years since I took a low flying look at the Himalayan mountains in Nepal (14th poorest country in the world) and posed the question, “why can’t we use the enormous hydro-power potential to generate renewable electricity for the host nation and to export to its power-hungry neighbours, India and China?” Deliver on that and you would be excused a celebratory lap of honour around Parliament Square.

Mike Foster

EUA's Chief Executive

 

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