Trump looms over Climate Week as UN returns

World leaders and business executives are flocking to New York City to make a case for bold efforts to expand clean energy and enhance climate aid for imperiled countries.

Hanging over them all is the specter of Donald Trump's potential return to the White House.

A week of climate-related events coinciding with the U.N. General Assembly will allow supporters of the fight against rising temperatures to rally their forces before November's U.S. presidential election — which will be followed, days later, by the COP29 global climate summit in Azerbaijan. This week is also one of the first chances for these advocates to gather in one place since the collapse of President Joe Biden's reelection campaign jolted their hunt for a strategy to counter Trump 2.0.

Amid the week's confluence of closed-door meetings and public pronouncements about how countries and businesses plan to address global warming, supporters of Biden's efforts intend to send their own message: The United States isn't abandoning the climate cause, in large part because the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the transition to clean energy.

"I'm there to nudge our friends to do more, but also to reassure them that the IRA will not and cannot be repealed," Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said. He added that the climate law "puts everybody in a position to support more ambitious" national climate plans at COP29.

Trump has sent the opposite message, scoffing at the reality of climate change and vowing to shred the Biden administration's clean-energy agenda, including by " rescind[ing] all unspent funds " under the IRA. During his four years as president, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate agreement — and though Biden rejoined the pact in 2021 , a second term for the GOP nominee could bring even more dramatic steps to divorce the United States from the global treaty underpinning the climate talks.

Even a victory by Biden's would-be successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, would still leave a long list of tangled questions to be taken up at November's COP29 summit, including the world's continued reliance on fossil fuels and developing nations' demands for trillions of dollars in climate assistance over the coming decade.

Environmental activists hope national leaders will use the General Assembly to elevate climate issues in their speeches from the U.N. rostrum, which then could increase momentum going into the talks in Azerbaijan.

"We are hoping for political signals that will give us hope on the road to the COP," Fernanda Carvalho, head of policy of the climate and energy practice at WWF International, said in a news briefing Tuesday.

Discussions about a potential Trump victory have centered on which countries would step into the vacuum if the U.S. were to abandon its international leadership role on climate change, said Frances Colón, senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund. Harris' entrance into the race nine weeks ago has fueled hope for a Democratic victory among environmental groups, Colón added, though they continue to prepare for any outcome.

"There's a lot of appetite to better understand the possible scenarios out of each election outcome for international climate from countries around the world," Colón said. She added, "Even in panels, events, where that is not the main topic, it will be the first question that is asked."

World leaders will meet in public and in private this week to discuss sticky issues that could entangle negotiations at COP29, said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at environmental think tank E3G.

Azerbaijan officials are planning to hold high-level meetings to set a new monetary goal for delivering climate aid to developing countries. Agreeing on a new dollar figure is the main task of this year's talks, but countries remain deeply divided over who pays and how much. The current goal of $100 billion per year has ballooned in some discussions to $1 trillion.

American officials and corporate executives, meanwhile, will look to highlight actions they're taking to tap into the billions of dollars available under the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan infrastructure law, hoping Trump won't honor his vow to rescind the unspent dollars.

Panels, parties and pacts, oh my

The flurry of gatherings in New York, known as Climate Week, will include staid policy panels, glitzy product launches and exclusive closed-door confabs. Bloomberg Philanthropies and the nonprofit Climate Group are hosting dozens of events for the business community on everything from scaling up renewable energy to the role of voluntary carbon markets.

This year's U.N. General Assembly won't have a specific climate summit on its sidelines, as it did in 2023. But climate issues will be wrapped into a broader gathering ahead of the General Assembly called the Summit for the Future. A separate meeting will be held on the threats from rising sea levels.

Azerbaijan will also join the United Arab Emirates, which hosted last year's climate summit, and Brazil, which will do the honors next year, in hosting a meeting to encourage countries to set stronger targets to reduce carbon pollution in their next round of national climate plans, due in 2025.

But leaders need to make more immediate decisions on how countries will fund those actions.

"It's the conversations happening now in capitals around the world, that are about to happen in the U.N. General Assembly, New York Climate Week ... these really set the context and the drive for the deal that will take place in COP29," said Melanie Robinson, director of the global economics and finance program at the World Resources Institute, an environmental organization.

In past years, political leaders have used the U.N. gathering to highlight actions they're taking to address rising temperatures. Chinese President Xi Jinping announced in 2020 that his country would zero out its emissions by 2060.

Biden is scheduled to address the cavernous U.N. Assembly hall on Tuesday, but many of those in New York will already be looking to Harris and Trump to determine America's direction.

A bumpy road

The U.S. accounts for around 13 percent of global climate pollution and is the world's top oil and gas producer. Its decisions on climate change in the coming months could shape global progress toward meeting an agreement made at last year's COP28 in Dubai, where nations set a non-binding pledge to transition away from fossil fuels and prevent temperatures from rising to levels that would threaten billions of people.

The U.S. also commands tremendous soft power through its international influence, and its economy is home to some of the world's wealthiest corporations.

Yet Trump has promised to once again exit the Paris climate agreement, if not the entire 1992 treaty known as the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, if he wins. How corporations respond to that potential scenario could affect the United States' contribution to rising temperatures under a second Trump presidency.

Many of those companies have said they plan to either skip COP29 or send smaller delegations than usual, in part because of the uncertainty over Trump's reelection hopes.

Still, corporate leaders contend their presence at Climate Week underscores the enduring nature of their climate commitments – and provides them an opportunity to bolster their efforts before November's big events. They note that shareholders and consumers are guiding their decisions.

Ford, for its part, sees growth opportunities for electric vehicles despite market "bumpiness" over the past 16 months, said Bob Holycross, the automaker's chief sustainability officer. He said the automaker is on track to sell more electric vehicles this year than in 2023.

While policies such as fuel economy standards can help accelerate the pace of that transition, Holycross said customers are pushing the transportation sector toward carbon neutrality. Expectations around rising demand for electric vehicles are fueling Ford's investments, he said.

"When we think about where this journey is taking us, it's going to go well beyond short-term election cycles," Holycross said. "We have to look at this from a more holistic point of view, but also make sure we're engaged in those important conversations with policymakers on any side of the spectrum."

Yet the possibility of Trump's return and his attacks on corporate sustainability initiatives have sparked a backlash that in part has led some companies to publicly pull back on some of their green efforts.

Companies must position themselves carefully in a divided country where climate change remains part of the culture wars, said Alex Flint, executive director of the conservative climate policy group Alliance for Market Solutions.

On one hand, companies could end up targets of a Republican Congress accusing them of steering investment decisions to "woke" priorities, or on the wrong side of Trump's social media posts. On the other, they could fall victim to activists' accusations of greenwashing and caring too little about the economic and human toll of an overheating planet.

"The politics is hard for companies to manage," Flint said. "The economics and the science are clearer than the politics right now."