For the second time in less than a decade, the United States is expected to retreat from one of the world’s most consequential challenges: limiting the deadly and costly wreckage of climate change.
The election of Donald Trump is not only a setback to the world’s ability to rein in dangerous levels of warming. It also signals to other nations that the new leadership of the richest country in the world, which is also history’s largest emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gases, is dismissive of the economic opportunities of transitioning to cleaner technologies. In addition it’s unlikely to be persuaded to change even as people worldwide are battered by extreme heat, fire and floods.