The Trump administration’s climate and energy policies aren’t necessarily worsening the long-term outlook for global warming, two new reports argue. Ahead of COP30, the reports — one by Rhodium Group, a research nonprofit, and another by the UN Environment Programme — both land on 2.8 degrees Celsius as the most likely level of warming to expect by 2100 under current policies and technology trends.
That’s well above the threshold targeted by the Paris Agreement. But both reports suggest that Trump administration actions like withdrawing the US from Paris and pulling back clean energy tax credits are being offset by the plummeting cost of renewables and the continuation of climate policies in other countries. The Rhodium outlook is the same as it was under the Biden administration; the UN report’s forecast is a few tenths of a degree lower than it was last year.
That’s not to say US policy is completely irrelevant: Both reports include a range of possible outcomes, and higher emissions in the near term mean deeper and more expensive reductions will be needed in the future to stave off the higher end of the range.