November 5 was one of the hottest US Election Days in history. Barely a month earlier, two destructive hurricanes tore through the southwest of the country, charged with power from a rapidly warming ocean. Vast tracts of the US have suffered record heatwaves, monstrous floods, and runaway wildfires this year alone.
And yet, on November 6, Donald Trump, an avowed climate denier, was elected to the presidency (again). His Republican Party also swept the Senate and is likely to control the House of Representatives, too (though the final outcome won’t be known for days if not weeks). A conservative, anti-climate, pro-fossil fuel movement will soon take control of the world’s richest and most powerful country.
This bodes ill for international efforts to rein in greenhouse gases and stop global temperatures from spiraling higher. That much is clear from Trump’s own riffs on climate and his party’s desire to yank the US out of the Paris Agreement — and perhaps the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change altogether. Congressional Republicans are also keen on gutting President Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, along with much of the rest of his pro-climate legacy.
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