Chile Says It’ll Miss US Climate Leadership as Trump Takes Over
(Bloomberg) -- Chile’s top environmental official said in an interview that US leadership in combating global climate change will be missed following Donald Trump’s presidential election win.
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All countries are expected to contribute in the fight against global warming, and the role of the world’s largest economy is very important in this process, Chile Environment Minister Maisa Rojas told Bloomberg Television from the sidelines of COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan on Thursday.
“We are going to miss that leadership for the coming years,” said Rojas, who holds a doctorate degree in atmospheric physics from the University of Oxford.
During his first term, Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations, withdrew the country from the Paris climate agreement and supported a vast expansion of offshore oil and gas exploration. For his next four years in office, he has vowed to again drill for more fossil fuels and also criticized offshore wind farms. Chile, on the other hand, wants to use its vast supply of copper and lithium to power the global transition to clean energy.
While the “real business case” for the continued development of renewable energy and electric vehicles will stay in place, those sectors would still benefit from US influence, said Rojas, who previously was a professor in the Department of Geophysics at the Universidad de Chile.
“I would not expect that to stop or move somewhere else,” Rojas said. “But, for the help, of course, it is going to make an important difference.”
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