Climate skeptic Trump makes environmentalists at Morocco meeting sweat

MARRAKECH, Morocco — Environmental advocates who came here to promote efforts to combat global warming worry that the surprise election of Donald Trump, who once called climate change a "hoax," will try to unravel their progress.

Less than a year ago amid great fanfare, the United States and nearly 200 other countries adopted the world’s first global climate pact, called the Paris Agreement. But Trump has vowed to renegotiate the deal, which limits greenhouse gas emissions.

In public, most negotiators and observers attending the Marrakech Climate Change Conference put on a brave face, reiterating that the momentum established last year in Paris would continue, and expressing hope that as president, Trump may change tack and pursue efforts to confront climate change.

“We’ve got a new administration and a new opportunity to surge forward on climate action,” said Mariana Panuncio-Feldman, a senior director for World Wildlife Fund, pointing out President Obama’s key role in the finalizing the Paris deal last year. “Our new president needs to carry that legacy forward and make good on the promise to make America into the world’s clean-energy superpower.”

But informally, there was much less optimism.

“Donald Trump has the unflattering distinction of being the only head of state in the entire world to reject the scientific consensus that humans are driving climate change,” said Michael Brune, the Sierra Club’s executive director.

Carola Ortega, 21, a New Jersey native and student observer in Marrakech, said a post-election briefing for her group succinctly laid out the challenges ahead.

“Before, we were told our job would be to use the next months to try to push the Hillary Clinton administration to do more when it came to climate change,” she said. “After the election, we were told we would have to try to push the Trump administration to do something, anything.”

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An election watch party at the Royal Mirage Deluxe Hotel that included dozens of summit delegates, environmentalists and others grew somber Wednesday as vote tallies pointed to a Trump victory.

“We came here to celebrate the election results and it has turned into a kind of a wake,” said Chris Tanner, who is doing post-graduate research on climate impacts with the State University System of New York.

Whether Trump as president could change the agreement may be unlikely.

The Paris Agreement includes a section that makes it difficult for countries to withdraw once the pact takes force, and that status was reached Nov. 4 —- unusually fast by United Nations standards, in part because of fears of a Trump presidency.

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Legally, a country can withdraw three years after the agreement’s entry into force, and then it must wait a year for the withdrawal to go into effect. That means a formal withdrawal by the U.S. could not happen before 2020, at the end of Trump’s four-year term.

But under the current rules, a country can stay in the Paris Agreement but simply ignore its obligations, something several observers worry could be the path taken by the unapologetic climate skeptic.

The current talks in Marrakech, through Nov. 18, are to start work on a "rule book" that determines how to implement the Paris Agreement, including consequences for countries that fail to live up to their promises to reduce emissions. Since the rule book will become valid only after it is completed, probably in 2018, it will not be ready in time to have an impact on any Trump plans.

“The real disincentive for the U.S. or any other country to simply disregard the Paris Agreement is pressure from other countries that are playing by the rules,” said Alden Meyer, of the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists.