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This story was originally published by he Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climatic desk collaboration.

donald trumpit’s new His tenure as US president poses a serious threat to the planet if he blows up the international effort to curb dangerous global warming, stunned climate experts warned in the wake of his decisive election victory.

Trump’s return to the White House is widely expected to result in the United States once again abandoning the Paris climate agreement and may even eliminate American participation in the United Nations support framework to address the crisis. climate.

While campaigning for president, Trump called climate change “a big hoax,” disparaged wind power and electric cars, and promised to eliminate environmental regulations and the “new green scam” of the Inflation Reduction Act, a important bill passed by Democrats to support clean energy projects.

trump agenda, analysts I have foundrisks adding several billion metric tons of additional heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, further jeopardizing governments’ goals of avoiding disastrous global warming. they are no longer complying. Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said the United States is now a “failed democracy” and that “we now pose a major threat to the planet.”

The election result will cause shock at the annual UN climate talks that begin in Azerbaijan on Monday. “The election of a climate denier to the presidency of the United States is extremely dangerous for the world,” said Bill Hare, a senior scientist at Climate Analytics, who warned that a Trump administration would likely “damage efforts” to prevent the world from falling. warm by more than 2.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, a Paris goal that now seems even more out of reach.

While joe bidenThe administration will send a delegation to the cop29 summit Next week, this will be overshadowed by an incoming Trump administration that threatens to disengage from other major carbon emitters, such as China, to address the climate crisis. “The nation and the world can expect the incoming Trump administration to destroy global climate diplomacy,” said Rachel Cleetus, policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Across Europe, climate activists and politicians who support stronger measures to reduce pollution reacted with despair to the news of Trump’s victory. “This is a dark day in the United States and around the world,” said Thomas Waitz, an Austrian MEP and co-chair of the European Green Party.

Luisa Neubauer, a German climate activist from the Fridays for Future movement, who knocked on Harris’ doors, compared the feeling to a bad breakup. “A decision has been made about parts of the near future and most of us had no say in it,” he said. “And for a moment it seems like the world is going to end. Which is not. But the anguish is real.”

But they also urged climate action supporters not to give up.

Areeba Hamid, joint chief executive of Greenpeace UK, said it was “an election won with corporate money, big polluter backers and misinformation” but a global movement was already fighting to stop the damage.

“We simply don’t have any more time to waste,” he added. “Regardless of what the Trump presidency decides to do on global climate action, we know that the damage can be contained if the adults in the room speak up.”

The last time he was president, Trump took several months to decide to pull the United States out of the Paris accord, raising fears that the agreement would collapse. The countries managed to avoid that fate before Biden re-entered the pact and there is some optimism that the transition to cleaner energy is not something Trump will do, despite his demands that the United States “drill, drill baby” in search for oil and gas. , can be reversed.

“The US election result is a setback for global climate action, but the Paris agreement has proven resilient and stronger than any country’s policies,” said Laurence Tubiana, executive director of the European Climate Foundation and architect key to the Paris agreement.

“The current context is very different from 2016,” he said. “There is a powerful economic momentum behind the global transition, which the United States has led and benefited from, but which now risks losing. “The devastating toll of recent hurricanes was a grim reminder that all Americans are affected by worsening climate change.”

As after the previous withdrawal, US cities and states committed to climate action will try to fill the void of federal indifference, acting as de facto representatives at global summits and even collaborating with other countries on how to reduce emissions. emissions.

“No matter what Trump says, the shift to clean energy is unstoppable and our country is not going to turn back,” said Gina McCarthy, Biden’s former climate adviser and co-chair of the America is all in coalition of climate-conscious states and cities.

“Our coalition is bigger, more bipartisan, better organized and fully prepared to deliver climate solutions, boost local economies and drive climate ambition,” he said. “We cannot and will not let Trump stand in the way of giving our children and grandchildren the freedom to grow up in safer, healthier communities.”

At the national level, environmental groups have said they will try to mobilize democratsas well as some republicansobject Trump’s takedown of climate policieswhich is expected to include major cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and weakened pollution rules for coal plants, cars and fossil fuel drilling. “President Trump will face a wall of bipartisan opposition if he tries to eliminate clean energy incentives now,” said Dan Lashof, director of the World Resources Institute.

However, Trump’s election victory has been deeply sobering for those concerned about the climate crisis. The issue was barely defended by Kamala Harristhe Democratic candidate, and polls showed that voters considered it a lower priority despite scientists’ warnings about record temperatures and two devastating ones, heat powered hurricanes that hit the Southeast just weeks before Election Day.

“This should be a wake-up call: The climate movement urgently needs more political power because the climate crisis is moving infinitely faster than our politics are right now,” said Nathaniel Stinnett, founder of the Environmental Voter Project, which sought votes from environmentalists in USA.

“We must work every day to build an unstoppable bloc of climate voters because we are running out of time.”