US quietly abandons push for sharper cuts in climate pollution

BAKU, Azerbaijan — The Biden administration had hoped to use this week’s U.N. climate talks to announce a multination plea for faster action to slash greenhouse gas pollution, according to two diplomats and a draft press release seen by POLITICO.
But the announcement never happened, a development that underscores the starkly altered prospects for climate diplomacy — which only look more bleak as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to retake power.
While it’s unclear whether Trump’s election prompted the United States to drop the proposal, the notion of urging sharper planet-warming emissions cuts is 180 degrees from the future president’s promises to throttle climate spending and ramp up fossil fuel production. Trump has said repeatedly that he considers climate change a hoax designed to harm U.S. economic competitiveness and enrich China.
It’s also unclear how far the Biden administration plan had gotten before its quiet demise. A draft press release, seen by POLITICO, indicated an announcement had been considered for Monday, when the COP29 climate summit opened in the Caucasian petro-state of Azerbaijan.
A State Department spokesperson said: “As part of our bilateral climate diplomacy, the U.S. has worked with partners and allies over the past year to encourage ambitious 2035 [national climate plans], highlighting the importance of keeping 1.5 degrees within reach.”
The 2015 Paris Agreement set 1.5 degrees Celsius as a desired limit to global temperature rise since the industrial era began — a target scientists say the world is almost certain to miss.
The U.S. spokesperson would not confirm whether any announcement had been planned or dropped — or whether plans changed in response to the election result. 
According to the draft press release, the United States and several proposed partners were preparing to announce their intent to submit “ambitious” targets for cutting carbon pollution by 2035. The countries would “call on others to join this coalition,” the document said.
Under the Paris Agreement terms, every country has until February to submit plans laying out how they plan to cut carbon emissions during the next decade. Recent assessments have found that current targets, covering the period until 2030, would push the world far beyond a safe level of warming.
Like the Paris Agreement itself, the U.S.-led call would have been non-binding. However such international statements can still have a real-world impact. They signal to businesses that they should invest in clean-energy technologies, and set a standard for other countries to follow.
The draft press release was produced by one of the United States’ potential partners, according to a senior climate diplomat from one of the countries. It “clearly won’t be published” now, said the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomacy of the climate talks.
The draft committed countries to making plans that would cut emissions fast enough to hold warming to 1.5 degrees. The countries would set targets covering every sector of their economies, such as agriculture, aviation and transport, and for all greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons.
The senior climate diplomat said the U.S. had notified their country only this past weekend that the initiative was no longer being pursued.
While the U.S. political situation has changed dramatically since Trump’s election victory, the decision to drop the statement may also reflect ambivalence from those the Biden team approached to join the deal. The European Union, for example, is a traditional U.S. ally on climate action but is struggling to hit the February deadline for submitting new goals. The EU’s executive is locked in a monthslong transition period during which no substantive new policy commitments are made.
A European negotiator, also granted anonymity because the talks were considered private, said the U.S. floated the idea of a statement before the climate conference with “a lot of parties but never pushed for it to become something more.”
While the proposed coalition appears dead, U.S. officials spent much of Monday working with European allies to ensure that the 11 days of talks in Baku focus on plans to rapidly cut emissions and wean countries off fossil fuels. In public remarks, top U.S. climate diplomat John Podesta called specifically on China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluter, to ramp up its goal.
After Trump’s victory, it is uncertain if the U.S. will ever submit a new national target for curbing greenhouse gas pollution. 
Trump has vowed to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, the deal that prompts countries to set those plans in place. Some conservatives have pushed for him to go even further and quit the 1992 U.N. treaty that undergirds the annual climate negotiations, even drafting executive orders for Trump to sign once he reenters the White House, a lawyer familiar with the process told POLITICO in June.
When asked Monday about the U.S. role in the climate talks, Trump transition team spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the incoming president’s intentions have not changed.
“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail,” she wrote in an email. “He will deliver.”
President Joe Biden is facing pressure from climate groups to announce the 2035 U.S. climate target regardless of what Trump has in mind.
Ben Goloff, a campaigner with an advocacy group called the Center for Biological Diversity, said Monday that  Biden should “seal a climate legacy and put in a bulwark of protections against Trump’s practice.”
Charlie Cooper contributed to this report.