"Our climate future, America decides"

The Paris agreement owes so much of its success to the ambitious stand of the two greatest polluter nations, China and the United States. Although China has recently taken the lead on the table of polluter nations, and of course the country’s influence on the climate issue is of absolute importance, but the Stance of the United states means more to the global direction of action on climate crisis as the country still sits on the throne of being the biggest economy in the whole wide world.

The Obama led administration has portrayed a huge support to the climate change cause and environmental issues overtime, if compared to previous administration, he has made quite a great difference. He gave the world a reason to be hopeful with the level of commitment he showed towards climate change and his stance has warmed up the rest of the world into being optimistic that the great America is not so far away from leading the world in proffering timely and accountable solutions to the climate crisis.

However, the longevity of the renewed level of optimism and hope that the United States has given the world would depend heavily on the political objectives of the next personality that gets the baton of leadership at the Whitehouse.  

 

The race to Whitehouse in the last one year took the world like a storm and to a lot, the result appeared quite predictable, as by popular opinion, the world had a favorite while it seemed the odds were against the hard fighting all new contender in the field of politics.

The Paris Climate agreement came to force on the 4^th of November and the world’s gaze was fixed on the track of genuinely pushing ahead towards a total ratification of the climate treaty while keeping a tab on the outcome of the US presidential election which coincidentally fell within the first week of the climate negotiations at Marrakesh, a beautiful city in the kingdom of Morocco.

The position of the United States in the global climate deal is quite important and that also has a lot to do with whosoever takes the mantle of power at the Whitehouse. The world anticipated a personality that will follow suit with the encouraging climate change policy blueprints of the soon-to-be-out administration.

The negotiation took a shared minded momentum of partly working on drafts at Marrakesh and partly observing the U.S elections. The anxiety could be felt within the corridors of the conference of parties even reaching beyond the Blue zone into the Green zone. The world was focused on America.

Despite the uncertainties that ruled the air, the rest of the world promised to go ahead with the climate agreement regardless of the possible outcome of the presidential election.

However, the dreaded outcome became the reality; Mr. Donald Trump won the elections as the world’s preferred candidate (Hilary Clinton) lost out narrowly.  Now, it looks like a lot of things are quite uncertain now, the progress the world has anticipated overtime on climate change seems shaky as the new president elect has overtime shown himself in the light of being a staunch climate change denier. In his previous campaign speeches, he made it clear that he would cancel all wasteful climate change spending from Obama-Clinton, including all global warming payments to the United Nations. He added that the steps will save $100 billion over his assumed tenure time of 8 years and that the money would be used to rebuild the vital infrastructure in America.

Invariably, if trump would succeed in this, that means goodbye to investments on clean energy and a total breakaway by America from her entire efforts on climate sciences. But then, there would not be the need to invest in such as he had previously termed global warming as a hoax created by and for the Chinese in order to make the U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

Now, there is so much uncertainty in the air as to what to expect from the new president in the coming days.

The world wanted a climate protagonist but America voted a climate antagonist, I think it is safe to say that what happens in America does not stay in America this time around, as it affects the whole world.