The Boston Globe

By Sabrina Shankman

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In 2017, a determined group of officials from Massachusetts, California, New York, and other states set off for global climate talks in Bonn, Germany with a mission: to prove to the world that even if the United States had a president who denied the science of climate change, they were still in.

Their presence was essentially a civics 101 reminder, that the US was a nation of states — and many of those states were barreling ahead on climate action.

Katie Theoharides, then the director of climate change for Massachusetts’ Republican governor, Charlie Baker, remembers the questions she fielded on bus rides to the venue in Bonn — people from Africa, from Europe, from Asia, all wanting to know what was going to happen under Trump. After all, in his first months in office, Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international climate treaty adopted by 196 countries in 2015 with the goal of slashing global greenhouse gas emissions.

“I think one of the informal roles the states carried was just assuring other folks from countries around the world that while the US leadership might not be supporting Paris, it was more important than ever to the states,” said Theoharides, who is now president and CEO of the Trustees of Reservations, a nonprofit land conservation group in Massachusetts.

In an act of history repeating itself, as tens of thousands of global leaders, corporate interests, climate experts and advocates come together for the United Nations annual climate gathering in Baku, Azerbaijan, for this year’s summit, once again, everyone will be talking about Donald Trump.

The president-elect will be coming into office in a very different time than 2017. The growing impacts of extreme weather events fueled by a warming planet, from wildfires to hurricanes, have become impossible to ignore, while the technology and economics underpinning the clean-energy transition — including solar and wind, as well as battery storage — have vastly improved.

At the same time, experts say the goal of keeping global temperatures from rising above the critical threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels is becoming increasingly unlikely. Beyond that, climate scientists say the risks of more destructive storms, drought, wildfires, heat waves, and species extinction increase significantly.

Trump’s election last week already appears to be sapping momentum from the ongoing climate talks, known as COP29 and scheduled to last two weeks, as Trump’s transition team talks about drilling for more oil and disregarding greenhouse gas emissions that come from that. Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and has often said that curbing fossil fuel use would create a drag on the US economy.

Experts said the return of Trump to office won’t deliver the same shock that it did eight years ago. When the US government walked away from the Paris Agreement, other countries — as well as leaders from US states and cities — stepped up.

Still, there’s “rising frustration among many other parties with the inconsistency of the United States, joining, withdrawing, joining, withdrawing. The unreliability of the United States has become more real,” said Kelly Sims Gallagher, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

That could mean that if the United States leaves the Paris Agreement again, as is expected, other countries could follow, she said. It could also make it harder to persuade other countries to support a new climate finance plan, which is the primary goal of this year’s climate talks. If it appears the world’s largest economy and second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases isn’t willing to help pay for the impacts of climate change and the transition to clean energy globally, it could dampen efforts elsewhere.

Mindy Lubber, president of the Boston-based sustainability advocacy nonprofit Ceres, said “It does matter who the president is and how strong his position is.” But, she added, “I don’t think all was lost, by any means.”

The best proof of that, she said, is in looking to the past.

After Trump announced he was pulling the United States out of the Paris Agreement in 2017, there was an almost immediate response by mayors, governors, CEOs, faith leaders, and more. They called the movement “We Are Still In,” a declaration of their intention to continue working toward climate goals in the United States.

When Theoharides and her peers from around the country attended the climate talks in 2017, they were able to show that collectively, their states’ targeted greenhouse gas reductions would meet the levels the United States had previously committed to, even without leadership from Washington.

Since its inception, the movement, which has been renamed “America is All In,” has garnered more than 3,900 signatures.

At this year’s climate talks, it’s not clear how robust the presence of local officials will be. No one from the city of Boston or from Governor Maura Healey’s administration will be attending, according to spokespersons from both administrations. Policy experts in the region said they expect that will change next year, with the Trump administration in power.

This week, American delegates can point to the progress made by the Biden administration in the past few years, said Joseph Curtatone, president of the Alliance for Climate Transition. That includes landmark national climate legislation, called the Inflation Reduction Act, that was passed during President Biden’s administration, delivering more than $361 billion in climate and clean-energy investments and more than 300,000 jobs in blue and red states alike.

It’s not yet clear what will happen to the unused funds from that legislation, which Trump has called the “greatest scam in history.” But delegates can assure others in Azerbaijan “that progress can’t be undone,” Curtatone said.

American delegates can also point out that the Biden administration is something of a welcome historical aberration for the United States. Climate and clean-energy advancements have largely happened at the state and local level.

“Cities and states have been at this a lot longer, and started a lot earlier, because we see the reality on the ground,” said Brian Swett, chief climate officer for the city of Boston. “We know here in Boston that we need to be leaders, if other folks are going to be willing to follow.”

Even before Trump’s first election, Boston joined the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance — a group of 22 cities around the world, including London, Berlin, Melbourne, and Amsterdam — that have committed to carbon neutrality in the next 10 to 20 years.

Mayor Michelle Wu is also part of a bipartisan group of nearly 350 mayors across 46 states known as the Climate Mayors, who are committed to climate action. Last week, after Trump’s victory was announced, the Climate Mayors announced, “No matter what, we’ll fight for the future Americans demand and deserve, where our communities, our health, our environment, and our economy all thrive. We will not turn back.”

Sabrina Shankman can be reached at sabrina.shankman@globe.com. Follow her @shankman.

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