Global efforts to fight climate change stumbled but survived the last time Donald Trump was elected president and withdrew the United States from an international climate agreement. Other countries, states, cities and businesses picked up some of the slack.
But numerous experts worry that a second Trump term will be more damaging, with the United States withdrawing even further from climate efforts in a way that could cripple future presidents' efforts. With Trump, who has dismissed climate change , in charge of the world's leading economy, those experts fear other countries - especially top polluting nation China - could use it as an excuse to ease off their own efforts to curb carbon emissions.
"There's no hope of reaching a safe climate without substantive action from the United States, from China, from Europe," said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson, who chairs the Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists that tracks countries' carbon dioxide emissions, which have been rising globally. He said he's certain the world is shooting past the internationally accepted threshold of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. That's just a couple tenths of a degree away. Others believe the goal is alive.
Trump's reelection comes as the world is on track to set yet another record hot year , and has been lurching from drought to hurricane to flood to wildfire.
"An emboldened Trump would be terrible," European Climate Foundation CEO Laurence Tubiana said in August.
