Ahead of next month’s major United Nations climate talks in Brazil, Gina McCarthy, the former Environmental Protection Agency head, said US cities and states were keeping the climate fight alive despite an all-out assault from the Trump administration.
“We will not allow our country to become numb or debilitated by those who are standing in the way of progress,” she said on a press call early on Thursday.
McCarthy co-chairs America Is All In, a coalition of climate-concerned states and cities in the US. The group will send over more than US subnational leaders – including governors, senior state officials, nearly 40 mayors and dozens of city officials – to the climate talks known as Cop30 and the UN Local Leaders Forum planned for the days before.
Expanded climate action from cities and states, paired with federal re-engagement after 2028, could by 2035 slash US planet-heating pollution by up to 56%, putting the United States below 2005 levels, according to a new study from America Is All In and the University of Maryland’s Center for Global Sustainability.
“There are especially large opportunities for states and cities to go further and faster in the power and transport sectors, as well as in reducing methane,” said Nate Hultman, former senior adviser for climate ambition at the state department and founding director of the Center for Global Sustainability.
Trump is cracking down on state and local climate action, trying to block policies in court and working to eliminate incentives for clean energy. But Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island senator, said climate leaders should resist those attacks, and sue the administration over potentially illegal obstruction.
“I think if you allow yourself to be intimidated by this administration, they will seize all the ground that you’ve seen them and then come back for more,” Whitehouse told reporters.
Global climate leaders must adopt the same aggressive attitude, said Whitehouse, though the US will not make it easy. This month, he noted, the nation derailed the enactment of a global carbon fee on shipping at an international maritime meeting, when Washington threatened to impose sanctions and visa restrictions on nations that supported the deal.
“There was kind of a like shock-and-awe thuggery approach that was effective there,” he said “But if you’re prepared for that kind of approach, then I think that’s where the line needs to be drawn.”
Whitehouse said leaders must be willing to stand up to the fossil fuel industry, who are the “villains” in the story of the climate crisis. The sector created a “whole armada of fake front groups” to protect its interests and spread doubt about the climate crisis – despite early knowledge that their products warm the planet, he said.
“To refuse to talk about that ignores both a very important and probably the most interesting part of the story,” said Whitehouse.
Without this influence, the world may have acted on the climate much earlier, said Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director of the science and climate advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists, to reporters.
“Fossil fuel companies have been lying and obstructing progress on climate action. That’s why we’re here,” she said.
Climate experts have long condemned the influence of the fossil fuel sector in UN climate negotiations; oil and gas companies have even admitted to influencing climate treaties in ways that protect their interests. Record numbers of fossil fuel lobbyists have attended UN climate talks since the passage of the landmark 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.
Amid mounting pressure from climate campaigners to take on corporate influence at climate negotiations, the United Nations climate change body last month introduced new guidelines around transparency, asking COP30 attenders to disclose who is funding their participation in the talks. But disclosure remains voluntary.
Whitehouse, who has long pushed the UN climate body to strengthen transparency requirements, called the new guidance “a bit of a disappointment”.
“It’s a good first step, but it’s not where it needs to be,” he said. “There should be real transparency about who’s showing up and what evil they’ve been doing.”
