Donald Trump could literally make the planet hotter with rollback of climate policies

Countries are thrashing out a deal for the planet at COP29 in Baku (Image: Getty)

Countries are “failing to bend the curve” on curbing temperature rises, analysts have warned.

They said nations have made “minimal progress” in increasing action to slash global warming in the past three years.

Current policies by governments put the world on track for an estimated 2.7C of long-term warming, the assessment by the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) initiative said.

Report lead author Sofia Gonzales-Zuniga of Climate Analytics, a CAT partner organisation, said: “We are clearly failing to bend the curve.

“As the world edges closer to these dangerous climate thresholds, the need for immediate, stronger action to reverse this trend becomes ever more urgent.”

It found the re-election in the US of Donald Trump, who is expected to curb environmental action domestically and pull out of the global Paris climate treaty, will make only a slight increase in warming projections.

The impact of Mr Trump’s return to the White House has been calculated as adding 0.04C of warming if the rollback of climate policies is limited to the US.

But that could be higher if the US permanently abandoned targets to cut emissions to net zero, accompanied by more countries rolling back or delaying action.

Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics, said there was a “clean energy momentum in the US now that will be difficult to stop”.

“While the Trump administration will undoubtedly do its best to throw a wrecking ball into climate action, the clean energy momentum created by President Biden, being actioned across the country, is likely to continue at significant scale,” he said.

The analysts recommended 2035 targets for the biggest emitters that would be in line with what is needed to keep temperatures to 1.5C of warming to avoid the worst impacts.

These require huge cuts in emissions from the likes of the US, China, the European Union and Japan, while developed countries need to back up domestic action with significant financial and other support for developing nations to help them shift to clean economies, they warned.

Climate Action Tracker is an analysis carried out in collaboration by two organisations, NewClimate Institute and Climate Analytics.