Trump as president elect: a climate of uncertainty

Published by The i on Friday 4th November:

There's a quote from Dr Phillip Williamson (of the University of East Anglia) within the article that resonates with me: 

"There's an implicit assumption in the Paris Agreement that greenhouse gases will need to be physically removed from the atmosphere. In other words, world leaders have agreed to do climate geo-engineering, although they haven't realised that".

As the Paris Agreement unfolds, it is becoming increasingly difficult to see how it is possibly going to deliver. With such low public support for the deployment of geoengineering (Scheer and Renn, 2014) and politicians seemly unaware of the political and ethical controversies that will be unearthed, will state governments end up turning their backs on the agreement? After all, global law is no law at all if there is no higher legal power to enforce it (Frydman, 2012).

And after the news of Trump's election today... what on earth will that mean for the agreement? He allegedly vowed to end all federal spending on renewable technology development if elected. Relying on the private sector development of these technologies is problematic because an electricity market that offers only short-term prices (Energy UK, 2014) does not drive incentive for building new, renewable technologies. Public policies must provide motives to drive private sector development of these technologies. The USA is a huge global player in climate, which makes Trump a huge threat.

Things aren't looking too rosy.