Trump is not going to COP30 in Brazil, but America is
Washington will not be sending a top-level team to this year’s COP climate summit in Belem, Brazil.
The global community expected as much from a president who has pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement for the second time, slashed funding for renewable energy, championed fossil fuel projects and told world leaders at the UN in September that climate change is the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
But delegates from Washington state, along with governors, mayors and other representatives from states and cities across the US, are determined to pick up the slack. Together, they represent about two-thirds of the US population and produce nearly three-quarters of the country’s economic output.
“It’s a long way to come from Seattle to Rio, but I made the trip, and others made the trip, because it’s important for the rest of the world not to give up on the United States,” said Jay Inslee, the former Democratic governor of Washington. Inslee was speaking to DW from Rio de Janeiro, where he was taking part in pre-COP events last week ahead of the main climate talks.
