No one was surprised when the United States withdrew from the Paris Agreement for a second time earlier this year. What shocked the international community were the vicious attacks on federal climate scientists and diplomats negotiating in multilateral climate fora, paired with the swift dismantling of domestic clean energy investments in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – especially as most of the investments benefit workers and communities in red states.
As former U.S. climate diplomats negotiating in multilateral climate fora such as the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), highlighting America’s domestic commitment to clean energy was essential to our international credibility. That required some level of assurance that U.S. domestic climate commitments would endure through changes across administrations. We touted the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) because we believed that its benefits for red states would make it politically durable. We championed the Paris Agreement because we thought the flexibility of its emission reduction targets (“Nationally Determined Contributions,” or NDCs) would be resilient to changes in political leadership. We also believed that competition with China would drive U.S. investment in clean energy technologies, not discourage it.
But as we have seen over the past six months, these beliefs have not held true.
To the world, this isn’t just a policy blip. It’s a signal that American climate leadership is inherently unstable, too dependent on who controls the White House and thus easily reversed every four years. In the climate arena, which depends inherently on long-term coordination and trust, this volatility is not a partisan liability. It’s a national liability with global impacts.
Domestic Actions Underpin – or Unravel – Multilateral Credibility
China, by contrast, has raced ahead not only in its domestic production of clean energy but also in its global energy investment to establish inroads with key nations. This is a serious national security concern. The Trump administration’s decision to not actively compete with Chinese clean energy mostly occurred through the gutting of the IRA. This hurts U.S. businesses facing uncertain markets for their products, but its impacts go far beyond the outlook for individual companies. Without a credible interlocutor in the White House, the United States risks ceding leadership and leverage in shaping global energy markets and norms. It also risks alienating countries most vulnerable to climate impacts – particularly the small islands, which are home to many U.S. naval bases and crucial to U.S. national security.
If the current administration is serious about bringing working class jobs and economic growth back to the United States, it should do all it can to blunt the risk of China being the manufacturer of the future. That includes building out the necessary tools in terms of domestic and foreign investment. Reauthorizing the Development Finance Corporation (DFC), which was created during the first Trump administration in part to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, would be a good start. Its diverse range of financial tools and private sector focus should be fully harnessed, unleashing its ability to provide dependable, affordable energy investments that can help the United States and its allies reduce its dependency on China.
Relationships with the Global South will heavily define U.S. capacity to compete with China. U.S. relationships with its allies – the G7 in particular – are equally essential. Rather than pursue short term, bilateral, transactional negotiations, the United States should be creating broader buyers’ clubs to coordinate on things like critical mineral investments and cordoning off markets to mitigate Chinese oversupply. Yet, there have been few signals that this administration is keen to coordinate amongst allies rather than bully through tariffs.
So What Do We Do About It?
The United States can’t anchor global climate diplomacy to a single office or envoy that disappears every four years. The recent mass lay-offs and restructuring that occurred at the State Department are a harsh reminder of the long term importance of securing bipartisan support for any ambitious foreign policy objectives.
In Trump’s first term, the “We Are Still In” coalition of governors, mayors, corporations, and universities stood strong to affirm America’s commitment to the Paris Agreement temperature goal. It was a diplomatic stopgap that helped maintain global confidence in the U.S. climate trajectory, even as the federal government stepped back.
Today, we need more than this.
Reestablishing multilateral credibility requires creating genuine domestic buy-in to clean energy and adaptation investments, which means that bipartisan ownership of the energy transition is no longer optional.
Trusted Messengers Make a Difference
Tying collective global action to individual sentiment at home is challenging. So perhaps a more salient approach is to reverse the order. Voters must be engaged on “kitchen table economics” of climate impacts – clear, localized explanations of how clean energy investments will help their wallets and how natural disasters worsened by climate change will hurt them. For example, recent tragedies like the California wildfires and Texas flooding have captured national attention and made clear the value of early warning systems. To succeed, these messages must be delivered by trusted messengers who have credibility with conservatives, listen to them, and empathize with their concerns.
The left-leaning climate community will have to resist its own form of retreat into familiar rhetoric and narrow coalitions. Meeting the moment means speaking the language of American energy dominance, not just decarbonization. It means taking seriously the rising interest in advanced nuclear energy, permitting reform, and domestic mining, not just solar and wind. It also means shifting the narrative to make clear the costs of climate inaction by highlighting the rising costs of healthcare, housing, and food due to hotter temperatures.
That also means building informal and formal coalitions of actors that don’t cycle with elections. American manufacturers that have seen firsthand positive economic impacts on their operations from climate mitigation policies. Farmers whose crops won’t grow because the soil is too hot. Americans whose healthcare costs skyrocket from increased air pollution and dirty water. A locally-led coalition in Utah offers one example of a path forward. With 27 state governorships and 28 state legislatures Republican-controlled, there’s no time to waste.
Success building those coalitions requires investing in environmental organizations that can act as trusted messengers and engage with Americans across the political spectrum, including conservatives. But philanthropy appears to be seriously under-investing in climate groups that focus on right of center advocacy – a concern because this is low-hanging fruit to strengthen bipartisan buy-in.
We understand the skepticism. Many philanthropies have turned their focus to state and local initiatives or, in recent months, to IRA defense efforts that sadly fell short. Part of the problem was a lack of political leverage. Creating new, long-term, bipartisan linkages can help ameliorate that challenge and foster opportunity.
Reasons for Hope
Philanthropy should view investments in bipartisan climate organizations as a source of optimism. Despite the federal backslide, the energy transition in the United States is continuing, at least somewhat. Private capital is flowing into renewables, EVs, and clean manufacturing. State and local governments, particularly in red states, are embracing clean energy for reasons ranging from job creation to grid resilience and energy security. For example, Texas leads the U.S. in wind and solar power generation – producing almost double California’s renewables output in 2024 – driven not by ideology, but by economics.
The rollback of mandates and subsidies may make the investment landscape seem uncertain. Yet despite a reported retreat from sustainability rhetoric, many companies continue to commit themselves to net-zero targets, in part because they understand the dual opportunity of lower emissions and greater efficiency and innovation. As Lisa Jacobson from the Business Council for Sustainable Energy shared, “the data is clear: deployment of a broad portfolio of energy efficiency and clean energy technologies is hard-wired into the U.S. economy.” The United States may be out of Paris, but its economy is not – at least not yet.
These are positive domestic trendlines. However, for international climate diplomacy to succeed, it cannot be tethered to partisan swings in Washington. If we want to lead abroad, we must build lasting consensus at home. Without a deeper base of domestic support for climate action, and without coalitions that extend across the aisle, U.S. global climate leadership will not work.
We must not tether our aspirations to fleeting moments of partisan alignment but instead future-proof climate action by building broad coalitions that can endure.
