The 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties ― COP29 ― opened Nov. 11 in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku, and unlike previous COPs, neither the president nor vice president of the United States are on hand to advance U.S. leadership in global efforts to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

President Joe Biden addressed COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 and COP27 in Sharm-El Sheik, Egypt in 2022. Vice President Kamala Harris led the U.S. delegation to COP28 in the United Arab Emirates in 2023.

But coming just days after President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, the U.S. presence at the conference ― or lack thereof ― could be viewed as an advance signal for a repeat of Trump’s 2017 withdrawal of the country from the Paris Agreement. Biden rejoined the global pact on global warming on his first day in office in 2021, and Trump has pledged to once again withdraw from the agreement as soon as he takes office.

The official U.S. delegation is led by John Podesta, White House senior advisor on international climate policy, and includes Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack, National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi and DOE Deputy Secretary David Turk, according to a State Department announcement. EPA Administrator Michael Regan and Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland sent deputy secretaries in their stead.

However, U.S. “subnationals” ― governors, mayors and corporate leaders ― are in Baku, carrying a message of continued commitment to the goals of the Paris Agreement, regardless of who’s in the White House.

“We have a responsibility to continue to address the climate crisis and to engage in every way possible, and to remind not just everyone in the United States, but frankly globally, that governors act as subnationals, irrespective of … the White House,” New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) said during a Nov. 8 press call, as reported by ABC News. “We’ve been in this position before. We are going to continue our commitments.”

Lujan Grisham, along with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), are co-chairs of the U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan group of 24 governors formed in 2017 in response to Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. All have adopted aggressive emission reduction goals.

A founding member of the alliance, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) is leading a subnational delegation to Baku, including state Maryland Environment Secretary Serena McIlwain and California Environment Secretary Yana Garcia, according to a Climate Alliance press release.

“We look at Donald Trump as a speed bump on the road to progress toward a clean energy economy, and we are rolling big time,” Inslee said during the Nov. 8 press call.

“My number one message is progress is going to continue in the United States. It will be driven by states who have already demonstrated that if you adopt clean energy policies, you will simultaneously grow your economy and reduce carbon emissions.”

Other organizations on the call included Climate Mayors, a nonpartisan group of nearly 350 mayors, and America Is All In, a broad coalition of local governments, educational institutions, tribal governments, investors and businesses.

Gina McCarthy, former EPA administrator and White House climate advisor, is managing co-chair of American Is All In. Speaking on the call, McCarthy said, “We’ll do everything in our power to stop efforts to unwind the progress we have made, to double down on local action, and to push private sector investments and to fill the federal leadership gap so that we can achieve our country’s global commitments.”

Ambition Without Action

Biden and Harris are not the only no-shows at COP29. Other world leaders skipping this year’s conference include European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, according to reports from Reuters and Bloomberg.

The absence of such key voices in Baku comes at a perilous moment for global action on climate. According to the recently released UN 2024 Emissions Gap Report, greenhouse gas emissions worldwide were up 1.3% in 2023, a significant bump from the pre-COVID pandemic average of 0.8% per year between 2010 and 2019.

Countries have not achieved the emission reductions they committed to in the initial rounds of climate pledges, called nationally determined contributions (NDCs), in 2015 and 2020-2021, the report says. New NDCs, setting goals for 2035, are due in February 2025, and according to Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Climate Program, global emissions must fall 7.5% per year through 2035 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The report calls on industrialized nations to do the heavy lifting on emission cuts, as well as on financial support for developing countries.

“Ambition means nothing without action,” the report says. “Unless global emissions in 2030 are brought below the levels implied by existing policies and current NDCs, it will become impossible to reach a pathway that would limit global warming to 1.5°C. … The next NDCs must deliver a quantum leap in ambition in tandem with accelerated mitigation action in this decade.”

While Trump almost certainly will take the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, a bigger question is whether he and Republicans in Congress might try to take the U.S. out of the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change, under which the Paris Agreement was finalized. U.S. participation in the UNFCCC required ratification by the Senate. It is uncertain if a Senate vote would be required to withdraw.

In their post-election analysis, ClearView Energy Partners cautioned “it may be premature to say the multilateral process is losing momentum. But the prospect of Trump administration rollbacks could make it harder for the U.S. to stoke greater global ambitions toward accelerating annual transition investments in the multiple of trillions of dollars.”