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Donald Trump made his disdain for global climate action clear the day he pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement. Since then, his administration has been on a climate bashing marathon, dismantling wind turbines, weakening fuel-efficiency standards, and scuppering an agreement on global maritime transport just a few months ago — not to mention the many other incendiary geopolitical initiatives with which he continues to surprise us. In the face of such destructive inertia, one wonders why one international climate deal seems to be escaping his rage.
CORSIA, the global aviation climate scheme run by the UN’s aviation body (ICAO), may be the only climate agreement Trump will never try to kill precisely because it asks almost nothing of the United States, or of airlines anywhere in the world. In fact, its raison d’être is to prevent other countries from taking meaningful action, first and foremost Europe.
A decade and a half ago, the European Union made the world’s first serious effort to cap and price aviation emissions. The EU supposedly “overreached”, by trying to put a carbon price on the full journey of any flight touching Europe, incoming and departing. The move provoked a backlash, skillfully stoked by Airbus and others, which ended with Russia, China and the Obama administration ganging up on Europe to cancel its carbon scheme for aviation in 2012.
