In the absence of Donald Trump at COP30 in Brazil, it was his main Democratic opponent, California Governor Gavin Newsom, who took center stage this Tuesday with his strong defense of climate action, while waiting for 2028. He wanted to remind us that the United States is not just Donald Trump and that the country will return to climate action if political changes occur in the next elections.
We were in Brazil – one of the world’s largest democracies, one of our largest trading partners – and not a single person from the Trump administration showed up.
That’s embarrassing. pic.twitter.com/1VSF2Kevv5
— Governor Gavin Newsom (@CAgovernor) November 10, 2025
“Trump is only temporary,” Gavin Newsom said on Tuesday in Belem, a city in the Brazilian Amazon that is hosting the UN climate conference, without the American federal delegation present for the first time in COP history.
“Donald Trump is doubling down on his stupidity,” he also declared, criticizing the federal government’s rollbacks on energy and climate, and America’s second withdrawal from the Paris agreement, the driving force behind global cooperation on climate. Throughout the day, staunch opponents of Donald Trump, considered one of the most serious candidates for the 2028 presidential election, repeated that his rollback was an “abomination.”
Newsom has increased the number of high-level meetings and events, with the governor of the Brazilian state of Para, with a German minister, with the president of COP30 in Brazil… tasting Amazon specialties, acai juice and cupuaçu, a local fruit. He also said that a Democratic president would reintegrate the United States into the Paris agreement “without hesitation.” “It’s a moral commitment, it’s an economic imperative,” he continued.
California, Newsom model
At every stage, Gavin Newsom has praised California as a model, which will be the world’s 4th largest economy, and whose electricity will be “100% clean” (no fossil fuels) on nine out of ten days this year.
Cities, provinces, regions in many countries are present at this COP to show that climate action at the regional or local level complements state action, even if they do not get a seat in the UN negotiations, which here are reserved for member governments of the UN Convention on Climate Change (UNCCC).
Also present, New Mexico’s Democratic Governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, emphasized that “when the federal government gets involved, we do more, and when they disengage, we do more.”
The absence of representatives from the Trump administration comes as a relief to those who feared the United States would derail the talks, as happened in October at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) where a carbon tax agreement was scrapped after American threats against certain countries. “This is a good thing,” said Christiana Figueres, former UN Climate Change chief at the time of the Paris agreement, Tuesday in Belem. “They can’t talk. »
The withdrawal from the Paris agreement decided by the American president will become effective in January 2026, but the United States remains a member of UNCAC and will retain its seat at the COP. “Trump’s attitude is excessive,” said Abe Assamoi, Ivory Coast’s representative at the COP, “because we know that climate change is a reality.”
“The absence of the United States does not endanger the COP,” emphasized Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro last Thursday in Belem. But in the long term, re-engaging with the country, which is the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, will be “important”, he continued.
Hence, the arrival of the California governor, “with humility”, to reassure countries that have lost confidence in the United States due to the back-and-forth on climate, from George W. Bush and the non-ratification of the Kyoto protocol to Donald Trump. Meanwhile, for his colleagues, to make the climate less partisan, Gavin Newsom admits he is still looking for the right recipe.
“Most of my audience doesn’t know what Celsius means, when we talk about 1.5°C. What is the unit in Fahrenheit? » he asked himself at the end of the day. “Greenhouse gas emissions, do they float in the sky, do they land? We need a better metaphor. »
