While President Donald Trump’s administration opted not to participate in this year’s UN climate summit, held in the Brazilian Amazon, the event’s second day on Tuesday is set to be dominated by the governors of California and New Mexico.
Much of the spotlight is on California’s charismatic leader, Gavin Newsom, who governs the world’s fourth-largest economy and has positioned himself as a staunch opponent to Trump, with whispers of a potential run for the presidency in 2028.
“We are doubling down on stupidity in the United States of America,” Newsom remarked at a Milken Institute event in São Paulo on Monday, offering a glimpse of the anti-Republican rhetoric that has become his trademark. “Not in my state of California.”
Newsom’s agenda in Brazil includes meetings with Helder Barbalho, the governor of Pará state, which is home to Belem, the host city for COP30, as well as with New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham.
Trump, who made aggressive fossil fuel expansion a cornerstone of his second term, pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement shortly after taking office in January. However, according to Champa Patel, Executive Director for Governments and Policy at the Climate Group — which manages the Under2 Coalition of global states and regions — US states can continue to follow the climate strategy put in place by former President Joe Biden’s administration.
“The states have that roadmap; they can still follow it and remain in line with the spirit of Paris,” Patel told AFP.
“Ultimately, it’s the state-level actors who will implement the policies, and the real economy is shifting,” Patel added, pointing to the growth of wind and solar energy even in states led by Republicans, driven largely by market forces.
Newsom is expected to showcase California’s green credentials, including its $4.1 trillion economy, which is now powered by two-thirds clean energy, as well as the state’s successful Cap-and-Invest programme — a carbon market that has been extended by law until 2045.
New Mexico’s Lujan Grisham governs a major fossil fuel-producing state but has championed the expansion of renewables and measures to curb methane emissions from the oil and gas sector.
Despite these efforts, questions remain about the limits of state-level action. Trump’s Republicans recently passed a law that accelerates the end of clean energy tax credits introduced under Biden, a move seen as potentially devastating to the renewable energy sector.
While state and regional coalitions can exert political pressure at climate summits, they remain, for now, outside the official text-drafting process.