As excited as I was to attend COP22 this year, I felt a twinge of regret at missing witnessing in action what I was sure would be a momentous election – after all, America was going to install her first female President in the White House, am I right? Turns out I, along with a large swathe of the US of A, got that one wrong. Horribly wrong.

Midway through our first week at the COP, I awoke in Morocco to the completely unfathomable election results. As an international student, woman and POC living in America, I felt immediately threatened. Unsafe. Unwelcome. In a country I’ve fallen in love with in the one year since I came to grad school. Our Duke contingent, and other students and scholars I met over the course of the day, weren’t doing much better. Maybe it was just me projecting, but I could feel a shroud of despair cloak the COP’s proceedings that day. People huddled together discussing immediate potential ramifications, and students commiserated in informal support circles, while the US delegation blockaded itself and refused to speak to anyone, including the press on November 9, the day after elections. I found solace at a circle led by members of indigenous communities as well as NGO community organizers – several people in the audience cried softly as the speakers’ compassion overwhelmed those of us who were still in shock.

Our current President-elect has been quite adamant about his climate skepticism, from calling climate change a Chinese hoax, supporting cuts in clean energy funding, and pushing for more coal production, to threatening to dismantle the EPA and pull USA out of the Paris Agreement, the landmark climate action deal arrived at just last year at COP21. This is, to put it lightly, terrifying. And terrifyingly ignorant. Faced with these ominous and imminent consequences, finding the heart to “keep calm and carry on” at COP was difficult for me – I can’t imagine what Parties who depend on proactive US climate policy (and the concomitant funding) were feeling!

A few days later, we had the pleasure of getting a coffee with Prof. Nate Hultman, Director of UMD’s Center for Global Sustainability, to try and get a sense of what comes next for America and climate change, and what these elections mean for both the Paris Agreement (Agreement) as well as future climate action. Talking this out with someone who for one, knows what he’s talking about, and two, has worked in DC and with the White House closely on climate policy in the past, helped me adjust my lens on the issues and attempt to identify both potential stumbling blocks as well opportunities for climate action and policy in soon-to-be Trump country.

By all accounts, President-elect Trump isn’t a friend of the environment, or clean energy, in America. However, there does exist an elaborate system of checks and balances at the federal government level that prevent the man from running roughshod over every law and regulation he happens to take issue with. This is the semi-good news; more on the domestic angle in a minute.

I’d argue instead, that the international ramifications of his stance on climate change are more damaging, and likely more enduring. We could assume, given Trump’s support for the idea that America needs to revert to isolationist economic and development policies, that he will, at the very least, refuse to ratchet up international development aid, which includes a bulk of current climate finance commitments. In fact, sanctioning the disbursal of pledged amounts is an annual affair carried out by the (now predominantly red) Congress, so it’s safe to say that’s not something the global community can count on in the years to come. Further, the conspicuous absence of USA’s contributions to climate funding could easily lead to the breakdown of global cooperation on combating climate change, and would leave several developing and least developed countries in the lurch, without any financing to help them meet their mitigation, adaptation and reporting targets under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (Convention), and under the Agreement.

As for his threat to withdraw the US from the Agreement? Yes, this is actually possible, and could be triggered as early as January 2018, IF Trump were to withdraw from the Convention, under which the Agreement was adopted. Is he likely to do it? The jury’s out, but the hope is this climate change stuff just isn’t high enough on his agenda in the first year to merit the effort needed to implement these changes.

So, what’s the good news you ask? Let’s look at what opportunities and hurdles exist in the implementation of America’s domestic climate policies. President-elect Trump has named a climate science denier, Myron Ebell of the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, to head his EPA transition team. This is worrying, and points to the importance of tracking who Trump allows the privilege of having his ear, in his cabinet and in the White House.

However, notwithstanding his cabinet choices, the role of sub-national, regional and non-governmental actors can and must expand greatly, in the fight against climate change. Several progressive states have already implemented cap and trade programs, such as under California’s cap and trade statute, and under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative which serves nine American states. City corporations and municipalities can fight climate change through implementing local policies and regulation, and states could consider implementing carbon taxes and stricter fuel emissions standards without overreaching or interfering with federal environmental policy, over which it is assumed Trump will have considerable oversight, if he so wishes.

Further, even as the Clean Power Plan is being challenged in DC’s Circuit Court, utilities and other corporates are already making cost-effective investments in transformative clean energy technologies that are rapidly reducing emissions across the power sector. Over 350 such companies have even signed a statement directed at Trump and the US Congress, the week after elections, in support of the Clean Power Plan’s vision and the need to stay ambitious and on the “Paris path”. Similarly, the EPA regulates too many industries, natural resources and ecosystems, under too many statutes to be summarily disbanded, and President Trump would have to have his Congress enact new legislation replacing the EPA with another body tasked with their original functions – again, this is highly unlikely.

What’s the bottom line? As is true for a lot of his policy platforms, we know very little about the specifics of Trump’s environmental mandate. Backtracking on the Agreement and/or the Clean Power Plan would prove difficult if not impossible, and switching back to reliance on coal is short-sighted – the hope is that he does not prioritize these strategies over other items on the immediate agenda. A more successful approach might be to focus on climate efforts that capture the imagination of America’s new President, by playing into his weakness for big ideas and manufacturing, and leveraging his competitive streak against China. In the meanwhile, we should rally our regional partners and governments to fight harder than ever to protect our environment from the ravages of climate change and promote the adoption of clean energy – it is at the regional level that the real work begins, and it begins now.