PROVIDENCE — It’s not every day a Rhode Island politician can claim to be the only representative of the U.S. federal government.

For the opening weekend of this year’s 30^th U.N. Conference of the Parties (COP) — the largest and most important venue for world governments to gather to address the global climate crisis — commonly known as COP30, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., was one of the few representatives from the U.S. government, as President Donald Trump refused to send a federal delegation this year.

The junior senator from Rhode Island is the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Whitehouse arrived in Belém, Brazil, a city known for being the gateway to the lower Amazon region, to push back against climate denialism in the United States and abroad.

“We had no support whatsoever from the State Department, which is a first for me. I’ve done a lot of climate conferences,” Whitehouse told reporters during a press gaggle following his trip. “Usually, they automatically provide logistical support; [this time] they wouldn’t even help us get our badges for the conference; we had to go through a private organization.”

Whitehouse took part in discussions on the future of offshore wind, clean shipping, methane regulations, net-zero policy implementation, the impacts of climate change on the world’s oceans, and non-CO₂ greenhouse gas emissions. He also was the keynote speaker of a Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition Institute panel discussion with other global elected officials on the implementation of climate policies.

With no official delegation, Whitehouse was straitjacketed on what he could accomplish at COP30 this year. Instead, the senator said he wanted to spread four key messages about climate change and its worldwide impacts to the delegates, each one related to key issues back home.

The first issue was based around the Trump in the room: Whitehouse emphasized to the delegates that the United States’ 47th president did not wholly represent the entire nation’s views on climate change. The Trump administration, in both terms, has pushed climate denialism in favor of boosting traditional fossil fuel reliance and infrastructure. ProPublica released a report Nov. 19 estimating Trump’s anti-green agenda could result in 1.3 million additional climate deaths.

Whitehouse wasn’t the only unofficial representative from the United States. California Gov. Gavin Newsom also attended the conference and took aim at the administration’s decision to reverse U.S. policies on climate change.

In Rhode Island so far, the effects of the second Trump administration’s climate change reversals have mostly shown up in hostility to the offshore wind projects being built or proposed off the coast of Rhode Island. SouthCoast Wind, which was going to supply electricity to Rhode Island once built, is now unlikely to be built, as Rhode Island Energy ended negotiations with the project after repeated delays in signing a power-purchase agreement, which itself was repeatedly delayed due to the Trump administration’s unpredictable hostility to renewable energy.

Whitehouse’s remaining talking points at COP30 were more policy oriented: the senator said he wanted delegates to get serious about taxing carbon emissions to get the world “safely over the mountain” that is greenhouse gas emissions. Whitehouse cited the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), of which Rhode Island is a participant. The program charges the biggest polluters in its 10 participating states carbon allowances they are required to buy quarterly.

“We’re lucky we’re in RGGI, it’s a light price on carbon, and I hope the state will consider raising its RGGI price soon,” Whitehouse said. “It’s been very good for Rhode Island; it’s a money-maker. The money that goes out, when it comes back, we spend in ways that are much more economically advantageous than the loss of revenue in the first place.”

The senator said he also wanted to bring attention to the growing collapse of the insurance industry, pointing toward home insurers rapidly pulling out in places like Florida in light of supercharged storms and hurricanes made stronger by the warming planet.

Rhode Island has been doing its fair share of looking at home insurance in light of climate change flooding. The state has started buyout programs in certain municipalities for homes in risky floodplains. Whitehouse said he would be working with the Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns, a lobbying group that works on behalf of the interests of the state’s 39 municipalities, because Rhode Island’s coastal communities would feel the real brunt of climate change and insurance.

“It’s beginning to show up in [the towns’] municipal bond ratings,” Whitehouse said. “They’re getting new questions from bond companies about how much of their tax revenue comes from coastal properties that might not be there long or might not have the kind of value they can tax at the current rates.”

Rhode Island doesn’t have Florida’s problem just yet. The real home insurance issue in Rhode Island is affordability, as the risk of flood increases and many homeowners in the state are without flood insurance policies at all.

“We’ll see how the messages were taken, but I think there was a lot of relief when I said, ‘Trump does not represent the United States view on climate change,’” Whitehouse said. “He represents the fossil fuel industry’s view.”