The second time US President Donald Trump put the US on the path to quit the Paris climate agreement, defenders of the international climate order barely stirred in protest. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe would “stay the course” on climate action, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer declined to criticize Trump, and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva waited more than a week before calling it “a step backward for human civilization.”
It was one of Trump’s very first acts in his second term, and one of the least surprising. “The whole movie we’ve seen before is playing again, but just at a higher speed,” said David Victor, a professor of innovation and public policy at the University of California at San Diego who closely tracks global climate diplomacy.
The movie might be the same — but it is playing in a different theater now and to a friendlier crowd. Inflation and threats to energy security have eroded the political strength of climate-forward leaders and emboldened Trumpian populists around the world.
Countries and companies that once set decadal goals and made bold statements about saving the world now face the prospect of missing those 2030 targets by big margins. US and Canadian banks have rushed to exit corporate climate alliances, even as their European counterparts remain.
Only one in four global environmental meetings organized by the UN last year resulted in a major deal and the billions of dollars that the US provided in climate finance to developing countries under former US president Joe Biden are set to go away, which kneecaps the ability of poor countries to deploy clean energy at a time of high interest rates.
The Paris deal is a voluntary commitment from all countries to keep warming “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial levels. With the planet’s average temperature last year breaching 1.5°C for the first time and most countries not on course to meet their climate commitments, there are serious questions about whether the global momentum to tackle climate change can sustain a second Trump assault.
COP30
Brazil is to host the next UN climate conference, COP30, in November, and the US departure plan would “temper the cheers of the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement,” said Jos Delbeke, professor and European Investment Bank chair on climate policy and international carbon markets at the European University Institute.
The withdrawal from the Paris deal would not officially go into effect until Jan. 27, 2026, although former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced he would help cover the gap in US financial obligations.
The US, the biggest historical emitter of planet-heating gases, has never been the world’s most enthusiastic climate champion, but its hostility at a time of high urgency has diplomats worried.
All countries are expected to submit new climate targets for 2035 to the UN within weeks, and developing countries are adamant that their rich counterparts, which have polluted far more, give much more climate funding. That was the crux of debate at COP29 in Azerbaijan in November last year, where delegates fought before reaching a deal to triple climate finance to US$300 billion by 2035.
“If it was difficult to get US$300 billion with the US negotiating and committed to having policies to combat climate change, it will certainly be more difficult now,” said Andre Correa do Lago, a Brazilian diplomat recently named president of COP30.
“If we don’t do something strong, these COPs will be demoralized,” Lula told journalists on Thursday.
Under Biden, the US became the world’s largest producer of oil and gas, putting it in a strong economic position at the start of this year. That has made it easier for Trump to assert himself on the world stage with confidence and to court new allies, including Argentinian President Javier Milei and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Milei has reportedly considered following Trump out of the Paris pact, although doing so could jeopardize its trade agreements with the EU, and a Russian business group has urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to leave.
POLITICAL CHALLENGES
Meanwhile, climate-forward leaders are finding things difficult. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is on his way out. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz face political headwinds on the back of a cost-of-living crisis. In the UK and China, stagnating economic growth is pushing leaders to opt for carbon-intensive projects.
Regardless of their political choices, all countries face a greater onslaught from climate-driven extreme weather events. Reinsurer Aon estimated economic losses from catastrophes last year reached US$368 billion, a sharp increase from 2016, when they were US$216 billion. Before he had been back in office a full week, Trump visited Los Angeles to see the destruction left behind by fires that scientists confirmed were made 35 percent more likely because of climate change.
Many climate advocates are hoping that opposition to Trumpian anti-climate leaders will grow. “We have to stand up,” said Laurence Tubiana, chief executive of the European Climate Foundation and an architect of the Paris agreement. “We should not be frightened by Trump’s menace.”
Europe, China and Brazil are expected to fill the void Trump has created in international climate diplomacy, but if that process should falter, the global energy transition is not reliant solely on what governments do.
The greatest hope for climate action is in economic forces. In 2016, global investments in the energy transition stood at US$426 billion, with the vast majority going to government-subsidized solar and wind power, data compiled by energy research firm BloombergNEF (BNEF) showed.
Since then, investments have grown fivefold, to US$2.1 trillion last year. They also cover a much wider range of sectors, a BNEF report published on Thursday showed.
“Some of the largest economies are going to set ambitious climate goals even without the US,” BNEF deputy chief executive Albert Cheung said. “But with the proviso that it has to be economically beneficial and rational for their people.”
The world has entered a new phase in the energy transition. Before the Paris Agreement was signed, pushing for climate targets was seen as having to sacrifice economic growth for the greater good, limiting how far even rich countries could go. After Paris sent a market signal, the transition entered a phase of opportunity that saw a rapid rise in valuation for climate tech companies. Under Biden, the US passed laws that injected hundreds of billions of dollars into the transition.
Now countries are in competition mode: “So suddenly now there’s a pie,” said Cheung, “and countries are looking at each other and going, ‘OK, well how much of that pie can we capture?’”
On that front, China is ahead with a huge lead. Last year, it spent more on the energy transition than the US, the EU and the UK combined.
With protectionism on the rise, “the biggest challenge in global climate work may not be that countries around the world are unwilling to develop the green economy,” said Li Shuo (李碩), director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. National limitations might become the bigger factor, especially since few nations can scale up like China, he said.
BNEF’s Cheung sees momentum continuing behind renewable energy, batteries, electric cars and grids regardless of government policies. However, less mature markets for hydrogen, carbon capture, low-carbon heat and green industries would struggle if governments pull away their support en masse.
The physical threats of climate change are starting to erode the bottom line of many companies, which is not something they can ignore. Many observers expect global companies facing backlash to continue quietly acting on climate change — something that is being called “greenhushing.”
“What’s changed since Trump took office is that for US business there is much more fear of the spotlight,” said Helen Clarkson, chief executive of the Climate Group, which acts as an umbrella group for corporate initiatives. “They just don’t want to put their heads up above the parapet.”
OPPORTUNITIES
The US retreat from the green race under Trump creates opportunities for others to invest in climate technologies that even China has not cracked yet, said Michal Orlowski, deputy chief executive of Polish power producer Tauron, specifically calling out opportunities in hydrogen production. “There are certainly threats, but there are also some opportunities for Europe,” he said. “Either we wake up now and bet on the right technologies, or we stay as a tourist destination.”
If there is a two-track energy transition for mature and less mature technologies, there is a similar divide among countries. Developing countries get a small fraction of global energy transition spending. That is where the diplomacy framework under UN-led COP meetings plays a crucial role. It gives developing and climate-vulnerable countries a platform to shame rich countries and pressure them to live up to their promises.
“Given that the world’s largest economy has clearly decided to deviate from the path of combating climate change, COP becomes even more necessary in this adverse context,” said Brazil’s Correa do Lago.
Before the official US exit from the Paris Agreement, Trump’s team could play COP spoiler in Brazil just as it tried to do during his first term, when negotiators used the forum to push against more climate finance while urging support for fossil fuels. The COP president could ignore US objections in formal plenaries — potentially gaveling down meetings and agreements without the representatives’ input.
However, it is more likely that the US presence in Brazil would help provide cover to laggard countries, bolstering efforts by Saudi Arabia and other oil producers to undermine past commitments to transition away from oil, gas and coal.
While moves by one president or prime minister can certainly slow down action, they are unlikely to reverse a lot of the progress that has been made. Before the Paris Agreement was signed, it was still “absolutely feasible” that the world could warm as much as 5°C, said Diana Urge-Vorsatz, vice chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That would be a catastrophic level of warming, sinking many island nations and major coastal cities, causing widespread hunger and malnutrition and eradicating coral reefs and countless species.
“The world has been taken off the worst climate pathways,” she said. “Now that’s almost out of the picture, unless something goes very wrong in the climate system itself.”
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