U.S. Leads in Breaking Up Global Climate Policy

It’s time for a climate reckoning. Global climate cooperation has been underway for more than 30 years since the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was signed in 1992.

In his second term, Trump has been even more hostile than before to basic climate measures. (Photo: COP30 Brasil Facebook)

Yet, as countries prepare to gather in Brazil for COP30, the Paris Agreement — and the UNFCCC itself — is teetering on the brink of irrelevance, University of Toronto Professor Jessica F. Green wrote for Foreign Affairs.

In the decade since the Paris Agreement, countries have made some progress, including creating national plans to reduce emissions, establishing a framework for assessing climate adaptation, and launching a new fund to compensate developing countries for loss and damage caused by climate change.

But this progress remains thin. Only 67 countries have submitted their national plans.

This year’s COP host, Brazil, is one of the world’s largest oil producers; it has recently weakened environmental permitting rules that could increase deforestation in the Amazon and ramped up oil and gas production.

The previous two hosts, Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates, are also petrostates, and both appointed people with deep ties to the oil industry to oversee the COP negotiations.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has again ordered the United States — the world’s second-largest carbon emitter — to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

In his second term, Trump has been even more hostile than before to basic climate measures.

In September, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced plans to stop collecting emissions data from major polluters, removing the means to track compliance with climate policy.

All the while, the drumbeat of the climate emergency grows ever louder. The world has already exceeded an average warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius. Extreme weather is increasingly common: Last month’s Hurricane Melissa was one of the strongest storms ever recorded in the Caribbean.