The newspapers dubbed it “unprecedented”, “historic”, “landmark”.
Then-U.S. President Barack Obama called it a “tribute to strong, principled American leadership”.
When 195 countries came together nearly 10 years ago to adopt a legally binding agreement to try to avert the worst effects of climate change, it was considered a triumph of diplomacy and a potential turning point for the world. The deal that emerged is now so well-known it is referred to simply as “the Paris Agreement” or “the Paris Accords” — or sometimes just “Paris”.
But with a stroke — or several — of his black-and-gold pen, U.S. President Donald Trump has taken the United States out of the fight to stop global warming, casting the future of the pact and everything it hoped to accomplish into doubt.
Has the departure of the United States doomed the campaign to cut greenhouse gas emissions to failure? And if not, who will take up the torch Trump has cast aside?
Uncharted waters
The good news is that climate change experts believe the benefits of a transition to renewables — from energy independence to cleaner air — are so compelling the shift will go with or without the United States.
The bad is that Trump’s actions will give many countries and companies an excuse to leave the battlefield. And that may make it impossible to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of holding temperature rises to well below 2 degrees Celsius.
Listing all the steps Trump has taken so far to undermine the climate campaign would take hundreds of words. So here are just a few.
Since 20 January 2025, the newly-minted U.S. government has:
• Withdrawn from the Paris agreement for the second time – joining the ranks of Yemen, Iran and Libya as the only countries outside the pact.
• Said the Environmental Protection Agency would look at overturning a 2009 ruling that greenhouse gases threaten the health of current and future generations – effectively gutting the agency’s legal authority to regulate U.S. emissions.
• Rolled back dozens of Biden-era pollution rules.
• Abandoned a deal under which rich countries promised to help poorer ones afford to make the transition to sustainable energy.
• Eliminated support for domestic and international climate research by scientists.
• Halted approvals for green energy projects planned for federal lands and waters.
• Removed climate change references from federal websites.
• Set the stage to fulfil Trump’s promise to let oil companies “drill, baby, drill” by declaring an energy emergency, which will allow him to fast-track projects.
Eliot Whittington, chief systems change officer at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, said that the United States is entering genuinely uncharted waters.
“The Trump administration is making changes far in excess of its legal authority and drawing more power into itself and away from Congress, states and the courts,” Whittington said. “It is doing so in service of an explicitly ideological agenda that is hostile to much green action — despite the popularity of environmental benefits and high level of environmental concern in the U.S.”
Alibi for inaction
Trump has repeatedly — and falsely — called the scientifically-proven fact that mankind’s actions are leading to planetary heating a hoax. In November 2024, following the onslaught of deadly Hurricane Helene, he said it was “one of the greatest scams of all time”.
For a hoax, climate change is packing a painful punch.
Last year was the hottest on record, and yet even with countries touting net-zero gains, emissions also hit a new high. According to World Weather Attribution, the record temperatures worsened heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, storms and floods that killed thousands, displaced millions and destroyed infrastructure and property.
In other words, the need to curb emissions is only growing more urgent.
Alister Doyle, a News Decoder correspondent who authored “The Great Melt: Accounts from the Frontline of Climate Change“, believes Trump’s anti-green policies will slow but not stop the move away from fossil fuels.
“But while other nations will stick with the Paris Agreement, almost none are doing enough,” he said. “Trump’s decision to quit will provide an alibi for inaction by many other governments and companies.”
Voters look to their wallets
Ambivalence about net-zero policies had been on the rise even before Trump took office, stoked by populist political parties.
There are clear long-term economic benefits of the transition — from faster growth to the avoidance of costs linked to natural disasters. But Whittington said that the short-term sacrifices and infrastructure spending it will require have proven a tough sell when voters are facing difficult financial circumstances at home.
“After a global inflation shock post-pandemic, governments have little financial space to defray the costs of upfront investment and generally voters feel like they don’t have the space to take on additional costs, even as a down payment on a better future,” Whittington said.
This is further complicated by a powerful lobby against climate action led by oil and gas companies, which have devoted hundreds of millions of dollars to the effort. While most have also made public commitments to green goals, the sentiment shift has led several to abandon most or all of these in the past few weeks.
Whittington believes that, despite these setbacks, the energy transition will eventually gain enough momentum that even fossil fuel producers will be unable to step on the brakes. It will be led by multiple countries and propelled by a variety of forces.
Chief among these is the need in today’s politically fractured world for energy security: the guarantee a country will have access to an uninterrupted — and uninterruptible — supply of energy at a price it can afford. This is particularly important to countries dependent on imported energy.
China leads the way.
In its pursuit of energy self-sufficiency, China — both the world’s largest fossil fuel importer and the world’s top greenhouse gas emitter — has earned itself a less dubious distinction: it now leads the globe in the production of renewable energy and electric vehicles.
“The International Energy Agency says that China could be producing as much solar power by the early 2030s as total U.S. electricity demand today,” Doyle said.
Europe, meanwhile, has been on a quest to wean itself of Russian oil and gas and has rapidly increased its adoption of renewables. The United Kingdom, meanwhile, is currently the world’s second-largest wind power producer and plans to double capacity by 2030.
“Europe as a whole — including the UK — generally is leading the world in showing how to cut emissions and grow the economy,” Whittington said.
The United States, he added, will likely stay involved in areas where it holds a technical edge, such as battery development.
Even the Middle East will have an increasingly compelling motive for going green(er): the need for other sources of income as fossil fuel demand falls from a peak expected in 2030.
Public pressure itself may again become a driving force for change.
As hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, heatwaves and other climate-related disasters increase — and as a younger, more climate-aware generation finds its voice — voters may start worrying less about their personal finances and more about the future of the planet.
Three questions to consider:
1. What is meant by the “green economy”?
2. How can a government encourage or discourage climate action?
3. What, if any, changes to your lifestyle have you made to help our planet?