In 2025, the US gave up on climate — and the world gave up on us
As the year draws to a close, 2025 is shaping up to be a turning point in the global fight against climate change. Most visible was the year the United States abandoned its efforts. The Trump administration withdrew from the 2015 Paris Agreement, which united virtually every country in the world in a voluntary commitment to end climate change. And for the first time in the 30-year history of international UN climate negotiations, the United States did not send a delegation to the annual COP30 conference, which was held in Belém, Brazil.
The Trump administration’s attack on climate action is far from symbolic. Over the summer, the president pressed his Republican majority in Congress to gut a Biden-era law that was expected to cut U.S. emissions by about a third from their peak, bringing the country within reach of its commitments under the Paris Agreement. In the fall, Trump officials used tough negotiating tactics to block, if not outright derail, a relatively uncontroversial international plan to decarbonize the world’s highly polluting shipping industry. And although no other country has played a larger role in climate change, the United States, under Trump, has cut the vast majority of global climate aid funding, intended to help countries that are in the crosshairs of climate change while doing virtually nothing to cause it.
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So it’s no surprise that other world leaders launched thinly veiled attacks at Trump during the COP30 climate negotiations last month. Christiana Figueres, a key architect of the 2015 Paris Agreement and a longtime Costa Rican diplomat, summed up a common sentiment.
“Ciao, baby! You want to leave, go,” she told a crowd of reporters, using an Italian expression that translates to “goodbye, little boy.”
These sweeping shifts in America’s stance on climate change, which President Donald Trump has called a “hoax” and a “scam,” are just the latest and most visible signs of a deeper shift underway. Historically, the United States and other wealthy, high-emitting countries have been seen as the primary drivers of climate action, both because of their outsized responsibility for the crisis and the greater resources at their disposal. However, over the past decade, hopes that developed countries would prioritize financing the global energy transition and adaptation measures to protect the world’s most vulnerable countries have been dashed – in part because of rightward shifts in domestic politics, external crises like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and revolts by voters in rich countries over concerns about the cost of living.
The resulting message for developing countries is unequivocal: help is not on the way.
Who will finance global climate solutions? Not the West.
In the void left behind, a different driver of global climate action has emerged, not political or diplomatic but industrial. The growing market for green technologies – primarily solar, wind and batteries – has made the adoption of renewable energy much faster and more cost-effective than almost anyone predicted. The world has significantly exceeded expectations in solar energy production in particular, producing about 8 times more last year than in 2015, when the Paris Agreement was signed.
China is largely responsible for the breakneck pace of clean energy growth. It now produces about 60 percent of the world’s wind turbines and 80 percent of the world’s solar panels. During the first half of 2025, the country added more than twice as much new solar capacity as the rest of the world combined. As a result of these changes in the global energy market led by China and commitments made by other countries under the Paris Agreement, the world is now on track to experience warming of 2.3 to 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.1 to 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100, compared to pre-industrial temperatures, far lower than projections of about 5 degrees C (9 degrees F) just ago 10 years.
These policies can be seen as a symbol of global cooperation on climate change, but for Chinese leaders the motivation is above all economic. That may be why they work, experts say. Chinese policies are driving much of the growth in renewable energy in the rest of the world. As the cost of solar panels and wind turbines falls year by year, this allows other countries, particularly in the Global South, to choose cleaner sources of electricity over fossil fuels – and also to buy some of the cheapest mass-produced electric vehicles in the world. Pakistan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia are all expected to see a massive increase in solar deployment over the coming years, thanks to their partnerships with Chinese companies.
“China will, over time, create a new narrative and become a much bigger driver of global climate action,” said Li Shuo, director of the China climate cluster at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Shuo said the political and rhetorical approach favored by rich countries to solving climate change has proven unreliable and largely failed. Instead, a Chinese-style approach that aligns countries’ economic agendas with decarburization will prove more effective, he predicts.
While Trump defends fossil fuels, the world focuses on renewable energies
In the meantime, many countries have begun to reorganize their diplomatic and economic relations in ways that no longer assume American leadership. That shift has accelerated this year in part because of Trump’s decisions to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, impose tariffs on U.S. allies and, more broadly, isolate himself in self-imposed isolation. European countries facing harsh tariffs have sought to deepen trade relations with China, Japan and other Asian countries. The EU’s new carbon border tax, which applies levies on imports from outside the bloc, will come into force in January. The move was once expected to spark a conflict between the EU and the United States, but it is now proceeding without outright support – or strong opposition – from the Trump administration.
African countries are also asserting their leadership. The continent held its own climate summit earlier this year, pledging to raise $50 billion to promote at least 1,000 local solutions in energy, agriculture, water, transport and resilience by 2030. “The continent has shifted the debate from crisis to opportunity, from aid to investment and external prescription to African leadership,” said Mahamoud Ali Youssouf, Chairman of the African Union Commission. “We have embraced the powerful truth [that] Africa is not a passive beneficiary of climate solutions, but the actor and architect of these solutions.
The whole world was ready to reduce shipping emissions. Then Trump intervened.
The American vacuum has also allowed China to have more influence in international climate negotiations. Although Chinese leaders remained cautious and reserved in the negotiating rooms of Belém, the country pushed its agenda on one issue in particular: trade. Given that China has invested heavily in renewable energy technologies, tariffs on its products could hamper not only its own economic growth, but also the global energy transition. As a result, the final COP30 agreement, which like all other UN climate agreements is ultimately non-binding, included language stipulating that unilateral trade measures such as tariffs “should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade.”
According to Shuo, announcing the tariffs on the first page of the final COP30 decision would not have been possible if US negotiators had been present. “China has succeeded in putting this issue on the agenda,” he said.
But Shuo added that other countries still feel the gravitational pull of U.S. policies, even though the Trump administration has not participated in climate negotiations this year. In Belém last month, US opposition to the International Maritime Organization’s carbon framework influenced discussions on structuring rules to decarbonize the maritime industry. And knowing that the United States would not contribute to aid funds shaped climate finance deals.
However, in the years to come, these pressures may well ease. As the world changes course in response to America’s absence, it may find that it has more to gain than expected.
