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Climate change: Why 2025 is a do-or-die year for climate action
Summary
Climate change is intensifying even as a climate denier takes charge as US president. In 2025, the choice between catastrophe and prosperity could not be higher
Donald Trump withdrawing the US from the Paris climate accords was a decision foretold. Trump has never been shy of airing his deep climate denialism, so it was clear as soon as the US presidential results were announced last November that the US would give up on climate action. However, just withdrawing from the UN process is one thing. What is equally worrying is the fact that several key US climate institutions—from NASA to the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—might well be forced to curtail their work.
As many analysts have pointed out, the nature of US federalism means that many progressive (and wealthy) US states—such as California—can continue to be a part of the global climate alliance, but without the presence of the US as a nation, the advantages are limited. In fact, I would go as far as to say that with the Trump dispensation, the global fight against climate change has entered a period of serious destabilization.
Why is this a possible scenario? The next four years of Trump are going to coincide with a crucial make-or-break period which will determine whether humanity succeeds or fails in keeping global heating to within a rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius (above pre-industrial levels), by 2100. Failure to do so would be catastrophic, not just in the distant future, but also in the near term, perhaps as early as the 2040s.
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This year, before the beginning of the annual UN climate summit (COP30) in Belem, Brazil, in November, member nations of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) must submit their climate mitigation plans for the decade leading up to 2035. Called the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), it involves a ratcheting up of climate commitments, including slashing national dependencies on fossil fuels. A combination of increased ambition from all nations will shape how soon the world transitions away from oil, coal and gas.
The US is the world’s second largest emitter of planet-heating greenhouse gases (GHG) and is the largest historical emitter as well. As a result, the onus is greater to make deeper cuts in its fossil fuel consumption. Indeed, just before Trump’s inauguration, the Joe Biden administration had filed new plans under the Paris agreement: cut GHGs by 61-66% from 2005 levels by 2035, a big step towards achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. That plan has been scrapped by Trump, and under the new administration, the US will, as Trump puts it, “drill baby drill", to increase its oil and gas production.
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Over the course of the year, other countries will have to recalibrate their own positions in light of the abdication of responsibility by the US. As reported in the Hindustan Timeslast week, some experts are wary that the US decision to withdraw may cause a loss of confidence in the UN’s multilateral process. For poorer nations, which have largely contributed next to nothing to cause the climate crisis, and yet are suffering disproportionately from climate impacts, the US is a “disgrace".
“The United States is mostly the origin, deepening, and perpetuation of the global climate crisis. In recent years, it has consistently failed to fulfil its commitments…and undermined the potential impact of the Paris Agreement. While remaining a part of it, the US persistently attacked it, and now it is withdrawing for the second time. This is the greatest expression of hypocrisy and global disgrace," Bolivia’s lead climate negotiator Diego Pacheco told Hindustan Times.
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Much will depend on the political signaling from China and the European Union this year, and we will likely see a watershed moment at COP30. The struggle is this: will the overlapping groupings of petro-states, climate deniers and the US succeed in derailing meaningful climate action for another decade? In a world where online misinformation is rife, and likely to get worse because of the anti-regulatory actions of Meta and X, this is looking increasingly likely. If this does indeed come to pass, then the results will be catastrophic.
It is quite ironic that this year marks a decade since the landmark Paris agreement. Much of the promise of that accord has been frittered away, especially between 2018-2022, when the global momentum for action was arguably at its highest, multilateralism still had legs and climate impacts like regular wildfires and cyclones were just starting to bite.
We may well look back at the past ten years as a lost decade. While there have been massive strides in the area of renewable energy, what has been lacking has been political will. And while it was still possible to shame the highest emitters into changing their tune, this will get increasingly harder. All that has changed, and we can expect climate denialism to become even more strident now.
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One development that has mostly flown under the radar over the past year is how the biggest players in the global banking system have been pulling out of climate pledges. This has only escalated in the period leading up to Trump’s inauguration, as six of the biggest US banks—Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Wells Fargo & Co—pulled out of the international Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). And this has, in part, been due to increasing pressure from Republican politicians and state attorneys to stop banks from withholding financing for oil and gas companies.
So, as we come to the end of the first month of 2025, the climate picture looks pretty bleak. Ever since the Paris agreement, climate scientists have time and again given updates on how the time for meaningful action has been shrinking. But after years of drift, we are now faced with a situation where even the small gains that have been made may be reversed.
