As the year draws to a close, 2025 looks like a turning point in the global fight against climate change. Most notably, this was the year the US abandoned these efforts. The Trump administration withdrew from the 2015 Paris Agreement, which brings together virtually every country in the world in a voluntary commitment to stop climate change. And for the first time in the 30-year history of UN international climate negotiations, the United States did not send a delegation to the annual COP30 conference, which was held in Belem, Brazil.
The Trump administration's attacks on climate change have been far from symbolic. Over the summer, the president pressured his Republican majority in Congress to gut Biden-era law This is projected to cut U.S. emissions by about a third from their peak, putting the country within striking distance of its Paris Agreement commitments. In the fall, Trump officials used heavy-handed negotiating tactics to stall, if not completely derail, a relatively uncontroversial international plan to Decarbonize the highly polluting global shipping industry. And while no other country has played a greater role in climate change, the US under Trump has reduced the vast majority global climate aid fundingwhich is intended to help countries that are on the brink of climate change, despite the fact that they are doing virtually nothing to cause it.
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So it's no surprise that other world leaders have taken thinly veiled shots at Trump on COP30 climate talks last month. Christiana Figueres, a key architect of the 2015 Paris Agreement and a longtime Costa Rican diplomat, summed up the general sentiment.
“Hello baby! If you want to leave, leave,” she told a crowd of reporters, using an Italian phrase that translates to “bye-bye little boy.”
These dramatic changes in the US position on climate change, which President Donald Trump has called a “hoax” and a “scam”, are only the latest and most visible signs of deeper changes underway. Historically, the US and other rich, high-emitting countries have been seen as the main drivers of climate action, both because of their enormous responsibility for the crisis and the large resources at their disposal. Over the past decade, however, hopes that developed countries would prioritize funding for both the global energy transition and adaptation measures to protect the world's most vulnerable countries have been dashed—in part due to a shift to the right in domestic politics, external crises such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and uprisings among rich-country voters over cost-of-living issues.
The resulting message to developing countries was unmistakable: help is not on the way.
In the vacuum left behind, another driver of global action on climate change has emerged, not political or diplomatic, but industrial. The growing market for green technologies—primarily solar, wind, and battery storage—has made the adoption of renewable energy much faster and more cost-effective than anyone predicted. The world has far exceeded expectations In particular, solar energy production last year produced approximately 8 times more 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 its solar panels. In 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 the commitments of other countries contained in the Paris Agreement, the world is now in a state of crisis. path to vision from 2.3 to 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.1–4.5 degrees F) warming by 2100 relative to pre-industrial temperatures, much lower than the approx. Projections at 5 degrees C (9 degrees F) was expected just 10 years ago.
The policy may be seen as a symbol of global cooperation on climate change, but for the Chinese leadership the motivation is primarily economic. According to experts, this may be why they work. China's policies are largely driving the growth of renewable energy in the rest of the world. As the cost of solar panels and wind turbines falls year after year, this is allowing other countries, especially in the Global South, to choose cleaner sources of electricity instead of fossil fuels, as well as some of the world's cheapest mass-produced electric vehicles. Pakistan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. everyone expects to see a significant increase in the use of solar energy in the next few years thanks to partnerships with Chinese firms.
“China will eventually create a new ideology and become a much more important driving force in global climate action,” said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Center at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Shuo said the policy and rhetoric approach favored by rich countries to tackling climate change has proven unreliable and has largely failed. It has been replaced by a Chinese-style approach that aligns countries' economic programs with decarbonization would be more successful, he predicted.
Meanwhile, many countries began to reorganize their diplomatic and economic relations so as to no longer assume American leadership. That shift has accelerated this year, in part due to Trump's decisions to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, impose tariffs on U.S. allies and, more broadly, go into self-imposed isolation. European countries faced with harsh tariffs sought to deepen trade relations with China, JapanAnd another Asian countries. The EU's new carbon border tax, which applies to imports from outside the bloc, will come into force in January. The move was once expected to spark conflict between the EU and the US, but now act without direct support or strong opposition — from the Trump administration.
African countries are also claiming leadership. The continent hosted its own climate summit earlier this year. pledging to raise $50 billion to advance at least 1,000 local solutions in energy, agriculture, water, transport and sustainability by 2030. “The continent has shifted the conversation from crisis to opportunity, from aid to investment and from external prescriptions to governing Africa,” said Mahamoud Ali Yusuf, Chairman of the African Union Commission. “We have accepted the mighty truth [that] Africa is not a passive recipient of climate solutions, but an actor and architect of those solutions.”
The US void has also allowed China to increase its weight in international climate negotiations. While Chinese leaders remained cautious and reserved in the Belem meeting rooms, the country pushed ahead with its agenda on one issue in particular: trade. Because 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 agreement at COP30, which like all other United Nations climate agreements is ultimately non-binding, included language stipulating that unilateral trade measures such as tariffs “shall not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustified discrimination or a disguised restriction of international trade.”
Shuo said naming tariffs on the first page of the final decision at COP30 would have been impossible if U.S. representatives had been present at the talks. “China has managed to put this issue on the agenda,” he said.
But Shuo added that other countries still feel the gravitational pull of U.S. policy even though the Trump administration skipped climate talks this year. Last month in Belém, United States opposition to the International Maritime Organization's carbon framework influenced conversations about rules for structuring decarbonization of the shipping industry. And knowing that the US will not contribute to relief funds formed agreements on climate finance.
However, this pressure may well ease in the coming years. As the world changes in response to the US's absence, he may find that he can get more than expected.
