This then leads to more pollution.
Before Trump, the US had a higher rating than China (though both were bad):
https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/usa/2024-11-13/
(Same as EU's rating: https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/eu/)
https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china/2024-09-17/
The sad reality is that unless there is uniform compliance across major countries, these talks are just climate theatre.
As far as I can tell it would be a relatively straightforward thing to measure (how else are we getting these per country reports on emissions?)
Given that, I’d expect it to become obvious if they are cheating the accords.
And as far as markets go, I believe quite strongly that’s a failure of our economic system. It fails to account for externalities appropriately. If things were priced with externalities accounted for it would change consumption patterns dramatically
Is there any evidence these aren't a fig leaf? What kind of leverage does this give countries to penalize others in the event of a broken agreement?
In the case of China, it's pushed them to make headway in the process of building a manufacturing infrastructure that is more insulated from global energy price swings. IIRC they can also power much of it more cheaply (e.g. solar has no fuel cost), which provides them with a cost advantage.
As we have repeatedly seen, there is also leverage to be had in not having one's country internally levered to global oil prices.
So it provides leverage, but not to directly penalize.
I know the USA is boycotting for a different (and a very bad) reason, but I feel like (with hindsight) it would have been a smart move for other countries to abandon this conference and demand something better.
Demand from whom? If major players decide they don't give a shit, then this is the way it is.
And China does produce and installs tons of solar panels, windparks and batteries, but they also build as much coal plants as they can. African leaders all in all seems loud to use climate change as a means to get more developement funds/compensation and that's it. The arab world gets angry if the oil output gets reduced. Then there is south america, where from what I know of personal interactions, climate change is largley a unknown term, unless it is used to somehow attack the "west".
But yes, what to expect if the richtest country does not lead by example.
This is our climate we are talking about, failure to address climate change has dire consequences. I am simply asking our leaders to act accordingly, nothing less.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't try these things, but COP has become the poster child of the failure of these kind of events.
Hopefully, or so the unstated thinking goes, it will be those poors who bear most of the brunt. Yes, many will perish or be uprooted, but humanity as a whole is nowhere near threatened with extinction.
Or, another strain of thought goes, technologies that are yet to be developed will suddenly appear to save the day...
We have technologies that can reduce our carbon emissions... and they get fought against by the people saying that they're not worried because tech will be invented that solves the problems
It's frustrating that intelligent solutions we can have now are just ignored.
The removal is what people claim some technology will magically appear to solve.
Now we have evidence which seems to suggest we have reached our first such tipping point[1], low latitude coral reef die-off. So even if we stop emitting CO2 into the atmosphere tomorrow, these corals are still going to die (most likely) and they are not coming back for at least a few centuries, meaning the CO2 which they store will be released into the atmosphere causing even further warming.
This is only the first of a more then a dozen tipping points, and since we have passed this one we are also likely to pass a couple more (Greenland Icesheet and North Atlantic conveyor), however that is not certain. And it is possible that if we take drastic action (which we 10000% should) we can (possibly) prevent other tipping points and even possibly use existing technology (like planting trees, reclaiming swamps, etc) to offset the carbon released by the dying corals.
So in short, while technically true, reducing emission to zero isn’t enough any more. We are not at a point (yet; possibly) where we can’t stop the warming with existing technology. But we must absolutely absolutely absolutely, and dear I say, absolute-effing-lutely reduce our emissions to zero, not net zero, but absolute zero, and we mast do it as fast as we can, no matter how much it costs.
1: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/10/251029002920.h...
bayesianbot•14h ago
2025 State of the Climate report[1] said (on top of other horrible things)
> A dangerous hothouse Earth trajectory may now be more likely due to accelerated warming, self-reinforcing feedbacks, and tipping points.
I haven't seen hothouse earth mentioned in mainstream papers for a long time (decade+?), as it was deemed unlikely before.
Also The German Physics Society and the German Meteorological Society issued a joint statement warning about the possibility of 3 °C warming by the 2050s[2]
I am actually angry to people that they're irresponsible enough to vote for this without caring about others, but it feels like it was such a horrible timing for all this stupidity as well.
[0] https://www.carbonbrief.org/met-office-atmospheric-co2-rise-... [1] https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1... [2] https://worldcrunch.com/focus/green-or-gone/global-warming-a...
bakql•14h ago
All the glaciers will have disappeared too by then. Pinky promise.
arprocter•10h ago
"In coordination with the requested terminations for Weather Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes (see OAR-10) and Ocean Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes (see OAR-19), NOAA will close...Mauna Loa"
webnrrd2k•7h ago
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis