Making Sense of a Turbulent Global Climate and Clean Energy Landscape

   

 The Equation Read More 

It’s been almost 10 years since the Paris Agreement came into force in November 2016, and I don’t think any of us in the trenches of the fight for global climate action could have predicted where we find ourselves today.

The world is virtually certain to overshoot 1.5°C of warming and climate impacts are rapidly worsening everywhere. Meanwhile, the world’s largest historical emitter, the United States, under the reckless authoritarian Trump administration, has launched an all-out assault on US and global climate policies. Geopolitical tensions are running high, with the illegal war against Iran, tariff fights, and multiple humanitarian crises unfolding alongside a crushing economic toll from the fossil energy crisis ensuing from the war.

The need for a safer, more just world is more desperately clear than ever. Despite the cruel impulses of many governments and the boundless greed of the fossil fuel industry, tendrils of climate progress continue to sprout, and renewable energy expansion is now unstoppable.

Here are six major themes on my mind as I head to the upcoming UN climate meeting in Bonn, Germany which will be held June 8-18:

In January, President Trump exited the Paris Agreement for a second time, this time sinking to a new low by also ditching the bedrock UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. But the rest of the world is staying the course and continuing to engage in the UN climate talks. Progress is not easy or as rapid as needed—as we saw at COP30 in Brazil last year—but no other country has followed the U.S. for now.

In some ways, the mundane back-and-forth of climate negotiations, the preparations for COP31—billed as the ‘COP of the Future’—are an antidote to harmful pyrotechnics of the Trump administration. But we can’t let the low bar of complacency and business-as-usual serve as “good enough,” given the deepening climate crisis. Durability is crucial but the international climate system must also deliver robust results. At Bonn and in the lead-up to COP31 in Türkiye later this year, political leaders need to show genuine commitment to working through disagreements and standing up to the malign influence of fossil fuel interests to secure necessarily ambitious outcomes.

Climate change is unfolding around the world in terrifying ways. The recent extended heatwave in India and Pakistan caused numerous deaths and exposed millions of people to dangerous conditions, and is just one recent example of the perilous world created by political inaction and continued burning of polluting fossil fuels. Europe also experienced record-breaking deadly extreme heat in May. Super typhoon Sinlaku—a rare early season Cat 5-equivalent storm—exerted a deadly and costly toll in the Micronesian region of the Pacific in April.  

We are living in an era of climate-fueled drought, floods, extreme heat, intensifying storms, threats to water supplies—and all of this is happening in the context of an ongoing global hunger crisis, threatening to make it far worse. With a potentially strong El Niño predicted later this year, we could see record-breaking temperatures in 2027, changes to rainfall patterns, and further stresses on global food supplies.

Here in the U.S., the UCS team is tracking Danger Season, that time of year when climate impacts peak for people across the country. So far, we’ve already seen intense early season heatwaves, an early start to an active wildfire season, record low snowpack, and drought.

Despite the Trump administration’s attacks on renewable energy in the U.S., and its attempts to undercut progress by boosting fossil fuels, data show that globally clean energy continues to expand rapidly—and is even beginning to displace fossil fuels.

Recent reports from Ember, IRENA and the IEA show the spectacular global surge in solar power in particular—and that trend is also evident in the United States. Steep cost declines in solar and battery storage are quickly making these the new electricity resources of choice, outcompeting fossil fuels, to meet demand in many places. Encouragingly, according to the Global Clean Energy Monitor, 2025 data show that in China and India renewable energy met most of new demand and helped turn down coal generation. Solar power was also a huge contributor to meeting peak electricity demand during India’s recent heatwave.

And while the fossil energy crisis unleashed by the US-Israel war against Iran is causing some countries to make short-sighted—or, in some cases, being forced to make short-term, existential—moves toward fossil fuels, it is also reinforcing that the only smart strategy ultimately is to chart as rapid a course as possible away from the economic risks of fossil energy price volatility. Those risks are playing out in particularly crushing ways for lower income countries and those who have historically relied on liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports from currently disrupted supply chains, where people are struggling to pay for basic necessities, including food and energy. But the energy affordability challenges are global—and in the U.S. being actively worsened by additional Trump administration actions. High fertilizer prices, triggered by the war’s upheaval of the fossil energy-related supply chain, are also exacting a steep toll on farmers and contributing to higher food prices.

A recent bright spot has been the resurgence in explicit demands for a global transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy—evident at the April Santa Marta conference, and high on the agenda at the upcoming UNFCCC meeting in Bonn. Fenceline communities who bear the burden of pollution from fossil fuels and fossil fuel infrastructure, and climate advocates, have long called for a fast, fair, funded fossil fuel phaseout. After securing a win by getting language on a transition away from fossil fuels into the final agreement at COP 28, it had since seemed as if policymakers were once again falling into the thrall of the fossil fuel industry and resisting any real action.

That all changed at COP30 in Brazil last November, where this issue quickly rose to the top of the agenda. Although the overall final outcome was disappointing, civil society pressure did succeed in securing a just transition mechanism. And the frustrations that boiled over in Belém have led to a renewed focus on practical ways countries can turn down fossil fuels, turn up renewables and ensure the economic and public health benefits of that transition accrue to all communities including those that have been historically marginalized.

There are continued deliberations within the UNFCCC through a process initiated by COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago to create a Roadmap for Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in a Just, Orderly and Equitable Manner. At Bonn, we expect to hear more insights from a process to solicit input from all parties on this and potential options for an agreement at COP31. And countries at the Santa Marta conference have announced a second conference in Tuvalu (jointly hosted by Tuvalu and Ireland) next year.

A new report from IRENA also points out the infrastructure and technology shifts that will be needed for such a transition: Rapid electrification and renewable deployment will require major expansion of grids, storage and system flexibility, alongside stronger system integration and strategic planning for the phase-out of fossil fuel infrastructure.

The authoritarian anti-science Trump administration continues to double down on its attacks on federally funded climate science, scientific agencies, staffing, data and resources—including attacks on NOAA and NCAR.

UCS is fighting back hard against the Trump administration’s attacks on science, alongside many others in the scientific community.

The administration is also steadily defunding investments in scientific research at universities and other research institutions. A recent proposal from the administration would put political appointees in charge of making all decisions on federally funded scientific research, completely undermining scientific integrity. The Trump administration has also abandoned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and is trying to prevent US federal scientists from collaborating with their international peers. Across the administration, spewing lies and propaganda about science is now the norm. Their climate science disinformation echoes talking points and tactics that the fossil fuel industry has long propagated.

These actions are chilling for US-based scientists and they’re having a real impact on the US climate science enterprise, long considered the crown jewel of the global ecosystem. Scientists around the world are alarmed at this rapid erosion of US climate science. Agencies like the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and others are continuing to step up and meet the needs of the hour but it’s not easy—or even possible—to fill the gap completely.

This dire situation is also underscoring that a truly resilient global scientific enterprise that serves the needs of people all over the world requires collaborative, distributed, well-funded science without borders.

A recent WMO bulletin on the El Niño is just one illustrative example. The credits say: The WMO El Niño/La Niña Update is prepared through a collaborative effort between the WMO and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), USA, and is based on contributions from experts worldwide, inter alia, of the following institutions: Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), Centro Internacional para la Investigación del Fenómeno El Niño (CIIFEN), China Meteorological Administration (CMA), Climate Prediction Centre (CPC) and Pacific ENSO Applications Climate (PEAC) Services of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States of America (USA), European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Météo-France, India Meteorological Department (IMD), Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), International Monsoons Project Office (IMPO), Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA), Met Office of the United Kingdom, Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS), WMO Global Producing Centres of Seasonal Prediction (GPCs-SP) including the Lead Centre for Seasonal Prediction Multi-Model Ensemble (LC-SPMME).

Isn’t that a beautiful exemplar of what global scientific collaboration should look like?

To make the transition to a climate-resilient world powered by clean energy, we’ll need to redirect trillions of dollars away from fossil energy to clean energy. And as climate impacts accelerate, there’s an urgent need for climate adaptation funding, which has been sorely neglected for too long. Lower income nations—where billions of people are on the frontlines of acute loss and damage from climate impacts and millions still do not have access to modern forms of energy—cannot make the transition to clean energy and climate resilience without funding from richer nations most responsible for climate change. This is not charity, it is justice. And it is the only practical way to advance rapid progress globally.

Richer nations have long fallen short on their climate finance obligations. And now, unfortunately, the Trump administration’s gutting of USAID and other internationally focused programs and budgets has led to deep cuts in investments in global development and health across the board, including investments to advance climate resilience and clean energy. Other countries too, including the UK and some European nations, are reneging on their climate finance commitments. This couldn’t be happening at a worse time for lower income countries punished by high energy prices and worsening climate impacts.

Climate finance must be a key metric for how international climate action is evaluated. And for climate advocates in the Global North, it’s crucial to elevate this priority domestically and put pressure on their policymakers to deliver robust finance, alongside demands for reductions in heat-trapping emissions and a transition away from fossil fuels.

The Trump administration’s hostile upending of global norms is intersecting with long-term economic and political trends to create a turbulent geopolitical reality now—AND it is also accelerating the emergence of a multipolar world order, with new risks and opportunities.

Regardless of what happens under future U.S. administrations, the world has learned (repeatedly) that the United States can be an unreliable partner. That loss of credibility is sobering, especially since the U.S. is the largest historical contributor to heat-trapping emissions and the world’s richest nation. But it also leaves room for progress to emerge from new spaces, with new alliances and different imperatives to embrace climate action.

At the forthcoming climate negotiations in Bonn, countries must lay the groundwork for real progress at COP31—grounded in the latest climate science and climate justice—including on cutting emissions, transitioning away from fossil fuels, advancing climate resilience, and unlocking climate finance.

Today’s dark realities, while undeniable, cannot obscure real progress that is still happening against all odds. And they cannot make us lose sight of that better, brighter world that people and the planet need.