US skips COP30 climate conference, lobbies to sink new global deals

No other countries have followed the United States in withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, but the Trump administration is using a mix of lobbying and economic threats to thwart emissions-cutting and environmental initiatives around the world.

It helped sink global talks on an ambitious plastics treaty. It has pressed Europe to abandon some of its green policies. And after intense campaigning last month, it derailed an agreement to curb pollution from international shipping.

Trump administration officials say they are fighting policies that would raise costs for consumers or hurt American industry.

“President Trump will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries,” Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement.

The U.S. won’t be sending a high-level delegation to the annual global climate change conference — known this year as COP30 — which officially opens in Belém, Brazil, on Monday. But it will still influence the global climate trajectory, as the world’s largest historical emitter tries to convince other nations that environmental and clean energy goals aren’t worth pursuing.

“They are actively obstructing progress on climate, and that’s very significant,” said Niklas Höhne, who tracks global climate policy and is the co-founder of the NewClimate Institute in Germany. “Because the international system is all about cooperation.”

Many experts say the U.S. approach will run into some fundamental barriers. While Trump describes climate change as a “con job,” most world leaders still recognize the science that shows otherwise — and are steering their economies to cleaner energy after dramatic price drops in solar and wind.

Columbian President Gustavo Petro gave voice to that sentiment on Thursday, at the leaders’ summit that preceded COP30.

“Mr. Donald Trump isn’t coming. He’s behaving in a way that denies science, and he’s leading his society with eyes closed into the abyss and, with it, humanity,” Petro said. “Mr. Trump is wrong. Science illuminates the collapse if the United States doesn’t move toward decarbonizing its own economy.”

He suggested circumventing Trump and instead making deals with major U.S. states.

The U.S. government could succeed in “slowing down the shift to clean energy, [but] not in any way stopping the shift to clean energy,” said Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Still, some politicians could be open to the administration’s message. Compared with Trump’s first term, the world is far more fragmented in its approach to climate change.

“Ten years ago, the world came together in Paris united in our determination to tackle the climate crisis. A consensus that was based on science that is unequivocal,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in Brazil on Thursday. “Today, sadly, that consensus is gone.”

Corporations have retreated from sustainability pledges, and politicians regularly frame the energy transition as a threat to jobs and wealth. Artificial intelligence-driven energy growth has fueled the argument that energy abundance matters more than cutting emissions.

In addition, few countries want to risk the ire of the world’s largest economy — or provoke a president with a social media megaphone.

The clearest example of how the U.S. can leverage its power came last month, as countries met in London for a landmark deal that would have required ships traversing international waters to cut emissions or pay a fee. Adoption looked certain; International Maritime Organization (IMO) members had agreed to the draft in April.

But then the Trump administration went on the offensive, vowing to “fight, block and tackle” to stop the measure, said Michael Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Trump Cabinet members issued a remarkable set of threats to nations that might support the pact, included blocking their vessels from U.S. ports, visa restrictions, and sanctions on individual officials. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said he called about 20 countries to apply pressure. Then he drafted a social media post for Trump — which the president shared with a light edit — decrying the “scam tax” and pledging, “The United States will NOT stand for this.”

Saudi Arabia tabled a motion to postpone talks for a year, and the work to rein in an industry responsible for 3% of global emissions was shelved.

Wright called the outcome at the IMO “a pivot point in this whole climate nonsense.”

“We want to bring our arguments to our opponents,” he said, speaking at an energy summit on Oct. 22 hosted by the America First Policy Institute, a think tank aligned with Trump. “We’re going to come back to realistic views on energy, and President Trump is just all-in on American energy dominance. That’s a win not just for America, that’s a win for the world.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island), the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the administration used “a shock-and-awe thuggery approach that was effective.” He said the White House has become “indisputably” more aggressive on global climate issues, compared with Trump’s first term, and is captured “by the most extreme elements.”

“There is no such thing as negotiating with these people,” he said. “You have to be willing to resist.”

The U.S. hasn’t engaged on all climate and environmental issues. For instance, it skipped a summit on ocean protection and conservation and a conference on the financing of sustainable development.

As a general rule, though, the U.S. has stepped forward in matters involving fossil fuels.

That is what happened over the summer in Geneva, when 20 State Department employees showed up at plastic treaty talks with a clear red line: They’d oppose any limits on plastics production — in which fossil fuels are an essential component.

An agreement on plastics would have been the most important environmental treaty in a decade. But many nations argued that any worthwhile pact would need to rein in the growing volume of plastic production, rather than just focusing on better waste management.

After 11 tense days, the consensus-based talks hit an impasse. One negotiator from Tuvalu criticized the United States’ unprecedented “intransigence.”

Washington has also pushed for its fossil fuel interests in bilateral talks, including with India, which agreed in February to increase energy trade with the United States.

The European Union made a more specific pledge in a July trade deal, agreeing to purchase $750 billion in U.S. fossil fuels and nuclear products through 2028.

Now the U.S. is pressuring the EU to repeal or weaken regulations that would require corporations to address environmental and human rights issues in their supply chains. In October, Wright and the Qatari energy minister issued a joint letter to the EU, saying the requirements would “disrupt trade and investments” and detailing article-by-article concerns. The letter specifically mentioned the risks to liquid natural gas supply.

The EU hasn’t directly responded, but the critique plays into anxieties that were already emerging within the bloc.

“There is a risk that the Europeans look like they are bossed around by the U.S.,” even if they are just addressing internal concerns, said Linda Kalcher, a former U.N. climate adviser and the founder of Strategic Perspectives, a Brussels-based climate policy group. “Certainly, this Trump administration is more assertive and targeted against any negotiations or policies that would lower the demand for fossil fuels.”

While the U.S. stance could further weaken the cohesion of the global system, it could also open new opportunities for other countries — especially China, which dominates the clean energy industry.

“The U.S. is really an outlier in its position,” said Nikki Reisch, director of the climate and energy program at the Center for International Environmental Law. “The U.S. is ceding global leadership.”

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• Jake Spring contributed.