As the year comes to a close, 2025 looks like a turning point in the world’s fight against climate change. Most conspicuously, it was the year the U.S. abandoned the effort. The Trump administration pulled out of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which unites virtually all the world’s countries in a voluntary commitment to halt climate change. And for the first time in the 30-year history of the U.N.’s international climate talks, the U.S. did not send a delegation to the annual conference, COP30, which took place in Belém, Brazil.

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The Trump administration’s assault on climate action has been far from symbolic. Over the summer, the president pressed his Republican majority in Congress to gut a Biden-era law that was projected to cut U.S. emissions by roughly a third compared to their peak, putting the country within reach of its Paris Agreement commitments. In the fall, Trump officials used hardball negotiating tactics to stall, if not outright derail, a relatively uncontroversial international plan to decarbonize the heavily polluting global shipping industry. And even though no other country has played a larger role in causing climate change, the U.S. under Trump has cut the vast majority of global climate aid funding, which is intended to help countries that are in the crosshairs of climate change despite doing virtually nothing to cause it.

It may come as no surprise, then, that other world leaders took barely veiled swipes at Trump at the COP30 climate talks last month. Christiana Figueres, a key architect of the 2015 Paris Agreement and a longtime Costa Rican diplomat, summed up a common sentiment.

“Ciao, bambino! You want to leave, leave,” she said before a crowd of reporters, using an Italian phrase that translates “bye-bye, little boy.”

These stark shifts in the U.S. position on climate change, which President Donald Trump has called a “hoax” and “con job,” are only the latest and most visible signs of a deeper shift underway. Historically, the U.S. and other wealthy, high-emitting nations have been cast as the primary drivers of climate action, both because of their outsize responsibility for the crisis and because of the greater resources at their disposal. Over the past decade, however, the hopes that developed countries will prioritize financing both the global energy transition and adaptation measures to protect the world’s most vulnerable countries have been dashed — in part by rightward lurches in domestic politics, external crises like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and revolts by wealthy-country voters over cost-of-living concerns.

The resulting message to developing countries has been unmistakable: Help is not on the way.

In the vacuum left behind, a different engine of global climate action has emerged, one not political or diplomatic but industrial. A growing marketplace of green technologies — primarily solar, wind, and batteries — has made the adoption of renewable energy far faster and more cost-effective than almost anyone predicted. The world has dramatically exceeded expectations for solar power generation in particular, producing roughly 8 times more last year 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 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 Chinese-led global energy market changes and other countries’ Paris Agreement pledges, the world is now on a path to see 2.3 to 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.1 to 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming by 2100, compared to preindustrial temperatures, far lower than the roughly 5 degrees C (9 degrees F) projections expected just 10 years ago.

These policies can be viewed as a symbol of global cooperation on climate change, but for Chinese leadership, the motivation is primarily economic. That, experts say, may be why they’re working. China’s policies are driving much of the rest of the world’s renewable energy growth. As the cost of solar panels and wind turbines drops year over year, it is enabling other countries, especially in the Global South, to choose cleaner sources of electricity over fossil fuels — and also to purchase some of the world’s cheapest mass-produced electric vehicles. Pakistan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia are all expected to see massive increases in solar deployment in the next few years, thanks to their partnerships with Chinese firms.

“China is going to, over time, create a new narrative and be a much more important driver for global climate action,” said Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Shuo said that the politics-and-rhetoric-driven approach to solving climate change favored by wealthy countries has proved unreliable and largely failed. In its place, a Chinese-style approach that aligns countries’ economic agendas with decarbonization will prove to be more successful, he predicted.

Meanwhile, many countries have begun reorganizing their diplomatic and economic relationships in ways that no longer assume American leadership. That shift accelerated this year in part due to Trump’s decisions to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, to impose tariffs on U.S. allies, and more broadly, to slink away into self-imposed isolation. European countries facing punishing tariffs have looked to deepen trade relationships with China, Japan, and other Asian countries. The EU’s new carbon border tax, which applies levies to imports from outside the bloc, will take effect in January. The move was once expected to trigger conflict between the EU and U.S., but is now proceeding without outright support — or strong opposition — from the Trump administration.

African countries, too, are asserting leadership. The continent hosted its own climate summit earlier this year, pledging to raise $50 billion to promote at least 1,000 locally led solutions in energy, agriculture, water, transport, and resilience by 2030. “The continent has moved the conversation from crisis to opportunity, from aid to investment, and from external prescription to African-led,” said Mahamoud Ali Youssouf, chairperson of the African Union Commission. “We have embraced the powerful truth [that] Africa is not a passive recipient of climate solutions, but the actor and architect of these solutions.”

The U.S. void has also allowed China to throw more weight around in international climate negotiations. Although Chinese leadership remained cautious and reserved in the negotiation halls in Belém, the country pushed its agenda on one issue in particular: trade. Since China has invested heavily in renewable energy technology, tariffs on its products could hinder not only its own economic growth but also the world’s 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 like tariffs “should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade.”

Calling out tariffs on the first page of the final decision at COP30 would not have been possible if negotiators for the United States had been present, according to Shuo. “China was able to force this issue on the agenda,” he said.

But Shuo added that other countries are still feeling the gravitational pull of U.S. policies, even as the Trump administration sat out climate talks this year. In Belém last month, the United States’ opposition to the International Maritime Organization’s carbon framework influenced conversations about structuring rules for decarbonizing the shipping industry. And knowing that the U.S. wouldn’t contribute to aid funds shaped climate finance agreements.

In the years to come, though, those pressures may very well fade. As the world pivots in response to a U.S. absence, it may find it has more to gain than expected.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/international/2025-trump-climate-change-paris-agreement-china/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

It’s the end of the year, and so one should be compiling ten-best lists.

And I turned 65 last week, having spent almost my entire adult life in the climate fight, so it’s one of those moments when I wish I could look back with a certain amount of satisfaction.

But since I owe you honesty, not exuberance, just at the moment I can’t provide much celebration. I was hopeful this column might be about a big victory — on Wednesday the board that controls New York City’s pension funds was considering whether or not to pull tens of billions from Blackrock because of the investment giant’s climate waffling, which would have been a massive display of courage. Sadly, City Comptroller Brad Lander hadn’t gotten the measure on the agenda before the final meeting of his term, and he seems to have run out of time and political juice — the idea was tabled.

And so we’re left staring at a pile of recent defeats, at least in this country (which is an important qualification). I’ll try to end in a more hopeful place, but I fear you’re going to have to work through my angst with me for a few minutes.

The most traumatic item is the Trump administration’s decision to shut down the National Center for Atmospheric Research, born like me in 1960. It was a product of that era’s faith in science, a faith that paid off spectacularly. Take weather forecasting. As Nature reported Wednesday:

Work at NCAR played a key part in the rise of modern weather and climate forecasting. For instance, the lab pioneered the modern dropwindsonde, a weather instrument that can be released from an aircraft to measure conditions as it plummets through a storm. The technology reshaped the scientific understanding of hurricanes, says James Franklin, an atmospheric scientist and former branch chief of the hurricane specialist unit at the US National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida.

But its most historically significant work has been in understanding the dimensions of the ongoing climate crisis. Nature again:

On the global scale, NCAR is known for its climate-modelling work, including the world-leading models that underpin international assessments such as those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).Hundreds of scientists pass through NCAR’s doors each year to collaborate with its researchers. More than 800 people are employed at NCAR, most of whom work at the centre’s three campuses in Boulder, including the iconic Mesa Lab that sits at the base of jagged mountain peaks and was designed by architect I. M. Pei.

There’s no question about why the administration is doing what it’s doing. Project 2025 enforcer Russell Vought explained it quite succinctly — NCAR must go because it is “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.” This is stupid — it’s like closing the fire department because it’s a source of “fire alarmism” — but it’s by now an entirely recognizable form of stupid. And it’s also sly: It’s like spraypainting over the surveillance cameras so you can rob the bank without anyone watching. But of course nothing changes with the underlying physics. Indeed, as the announcement came down, NCAR was closed for the day because:

the local electrical company planned to cut electricity preemptively to reduce wildfire risk as fierce winds were forecast around Boulder. In 2021, a wildfire ignited just kilometres from NCAR; fuelled by powerful winds, it ripped through suburban homes, killing two people. Many researchers say this is a new normal of increased fire risk in an era of climate change—a topic of study at NCAR.

I am glad people are rallying to fight — there was an emergency press conference Thursday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, where many of the world’s Earth scientists are gathered. Third Act Colorado is working with Indivisible on a weekend rally. This is the scientific equivalent of tearing down the East Wing of the White House, and given the moment a lot more significant.

But I’m saddened to see how little our representatives in D.C. seem to really care, even the Democratic ones. Sixteen Democratic Senators voted Thursday to confirm President Donald Trump (and Elon Musk’s) nominee to head NASA, even though, as Brad Johnson pointed out in his Hill Heat newsletter, the administration is trying to slash science research at the agency in half.

The new head, Jared Isaacman, is clearly on board. As he wrote this spring, “Take NASA out of the taxpayer funded climate science business and leave it for academia to determine.” But of course the administration is wrecking that too — they cut off the funding for the gold standard climate research program at Princeton on the grounds that it was “contributing to a phenomenon known as ‘climate anxiety,’ which has increased significantly among America’s youth.”

Too many Democratic leaders are feeling comfortable waving off climate concerns, because of a feeling that it might be a political problem for them. That was exemplified Thursday morning in the New York Times when center-right pundit Matt Yglesias issued a strident call for liberals to “support America’s oil and gas industry.”

That he did it hours after that oil and gas industry won its fight to shutter climate research was probably coincidental, but the piece was a woebegone recycling of decades-old bad-faith arguments from a person who has insisted repeatedly that climate change is not an existential risk. Yglesias wants us to follow Obama-era “all of the above” energy policies even though they date from 15 years ago, when clean energy was more expensive than dirty, and long before we had the batteries that could make solar and wind fully useful. It’s no longer a good argument, but he has not changed his tune one iota — he keeps invoking Barack Obama, as if what was passable policy in 2008 still made sense.

The centerpiece of his argument is that we should support the gas industry because at least it produces less carbon than coal.

It is much cleaner than coal, consumption of which is still high and rising globally. Increased gas production, by displacing coal, has been the single largest driver of American emissions reductions over time. To the extent that foreign countries can be persuaded to rely on American gas exports rather than coal to fill the gaps left by the ongoing build-out of intermittent wind and solar that’s a climate win.

By now anyone following this debate knows that this is a mendacious point. That’s because the switch to gas has reduced American carbon emissions at the cost of increasing American methane emissions. Those who, like Yglesias, followed last year’s debate over pausing permitting for liquefied natural gas export terminals know that the crucial point was the science showing that in fact American LNG exports were worse than coal. The job is to get others to switch to solar, not coal — and that’s happening everywhere except the US, whose appetite for the stuff is apparently the thing still driving up global consumption even as demand drops in China and India.

Having written many many op-eds for the Times, I know that they fact-check things like the methane numbers; this should not have eluded them, but in fairness it’s eluded Democrats for decades, because gas has been such a convenient out for those unwilling to stand up to Big Oil. If I sound sore here, it’s because I’ve tried and failed to get this basic point of physics across; it’s just technical enough that senators often forget it, but ostensibly serious people like Yglesias should at least grapple with it.

All of this comes on the 10th anniversary of the Paris climate talks — and 10th anniversary of the Congress and (Democratic) president approving the resumption of US oil exports. I celebrated my 55th in Paris, and I remember being hunched over a laptop at a cafe writing what I think may have been the only op-ed opposing that resumption. As I said at the time:

It’s especially galling that Senate leaders — Republicans and Democrats — are apparently talking about trading this gift to Exxon and its ilk for tax breaks for wind and solar providers. It’s hard to imagine a better illustration of politicians who simply don’t understand the physics of climate change. We don’t need more of all kinds of energy—we need more of the clean stuff and way, way less of the dirty. Physics doesn’t do backroom deals.

And indeed the senators who said it was no big deal were wrong. America is, as Tony Dutzik pointed out this week, now the biggest oil exporter on Earth. He lays out the case nicely:

“There is currently little if any incentive for US oil producers to export crude oil even if the ban is lifted,” wrote Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations, for example, in December 2015.A decade later, those breezy assessments have proven to be wildly off-base. “The United States produces more crude oil than any country, ever,” reads a 2024 headline from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), one of the agencies that got it wrong. Not only did lifting the crude export ban lead to a surge in oil production, but it also dramatically reshaped the global energy system, US politics, and greenhouse gas emissions.

So, anyway, feeling a little sad. But I do think this is a low point, because I think around the rest of the world, where Trump (and pundits like Yglesias) have marginally less sway, things are continuing to break the right way. In fact, this week the premier journal Science picked its scientific “Breakthrough of the Year” and it turned out to be not some fascinating if arcane new discovery, but instead the prosaic but powerful spread of renewable energy around the planet:

This year, renewables surpassed coal as a source of electricity worldwide, and solar and wind energy grew fast enough to cover the entire increase in global electricity use from January to June, according to energy think tank Ember. In September, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared at the United Nations that his country will cut its carbon emissions by as much as 10% in a decade, not by using less energy, but by doubling down on wind and solar. And solar panel imports in Africa and South Asia have soared, as people in those regions realized rooftop solar can cheaply power lights, cellphones, and fans. To many, the continued growth of renewables now seems unstoppable—a prospect that has led Science to name the renewable energy surge its 2025 Breakthrough of the Year.The tsunami of tech spilling from China’s factories has changed the country’s energy landscape—and its physical one, too. For decades China’s development was synonymous with coal, which produced choking air pollution and massive carbon emissions, still greater than those of all other developed nations combined. Now, solar panels carpet deserts and the high, sunstruck plateau of Tibet, and wind turbines up to 300 meters tall guard coastlines and hilltops (see photo essay, below). China’s solar power generation grew more than 20-fold over the past decade, and its solar and wind farms now have enough capacity to power the entire United States.
China’s burgeoning exports of green tech are transforming the rest of the world, too. Europe is a longtime customer, but countries in the Global South are also rushing to buy China’s solar panels, batteries, and wind turbines, spurred by market forces and a desire for energy independence. In Pakistan, for example, imports of Chinese solar panels grew fivefold from 2022 to ‘24 as the Ukraine war pushed up natural gas prices and the cost of grid power. “For people who were asking, ‘How am I going to keep the lights on in my home,’ it was a very obvious choice,” says Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. In South Africa, old and unreliable coal plants drove a similar dynamic. Ethiopia has embraced solar and wind amid worries that hydropower, the country’s mainstay, will decline as droughts become more frequent.

That’s the fight as we head into 2026. Trump and Big Oil have had the run of things this year, but their idiocy is pushing up against limits: Among other things, it turns out that permitting every data center imaginable while cutting off the supply of cheap sun and wind is sending energy prices through the roof, which may be a real issue as midterms loom.

I’m not retiring — I’m here for the fight, and you too I hope.

Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and co-founder of 350.org and ThirdAct.org. His most recent book is "Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?." He also authored "The End of Nature," "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet," and "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future."

The cost-of-living has emerged as one of the biggest political headwinds facing Donald Trump in his second term, and according to a report from ABC News, his leadership has sent one particular cost soaring that will hit close to home, literally, for many: energy bills.

Citing new findings from a Democrat-aligned climate advocacy group, Climate Power, ABC News on Monday reported that energy bills across the US have increased by 13 percent since Trump returned to the White House in January. This analysis was based on data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The report laid the blame for this increase on a few factors, primarily citing Trump's "One Big Beautiful" federal funding bill, which he signed into law over the summer. According to Climate Power, this bill is "driving up utility costs and destroying jobs by removing cheaper, cleaner energy sources from the grid, all while funding new tax breaks for the oil and gas industries."

The report also estimated that, due to the new energy projects cut or delayed since Trump's return to the presidency, the US has lost out on 24,958.5 megawatts of planned energy generation. Trump's policies have notably targeted green energy projects, scaling them down significantly or eliminating them outright.

This loss of energy serves to exacerbate another issue driving up costs, according to Climate Power: the proliferation of power-hungry AI data centers. David Spence, a professor of energy law and regulation at the University of Texas, explained to ABC News that demand for energy is ballooning in 2025, and outpacing production "by a lot."

"We're just not able to bring new supply on as quickly as demand is growing, and that's driving prices up," Spence said.

The Trump administration has claimed, contrary to available evidence, that green energy sources drive up the cost of electricity prices. In fact, many green energy sources at a sufficient scale can produce notably cheap energy, with Australia set to offer homes three hours of free power a day thanks to a surplus of solar energy.

Trump has also claimed for years that wind power turbines cause cancer rates to increase in areas where they are built, and increase whale deaths when built offshore, despite no studies finding a credible link for either claim. A BBC News report indicated that Trump's opposition to wind turbines might have originated when 11 of them were constructed off the coast of his golf course in Scotland, a change in the coastal view he decried as "ugly."

I’ve been a vegetarian for over a decade. It’s not because of my health, or because I dislike the taste of chicken or beef: It’s a lifestyle choice I made because I wanted to reduce my impact on the planet. And yet, twice a day, every day, I lovingly scoop a cup of meat-based kibble into a bowl and set it down for my 50-pound rescue dog, a husky mix named Loki.

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Until recently, I hadn’t devoted a huge amount of thought to that paradox. Then I read an article in the Associated Press headlined “People often miscalculate climate choices, a study says. One surprise is owning a dog.”

The study, led by environmental psychology researcher Danielle Goldwert and published in the journal PNAS Nexus, examined how people perceive the climate impact of various behaviors — options like “adopt a vegan diet for at least one year,” or “shift from fossil fuel car to renewable public transport.” The team found that participants generally overestimated a number of low-impact actions like recycling and using efficient appliances, and they vastly underestimated the impact of other personal decisions, including the decision to “not purchase or adopt a dog.”

The real objective of the study was to see whether certain types of climate information could help people commit to more effective actions. But mere hours after the AP published its article, its aim had been recast as something else entirely: an attack on people’s furry family members. “Climate change is actually your fault because you have a dog,” one Reddit user wrote. Others in the community chimed in with ire, ridiculing the idea that a pet Chihuahua could be driving the climate crisis and calling on researchers and the media to stop pointing fingers at everyday individuals.

Goldwert and her fellow researchers watched the reactions unfold with dismay. “If I saw a headline that said, ‘Climate scientists want to take your dogs away,’ I would also feel upset,” she said. “They definitely don’t,” she added. “You can quote me on that.”

The study set out to understand how to shift behavior by communicating climate truths. Instead, its media coverage revealed a troubling psychological trade-off: When climate-related messaging strikes a nerve, it may actually turn people off from the work of shifting societal norms.

It’s an instinct I understand on some level. I love Loki, and my knee-jerk reaction is to defend the very personal choice of sharing one’s life with a dog. I also sympathize with redirecting the blame toward the biggest polluters: billionaires and fossil fuel companies (not Bon-Bon, the pet Chihuahua in question). But is it irresponsible to shrug off any conversation about the environmental impact of our pets — something far more within our control than, say, the overthrow of capitalism?

Is there a way to have a frank discussion about the climate impact of our personal lives without it going to the dogs?

Oftentimes, when I’m questioning how a particular climate behavior might fit into my life, I try to imagine how it looks in my vision of a sustainable future. It’s why, for instance, I don’t own a car and am dedicated to riding public transit, even though it isn’t always super convenient. I’m keen to be an early adopter of systems I believe in. But I struggle to imagine a future without companion animals, even knowing about their environmental impact — which is admittedly substantial.

Dogs and cats eat meat-heavy diets, which is where the bulk of their carbon pawprint comes from. A 2017 study from UCLA found that dogs and cats are responsible for about 25 to 30 percent of the environmental impact of meat consumption in the United States. That’s equivalent to a year’s worth of driving by 13.6 million cars. For pets that eat traditional kibble or wet food, that protein may come from meat byproducts — otherwise-wasted animal parts, such as organs and bones, not approved for human consumption. But an increasing number of pet owners are opting to feed their fur babies “human-grade” meat products, which requires additional resources and generates extra emissions.

After they eat, of course, they poop. A lot. At least for dogs, that poop typically gets bagged in plastic and sent to the landfill. And it turns out all the biodegradable poop bags I’ve diligently bought over the years don’t help matters much; they also release greenhouse gases in landfills, and most composting programs don’t accept pet waste.

With more dogs around than ever before — the U.S. dog population has steadily increased from 52.9 million in 1996 to a new peak of 89.7 million in 2024 — their overall climate toll is more than a Chihuahua-sized issue. But pets are also more than just sources of carbon pollution. According to a 2023 Pew Research poll, 97 percent of owners say they consider their pets to be part of their families, with 51 percent of respondents saying they are on the same level as a human family member. So whenever their climate impact crops up in the discourse, as it has periodically, it makes sense that people tend to get defensive.

For some climate advocates, the solution has been to shift messaging away from individual responsibility and focus instead on big, systemic changes like overhauling our electricity and transit systems through governmental investment in clean energy. In her essay “I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle,” author and podcaster Mary Annaïse Heglar wrote: “The belief that this enormous, existential problem could have been fixed if all of us had just tweaked our consumptive habits is not only preposterous; it’s dangerous … It’s victim blaming, plain and simple.”

Heglar and others have taken a strong stance against environmental purity — the idea that you can’t care about or advocate for systems-level change if you aren’t first changing your own habits. But not everyone agrees that individual actions should be completely deemphasized in the climate conversation. Kimberly Nicholas, a climate scientist and author of the popular book Under the Sky We Make, has argued that wealthy people living in wealthy countries — and globally, “wealthy” is a lower bar than you might think — do have a responsibility to slash their outsize carbon emissions. And particularly for those of us living in democracies, personal action isn’t just about the choices we make as consumers.

“There’s still an ongoing tension between personal and system change, or individual and collective action,” Nicholas said. “It’s really hard to get that right — to get the right balance there that acknowledges the role and the importance of both, and to talk about and study and describe both in a way that motivates people to take high-impact actions.”

Goldwert saw that tension play out in her maligned climate communications study. In the experiment, participants reviewed 21 individual climate actions (like eating less meat) and five systemic actions (like voting) and rated their commitments to taking each action. Two test groups then received clarifying information about the relative impact of the 21 individual actions — one group was asked to estimate their ranking before learning how they actually ranked, the other group received the information straight-up. But participants didn’t receive any data about the carbon-mitigation potential of the five collective actions, which would be far more difficult to quantify.

What Goldwert’s team found surprised them: The teachings did nudge people toward higher-impact personal actions, but their stated likelihood of engaging in collective ones actually went down — a backfire effect that hints at the perils of focusing too much on personal lifestyle choices.

“It might be kind of like a mental substitution,” Goldwert said. “People feel like, ‘OK, I’ve done my part individually. I kind of checked the box on climate action.’”

Participants were also asked to rate the “plasticity” of each of the actions, or how easy it would be to adopt. And those measurements revealed another nuance in how people view different forms of climate action. For the individual-focused options, participants were more likely to commit to actions they saw as requiring little effort. For the systemic actions, they were more interested in whether it would have an impact — something researchers are still working on quantifying.

“If you think voting or marching is just symbolic or ineffective, you’re not going to engage,” Goldwert said. “We have to show people evidence that their voice or their vote can shift policy, corporate practices, or social norms.”

I, for one, was surprised to see that participants rated the commitment to “not purchase or adopt a dog” as easy. When I asked Goldwert what might be behind that, she noted that dog ownership is a decision people don’t make very often. It also doesn’t require any action at all for people who already don’t own dogs. The results surely would have been different if the listed action was “get rid of your existing dog.” (Which it was not — a point that readers seemed to miss, based on Reddit comments about the study and the “crazy emails” Goldwert said she received.)

Still, for an animal lover like me, the idea of never adopting another dog doesn’t feel easy to commit to at all. It feels like an immense sacrifice. The sadness I feel at the thought of a future without dogs points me to another important factor when it comes to motivation for climate action: joy.

Actions we take to try and mitigate the climate crisis may be partially driven by how easy they are for us or how effective we believe them to be — but any choice we make is also driven by what we find joy in. It’s an essential part of staying committed and resilient in the fight for a better future. In this way, carbon-intensive activities like dog ownership have value beyond their weight in emissions.

“People have an emotional attachment to the people and animals and creatures that we love,” Nicholas said. “And that is actually, I think, very powerful. We’re not only going to solve climate change by lining up all the numbers — we certainly need to do that, but we have to tap into what people really care about and realize all those things are on the line and threatened by the amount of climate change we’re heading for with current policies.”

Would I fight to ensure that dogs, like my beloved Loki, can continue wagging happily on this planet? Heck yes, I would. I’ve always felt that being a pet person goes hand-in-hand with a sense of altruism and responsibility. And if not giving up our pets means fighting climate change by voting, marching, donating, advocating, and consuming like our pets’ lives depend on it, I think we can all get on board.

That might also mean adjusting our pets’ diets. While making my dog a full vegetarian seems challenging (though technically possible), just cutting out beef has a significant impact — shifting to “lower-carbon meats” was even one of the high-impact actions included in Goldwert’s study. That’s one Loki can easily commit to. And we already buy insect-based treats, which leave a pungent odor in my pockets but seem to please his taste buds.

There are also ways that dog ownership intersects with other climate-related behaviors. Anecdotally, I would say I travel less because I have a dog whose care I need to think about. Walking him every day has also made me vastly more connected to my local environment, the goings-on in my neighborhood, and my neighbors themselves — all of which are important aspects of building climate resilience. Some dogs have even been trained to sniff out invasive species and help identify environmental contaminants. (Not Loki, who has never worked a day in his life.)

Though I’d never thought about it quite this way before I read Goldwert’s study, the climate actions I take have a lot to do with the love I feel for Loki. Not because I want to leave a better world for him — I recognize the reality that I will almost certainly outlive him — but because my feelings for him bring me closer to the love I feel for all living things on this planet. This “ice age predator” who shares my home, as the anthropologist and comedian David Ian Howe puts it, is a living reminder of the relationship humans have with other species, going back many thousands of years.

As the saying goes, “Be the person your dog thinks you are.” And next time you get a little worked up about the realities of the climate crisis and your accountability within it, consider taking yourself on a walk.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/culture/the-climate-paradox-of-having-a-dog/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The American automobile industry is at risk thanks to President Donald Trump’s war against green energy.

Business journalist Bill Saporito wrote in The New York Times that most car companies had shifted to prioritizing electric vehicles (E.V.s) before Trump canceled efforts to support the industry. He likened the move to insisting that all music should only be accessible on vinyl rather than streamed digitally.

"Ford Motor has mothballed production of the all-electric version of its flagship F-150 pickup truck, and last month announced a $19.5 billion charge related to restructuring its E.V. business," Saporito wrote. "General Motors, citing the loss of tax incentives for E.V. buyers and laxer pollution regulations, switched production at its Orion, Mich., plant from E.V.s to full-size S.U.V.s and pickups powered by internal combustion engines (ICE, in industry parlance). In doing so, G.M. last week announced that it was taking a $6 billion loss in the fourth quarter — on top of a similar $1.6 billion hit the quarter before."

Ultimately, Trump has cost automakers $25 billion in losses.

The ordeal is a repeat of 2008, when car companies prioritized building giant S.U.V.s and trucks. Oil prices spiked so high that buyers began shifting to lower-fuel vehicles like Toyotas and Volkswagens. Then the housing market collapsed. The federal government swooped in with a $50 billion bailout for G.M. after it was forced into bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, Detroit was too slow to adapt when Tesla began to corner the E.V. market. Carmakers then fast-tracked their E.V. programs and joined the global shift to cleaner vehicles. Then Trump was reelected in 2024 and ushered in hefty tariffs on markets that are still promoting fuel-efficient vehicles and E.V.s.

Trump's "tariffs raised their manufacturing costs and scrambled a trilateral supply chain built on autos, parts and subassemblies flowing freely among the United States, Canada and Mexico," the report explained.

The main reason Trump opposed the fast-growing global push for E.V.s is that President Joe Biden championed it. The $1.2 trillion Infrastructure and Jobs Act funded projects to build and repair bridges and roads, but it also expanded the support structure for E.V.s with larger charging networks on major interstates.

"The vindictive, oil-loving Mr. Trump, who equates green with woke and views climate change as heresy, has worked assiduously to undo it, working to cancel consumer tax incentives and billions in funds for E.V. charging and battery manufacturing projects," the report continued.

The costs continue to mount for the business community. To make matters worse, Trump’s promises to increase U.S. manufacturing have fallen flat in his first year back in office. Job growth hit the brakes, with seven straight months of manufacturing job declines, according to recent federal data, as Politico reported last week.

Speaking to CNBC at the end of last year, Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett was asked about the seven straight months of manufacturing job decline in the U.S. Hassett acknowledged the slump but promised that in the new year new plants would open and those numbers would turn around.

"Superior technology ultimately wins out. By the time the automobile industry is dominated by E.V.s, G.M. and Ford may have fallen well behind China, thanks to the Trump administration," Saporito wrote at the close of the story.

It was almost as disturbingly painful to watch Donald Trump publicly insulting our allies yesterday and demanding ownership of Greenland as it was to experience his rambling, ego-centric, error-filled and self-serving address.

"It's a small ask," Trump dismissingly insisted for decades of carrying an ungrateful Europe, Canada and western powers. The Davos gathering of leaders usually focuses on economics, but U.S. bullyism pushed other topics aside.

And then, suddenly, Trump posted that after a single conversation with Mark Rutte, head of NATO, he was calling off his tariff war with Europe – and maybe backing off ownership altogether because they had discussed an undescribed "framework" about the Arctic Circle.

It ended a baffling day with high confusion and emotion with dealing with an unpredictable Trump armed with the world's biggest military and trade arsenal.

Greenland seems a pawn, but Trump's demand for the spotlight was a diplomatic disaster.

A Weird Speech

Trump's unfocused remarks several times confused Iceland with Greenland, attacked immigration in Europe as well as the United States, and broadly swiped treaty friends over decades for "taking advantage" or "screwing" this country in trade, defense and culture.

It mixed future threats with past retributions, equated treaty concerns with his obsession with losing to Joe Biden more than five years ago, dismissed the value of the NATO alliance, insisting that only he can see the world as it should be seen.

It was, as one television head noted, a serial takedown of every U.S. ally personally and diplomatically. Though the speech itself did not go beyond what he has said publicly, its belligerent tone and grating insults may light a global split that may not be reparable, well beyond any political change in the next election or beyond. Its inability to provide clear focus simply left listeners baffled about his seriousness or agenda beyond power and control.

The only bright note was a Trump acknowledgement that the United States would not use military force to grab Greenland – but would relaunch a global trade law based on tariffs policy that are before the U.S. Supreme Court to consider as being unconstitutional.

If Trump musings were not seen as so critical, the appearance in Davos with global leaders could have been the Superbowl for fact-checkers. His remarks cherry-picked economic numbers, glossed over legalities, and rewrote domestic and international history.

Rambling Insults

For more than an hour, global leaders listened with chagrin and building anger as Trump rambled through a speech that sounded much more ad lib than written. The personal nature of the insults guarantee that Trump will have difficulty getting cooperation when it is needed.

As Trump talked punishing Europe with new tariffs over Greenland, the European Parliament suspended the approval of the trade deal that the EU and U.S. agreed in July, though voted narrowly to delay a new major trade deal between the European Union and four South American countries to build on an economic path that works around the U.S. Canada is talking with China about broadened markets. It's now all suddenly unclear anew.

Trump said Greenland is "a piece of ice, cold and poorly located" that Denmark cannot afford. When he did not confuse Greenland and Iceland, Trump talked about its strategic value for national and international security – though never explained why "ownership" is required from an ally. Despite Trump's belief that climate change and global warming is a hoax, the start of melting of the permafrost in the Arctic Circle makes emerging access to minerals and natural resources a much more understandable Trump target.

Meanwhile, of course, if Trump is really worried about Russia and China aggressions, as he says, the Russian invasion of Ukraine presents a much more prescient conflict. But Trump has basically withdrawn much of U.S. support for Ukraine and has unduly pressured Ukraine to cede territory to Russia. Russia is attacking the civilian population across Ukraine with attacks on utilities to keep the country without electricity, heat and water.

Rewritten World History

Trump overlooks both international agreements and domestic treaty agreements signed by the Senate that grant Greenland sovereign status. He also overlooks that the U.S. has a big military base there, and an open invitation to add more troops or mining investments.

Trump has rewritten the circumstances in which the U.S. "gave back" Greenland to Denmark.

Trump preferred a message that other countries are dependent on the United States, adding, essentially, that they need to reward and pay for that privilege.

Trump has rewritten history to say the United States saved Europe in World War II. Trump insisted that NATO has never repaid the U.S. for its support over years – ignoring that the only time NATO responded to its Article V cooperative military protections was after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington. Canada, for example, "lives because of the United States," Trump said. His attacks on Somalis and European immigration were openly racist.

Overall, his contemptuous messaging seemed to affirm international fears that the U.S. is willing to forgo treaty allies and partnerships for territorial expansion and power grabs.