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Since Donald Trump moved into the White House for his second term as president in January 2025, you’d be forgiven for thinking the US has abandoned all action to tackle climate change and is working aggressively to undermine the efforts of other countries towards that end.
This week, at the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington DC, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent cast doubt on the scientific consensus around global warming and pressured the two institutions to reverse what he called their “mission creep” and “myopic focus” on climate.
But this hostile rhetoric from the Trump administration and its withdrawal from the UN climate regime – coupled with its support for fossil fuels – doesn’t tell the whole story of what’s happening in the US, according to Lou Leonard, the first dean of the School of Climate, Environment, and Society at Clark University.
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At the state, city and community level, as well as in business and higher education, efforts are resolutely continuing to reduce planet-heating emissions, boost clean energy and adapt to climate shocks, Leonard, an environmental lawyer, told Climate Home News in an interview from Massachusetts.
Thanks to impetus from coalitions such as America Is All In – whose predecessor group he helped launch – the US can still make significant progress towards its 2035 goals to cut emissions, research shows. Leonard, who worked as senior vice president for climate and energy at the World Wildlife Fund for over a decade, explains how US climate action and the Paris Agreement can survive Trump’s wrecking ball.
Q: Has the effect of the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine global climate action and the UN climate process been worse than you expected?
A: A thing that is striking to me, looking at the decade of the Paris Agreement… is that over the course of that decade, the United States had a hostile sort of leadership in Washington, and the agreement has endured.
And it has endured despite the United States, not because of the United States – at least from a federal standpoint. The US was really important in the formation stage but has not been as vital to the endurance of the agreement.
Q: Is it not fair to say though that the current US abandonment of the UN climate process could reduce the impact and influence of the Paris Agreement?
A: The nature of an international cooperative framework means that the aggregate ambition is as strong as the countries that make up it, right? I’m not saying that, in the dream scenario where every country was in a really aggressively positive place that we would not get more out of the international framework. There’s no question that that’s true.
I think it’s just when we’re thinking about the singular role of one country – even the United States – there’s much more in play here than that theory of how things were going to work; the centrality of the United States to all this, especially at the Washington level. I think that turned out to be wrong – at least in the longest sweep of the progress that we’ve made.
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I think the reason why what’s happening in Washington didn’t have as great an impact as it might have in the rest of the world is because the story of what’s happening in the United States is not limited to what’s happening in Washington.
And that’s the second part – which is the things that sometimes frustrate people about the American political system – the sharing of power and the federal system, and all of those things which were intentionally built into the US system.
In these moments, that structure has helped create a reality… and then the rest of the world can see for itself that there’s all these efforts through America Is All In and in other places to bring those actors and that leadership and analysis of the impact of that effort to the rest of the world. I think that that has been an important part of the story of why the Paris Agreement has endured.
Q: What have some of the most important of those subnational efforts been in your view?
A: California’s the most obvious example, because it’s the world’s sixth largest economy and it’s certainly one of the most aggressive states moving forward on climate action. But it’s more than that: if you look at the America Is All In analysis that was released at COP30 in Belém, it shows a roadmap to maintain US trajectories, as a way to keep things from really collapsing when you have these changes in federal leadership.
There’s a parallel there to what’s happening globally – this is a distributed effort. We need all of society, all over the world, to be moving in this direction in order to reach our most ambitious goals.
And I think the fact that the US has over half of the economy, at least, really leaning in this direction really helps. And then if you just look at the energy transition in the US, we have begun to reach this tipping point where the role of the markets and the role of politics are shifting to some degree.
We really needed the policy incentives, and a lot of that [earlier] signal coming from Washington and then the states to get us to a point where renewable energy penetration was significant enough to begin to have momentum on its own, and I think we’re starting to see that. In just the last two years, over 90% of the new generation capacity in the United States has been renewables.
Q: Where do you see real momentum on US climate action continuing or gathering pace despite what Washington is up to?
A: What I really think is going to take us to another level than just relying on state governments… is the catalysing of more of a collaborative “all of society” approach here.
That’s what led me to higher education. I felt like there was an understanding and an alignment within higher education of the importance of these topics – and then the bench within higher education is filled with some of the top experts in the world on climate who were already leading as it related to climate science and talking about the problem. But if we could take that capacity and bring it into more direct relationship with businesses, municipalities and states, then that has the potential to unlock more of the impact of those actors together … that’s the reason I made the move.
The thing that drew me to [Clark] was you had a small university with really a national research capacity. And in Massachusetts, you have the only state in the country that has a chief climate officer that reports to the governor. You’ve got policy that’s been put in place related to green banks and zoning rules related to decarbonisation of buildings. And a state-based climate law that’s aligned with the Paris Agreement goals and has decarbonisation or net zero emissions by mid-century. You’ve got that policy piece in place, and then it’s how can you begin to catalyse some more of the collaboration that’s going be necessary to actually meet those goals? I think that’s really exciting.
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Another place where we’re seeing these ingredients come together is Pennsylvania. Just a month ago, the state of Pennsylvania created a new programme called Prepare PA, which is both about preparing for climate impacts and reaching goals related to the energy transition and the like. And they’re putting Penn State University at the centre of trying to help them implement a plan that involves businesses and municipalities. I think you’re seeing more and more of this kind of experimentation.
… This was always going to be an all-of-society effort, and the more we can see that, and the more we can make it real – how we all have roles to play at the local level, at the state level, in the private sector, in universities, in civil society, the more we have the opportunity to avoid this sense of powerlessness [about climate change] that can lead us to nihilism.
The post Q&A: Look beyond Trump for the full story on US climate action, says university dean appeared first on Climate Home News.
Q&A: Look beyond Trump for the full story on US climate action, says university dean
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An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
This guest post is by:
- Dr Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor
- Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, chair of mathematical modelling of climate systems at the University of Exeter and part of the Global Carbon Project team.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
The 21st edition of the annual “global carbon budget” report, published today, says that this small decline is largely due to a 1.9% drop in emissions from oil and the energy shock triggered by the Iran conflict and the closure of the strait of Hormuz.
Emissions from coal continue to increase slightly.
The Global Carbon Project’s projections for fossil fuel and cement CO2 emissions in 2026 are preliminary, with a range that spans a fall of -1.5% to a rise of +0.6%.
This means a small increase in emissions can not be ruled out.
Emissions from land-use change, such as deforestation, are projected to rise in 2026.
This is primarily driven by peat fires and forest degradation in south-east Asia and is linked to the development of a strong El Niño event this year.
As a result, total CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and land use are projected to reach a record high of 43.3GtCO2 in 2026 – marginally above 42.8GtCO2 in 2025.
Research published alongside the report by the same team in Nature Climate Change finds that the growth in solar, wind and electric vehicles (EVs) now offsets around two-thirds of the emissions that would otherwise come from rising energy demand.
However, the deployment of these technologies is not yet enough to push global emissions into a sustained decline, according to the study.
The 2026 global carbon budget report also estimates that:
- Fossil emissions are projected to fall in China (-0.9%), the US (-1.3%) and the EU (-1.5%) in 2026, but rise by 4.4% in India.
- Oil emissions are projected to fall in every major region, with the largest drop in China (-4.6%).
- Land-use emissions averaged 4.9GtCO2 per year over 2016-25, around 21% lower than the decade before.
- Total CO2 emissions (fossil and land-use) grew by an average 0.3% per year over the past decade (2016-25), compared with 1.7% per year over the decade before.
- The remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C is 150GtCO2, or less than four years of current emissions.
- The land sink in 2025 was the highest on record, rebounding after being weakened during the 2023-24 El Niño. The current El Niño is expected to weaken the land sink in 2027.
- The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is set to reach 427.7 parts per million (ppm) in 2026, 54% above pre-industrial levels.
(For more on previous editions of the Global Carbon Project’s annual report, see Carbon Brief’s coverage in 2025, 2024,