{"id":635711,"date":"2025-12-16T08:55:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T08:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/635711\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T08:55:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T08:55:17","slug":"at-the-top-of-the-2025-naughty-list-is-the-us-now-officially-in-climate-denial-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/635711\/","title":{"rendered":"At the top of the 2025 naughty list is the US, now officially in climate denial \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was a year of extremes when it came to both climate change<\/a> and climate policy. The weather statistics speak for themselves: 2025 is virtually certain to be the second or third hottest year on record<\/a>. Record greenhouse gas concentrations continue to drive higher temperatures across the globe, and sea ice and glaciers are retreating. Extreme weather events are causing massive social and economic disruption, and the three-year average for 2023-2025 is on track to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius for the first time. Cop30<\/a> was another missed opportunity to build momentum for a fossil fuel phase-out.<\/p>\n

At the top of the 2025 naughty list is the US, now officially in climate denial. This matters because of the abiding geopolitical and economic influence of the US, notwithstanding Trump\u2019s distaste for multilateralism. <\/p>\n

On his first day in office, Trump announced that he would withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement. That decision pretty much set the tone for his approach to climate policy, and since then his administration has cancelled offshore wind projects, doubled down on fossil fuel extraction on federal lands, ended the Biden-era subsidies for renewables, pushed scientifically inaccurate statements about the causes of climate change, and rolled back thousands of environmental regulations. Climate scientist Michael Mann was reported by the Guardian<\/a> as describing the US Department of Energy\u2019s plan to relax climate pollution controls as \u201cif you took a chatbot and you trained it on the top 10 fossil fuel industry-funded climate denier websites\u201d. <\/p>\n

Legal challenges might yet work to block Trump\u2019s most irrational decisions. Seventeen Democratic-led states have objected to Trump\u2019s decision cancelling wind projects and a federal judge struck down his order for the time being, offering a faint glimmer of hope that the courts will slow the damage he is doing to the US renewables sector and uphold the EPA\u2019s role in regulating climate pollution. <\/p>\n

Despite Trump\u2019s efforts to undo the modest achievements of global climate co-operation, the energy transition has continued to pick up pace. China is now the world\u2019s leader in manufacturing the decarbonisation and clean technologies at affordable scales that will ultimately overshadow the Trump-era\u2019s back-pedalling. Some of the countries benefiting from the renewables boom led by China include Pakistan, which has witnessed one of the most rapid and surprising transitions to clean energy, driven largely by rooftop solar panels. By 2026, it is expected that 20 per cent of the country\u2019s grid will be powered by solar. <\/p>\n

Even in the US oil and gas hotspot state of Texas, renewables flourished under former president Joe Biden\u2019s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) subsidies. Utility-scale solar capacity in Texas jumped from about 5 gigawatts in 2020 to 27.5 gigawatts by the end of 2024, and 24-29 per cent of the state\u2019s electricity is met by wind power. (For reference, Ireland\u2019s target for installed solar capacity by 2030 is 8 gigawatts). As a windy and sunny state with a deregulated electricity sector where companies compete to sell electricity to the grid, Texas is a fascinating example of why renewables are cheaper, faster and more attractive to investors to build than gas plants. <\/p>\n

\"OnOn his first day in office, Trump announced that he would withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement. Photograph: Getty Images <\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Too small to matter\u2019 is the laziest-possible excuse in climate debateOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Much of the investment has gone to Republican districts represented by members of the US Congress who voted against Biden\u2019s subsidies. Politics and economics seem to be increasingly detached. As we scratch our heads in disbelief at what is happening in the US, we should take note of the corrosive impact of disinformation spread by unregulated news outlets and social media platforms, and the influence exerted by fossil fuel interests on political parties and candidates. <\/p>\n

There are important lessons here for the EU as it plans to implement a 2040 emissions reduction target of 90 per cent compared with 1990 levels. For climate policies to work, political mandates and market dynamics need to be aligned. However, the EU is failing to hold its nerve under pressure from the US and Qatar to weaken corporate sustainability requirements so they can supply Europe with LNG to replace imports of Russian gas. In the midst of a climate crisis, where the continent of Europe is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, the EU is embarking on a spree of deregulation using “<\/a>omnibus\u201d procedures<\/a> that will weaken environmental and consumer protections. <\/p>\n

Climate leadership was not much in evidence from the Irish Government in 2025, though on paper at least, it remains committed to the 2030 climate targets. The unseemly campaign to retain the nitrates derogation and the lack of funding to implement the Nature Restoration law suggest that the coalition Government will be prioritising business-as-usual over water quality improvements and land use reforms. Public pressure is likely to build over Ireland\u2019s basic environmental quality standards: deteriorating water quality, poor public transport services and increasingly expensive energy are on no-one\u2019s Christmas wish list.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Ireland has second highest emissions per head in EU and must do more to reach net zero by 2050Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This was a year of extremes when it came to both climate change and climate policy. The weather…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[2311,117403,728,70,16,15,49,117936],"class_list":{"0":"post-635711","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-climate-change","9":"tag-climate-sustainability","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-weather-events"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115728412378131666","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}