6 min readJan 19, 2026 02:30 PM IST
First published on: Jan 19, 2026 at 02:30 PM IST
US actions were hardly unexpected. Donald Trump’s renewed assault on climate multilateralism follows a familiar script: Withdrawal, obstruction, and indifference to scientific consensus. His decision to pull the US out of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and disengage from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change does not alter a single physical reality of the climate system. Temperatures will keep rising. Seas will continue to swell. Extreme weather will intensify. Nor does the exit from over 60 other treaties and multilateral bodies reverse the economic direction of travel, as investment in low-carbon energy continues to outpace fossil fuels. What it will do, however, is dry up funding for many non-profit organisations working on climate action and introduce friction into a narrative of inevitability that had begun to take root among governments, markets, and the public.
What this retreat also does is change the politics of cooperation precisely at the moment when speed and coordination matter most. Climate negotiations are entering a far more complex phase, one shaped by carbon budgeting under overshoot, contested discussions on geoengineering, and the urgent need to deploy solutions faster than impacts are accumulating. Walking away from global forums weakens trust, narrows diplomatic space, and leaves difficult questions unresolved. It also shifts costs inward. As the UN’s climate chief, Simon Stiell warned, American households and businesses will bear the consequences through higher energy volatility, greater climate damage, and missed economic opportunity.
Against that backdrop, the message from the latest UNEP Emissions Gap Report (2025) is unequivocal: The so-called “multi-decadal average” temperature will at least temporarily surpass 1.5°C in the next decade. To stay aligned with the 1.5°C goal, global greenhouse gas emissions would need to fall by roughly 55 per cent by 2035. Current national pledges fall far short of that mark. The World Meteorological Organisation confirms the trend. The year 2025 ranked among the three warmest years ever recorded, extending what scientists describe as a streak of extraordinary global temperatures.
Even in the United States, where emissions had fallen roughly 20 per cent between 2005 and 2024, progress has begun to stall. Last year saw an uptick in both methane and carbon dioxide emissions. This reversal matters because it reflects a broader global challenge. Mitigation is not happening at the pace required, while climate impacts are accelerating.
For countries in the Global South, this is not an abstract concern. In India, heat has become an economic shock. The Lancet Countdown estimates that in 2024 alone, India lost around 247 billion potential labour hours due to heat exposure, translating into nearly $194 billion in lost income. As warming intensifies, these losses will compound, deepening inequality and straining development gains.
This is why the choice of solutions matters. In the rush to respond, there is a growing temptation to look for quick fixes. Some now frame geoengineering as a backstop in an overshoot world. Solar radiation modification, including stratospheric aerosol injection, aims to cool the planet by reflecting sunlight back into space. The science remains incomplete, and the risks are substantial. Altered rainfall patterns, damage to the ozone layer, impacts on food systems, and serious public health concerns cannot be wished away. The geopolitical questions are equally troubling. Who decides when and how such tools are deployed? What happens if countries attribute floods or droughts to deliberate intervention? How do we manage the risk of termination shock if such measures are halted?
More fundamentally, solar dimming does not address the root problem. Lowering temperatures temporarily is not the same as reducing or removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. A sunscreen is not a cure. Reliance on speculative fixes risks weakening incentives for real mitigation at the very moment when resolve is needed.
There is, however, a faster and safer lever available. Cutting short-lived climate pollutants offers the most effective way to slow warming in the near term. Methane, the second largest contributor to warming after carbon dioxide, accounts for roughly 30 per cent of the temperature increase to date and contributes about 0.5°C of current warming. Over 20 years, methane is more than 80 times as potent as CO₂. Concentrations have more than doubled since pre-industrial times and continue to rise.
The critical difference is methane’s short atmospheric lifetime. Rapid reductions can deliver rapid results. A global effort to cut methane emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 could avoid nearly 0.3°C of warming by the 2040s, several times the near term benefit expected from carbon dioxide reductions alone. This is the closest thing the climate system offers to an emergency brake. Without it, the risk of overshoot grows, along with pressure to gamble on unproven technologies.
December 2025 marked 10 years since the Paris Agreement was signed. The accord did change the trajectory, pulling the world back from a pre-Paris path of roughly 3.5°C of warming to around 2.3 to 2.5°C. That remains dangerously above the agreed 1.5 to 2°C range, but progress was real. The anniversary is a reminder of what coordinated action can achieve, and of how much harder the road ahead has become. Paris was never meant to be an endpoint. It was meant to be a framework for escalation. Ten years on, the test is whether countries choose to accelerate cooperation and mitigation, or retreat just as the costs of delay become impossible to ignore.
Osho is the director of the India Programme at the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD)
Lowering temperatures temporarily is not the same as reducing or removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere (Representational/File Photo) 
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