UN Report Shows How Killing Progress on Climate Pollution Is 'Trump's Real Legacy'
One campaigner said the United Nations Environment Program report "shows that America's retreat isn't just a political embarrassment. It has real consequences for the planet and for millions of people around the world."
President Donald Trump's pro-fossil fuel agenda not only is "making everyone's lives more expensive" but also is expected to have deadly and destructive consequences far beyond the borders of the United States, as made clear in a global emissions report released Wednesday.
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) put out "The Emissions Gap Report 2026: The Point of Return" in preparation for the next UN Climate Change Conference in Türkiye. It warns that the world's chance to meet the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels "with 'no or limited' overshoot has been lost."
While that is a global failure, a key factor is Trump's return to power in the United States last year. After pledging to roll back his predecessor's meager climate action policies if fossil fuel executives pumped money into his campaign, the Republican president has pursued a range of polluting actions, which include abandoning the Paris Agreement, again.
"Most of the climate-related policies from the Inflation Reduction Act have been repealed under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act," the report says, referring to Republicans' 2025 budget package, which Trump signed into law. "Additionally, several long-standing Environmental Protection Agency regulations concerning power plant and vehicle emission standards, electric vehicle support, methane emissions, and renewable energy proliferation have also been rolled back."
It also notes that the Trump administration recently moved to completely repeal limits on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants, which was criticized as "the largest deregulatory action of the USA power sector in history," though "a significant number of these attempts are in a judicial state of uncertainty, as they are being challenged in courts."
Countries that remain parties to the Paris Agreement develop plans to reduce emissions, called nationally determined contributions. The report explains that "if all NDCs are delivered and similar efforts continue, there is a 66% chance that warming will be limited to 2.6°C by 2100. This is a worse outcome than expected last year, as a result of the formal withdrawal of the United States of America from the Paris Agreement and revised estimates of historical emissions."
Historically, the United States is the world's worst climate polluter. The publication points out that "currently, the six largest emitters in terms of total GHG emissions are China, the United States of America, India, the European Union, the Russian Federation, and Indonesia."
While the US, Indonesia, and China all had increases in emissions last year, the document details, "in terms of magnitude, the increase in the United States of America (133 megatons of CO2 equivalent, MtCO2e) far exceeded that of all other countries, and was driven by increased electricity demand and a rebound of coal power generation."
Studies show that recent policy changes under Trump "have significantly altered the projections" for the years ahead, the report says, "with 2030 emissions projections now estimated to be almost 0.9 GtCO2e higher than projections based on policies in place under the previous administration."
As The Associated Press reported:
Report lead author Anne Olhoff, director of UNEP Copenhagen Climate Center, said the US policy change will likely add one-tenth of a degree Celsius (nearly two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) to global temperatures by the end of the century.
"This report shows that America's retreat isn't just a political embarrassment. It has real consequences for the planet and for millions of people around the world,” said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a climate organization. "An extra tenth of a degree might sound insignificant, but in climate terms it is enormous. It means more dangerous heatwaves, more destructive floods, more failed harvests, and more lives lost. For vulnerable communities in Africa, already living on the frontlines of the climate crisis, every fraction of a degree matters. These are not abstract numbers. They are human lives."
The Trump administration doubled down on its position, with White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers telling The New York Times that the United Nations was “pushing the woke Green Energy Scam, pressuring countries across the world to jeopardize their economic and national security in order to meet arbitrary climate goals."
Meanwhile, climate advocates and scientists joined Adow in ripping the administration's devastating agenda.
"All governments have a job to do, but in particular it is time for major fossil fuel producers such as the US and Saudi Arabia, which produce 20-25% of fossil fuels globally, to stop playing politics and face the scientific reality," said Bill Hare, CEO of the think tank Climate Analytics. "Right now they are looking at the fire, denying it exists, and pouring more petrol on it, while their own citizens increasingly face searing heat, wildfires, and other impacts."
Scott Forbes, an ecology professor at Canada's University of Winnipeg, said on social media that "America is now the biggest impediment to climate action. Of all the evil that Trump has done, this may top it all."
President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott meet with local emergency services personnel as they survey flood damage along the Guadalupe River on July 11, 2025, in Kerrville, Texas. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Firefighters battle the Eaton Fire on January 8, 2025, in Altadena, California. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
Researchers extract a fossil coral core sample from a massive coral colony in the Galápagos Islands to reconstruct historical climate and El Niño cycles as part of a study published in Science on August 27, 2026. (Photo by Julia Cole/Science)
(Graphic by Data for Progress)
Protesters hold a banner outside the US Supreme Court as it considers the Suncor v. Boulder case in Washington, DC, on October 5, 2026. (Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
