Over 100 countries have missed the deadline to tighten their climate targets ahead of November’s United Nations conference as President Donald Trump has rolled back some U.S. climate policies. [emphasis, links added]
Though the Paris Climate Agreement requires countries to set more stringent climate targets, many have yet to submit updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) plans as COP30 inches closer.
The climate talks will be held in Belém, Brazil, from Nov. 6 to Nov. 21, 2025, but the Trump administration has yet to select a delegation to attend as it continues to enact major deregulatory moves in the energy space.
“Most nations realize the cost of cutting carbon dioxide is painful and unnecessary. It is no surprise that nation after nation [is] trying to skirt their prior greenwashing pledges,” James Taylor, president of The Heartland Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Most countries missed the Feb. 10 deadline, though the U.N. reportedly was accepting of this as long as it meant they were working on their climate goals, according to The Associated Press.
Trump called climate change policy the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” in front of the U.N. General Assembly in September and withdrew America from the Paris Climate Agreement through a day-one executive order.
Trump has moved to end federal support for green energy sources like wind and solar, which were favored under the Biden administration through billions in subsidies, loans, and grants.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Administrator Lee Zeldin has moved to roll back major climate regulations, including the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which allows the agency to regulate greenhouse gases.
Zeldin argued that repealing the rule would constitute “the largest deregulatory action in the history of America.”
Author and publisher of ClimateDepot.com Marc Morano told the DCNF that this “UN COP FLOP” is a result of “the Trump Effect.”
“Other, more timid nations are picking up the Trump energy and quietly walking away from this 30-year global fiasco known as the UN climate agenda. Trump came along at just the right time in history, as Europeans and others are now fully realizing they have been had by decades of false promises that green energy would be ‘cheaper’ and that they could ‘easily transition’ away from fossil fuels,” Morano continued. “Trump has done the U.S. and the world a great favor by exposing this fraudulent UN climate process.”
Morano previously told the DCNF that Democrats and Europeans seem to be retreating from aggressive climate policies as the American “public is not tolerating virtue signaling about saving the planet anymore.”
Several corporate media outlets and some Democrats have recently shifted away from climate policy and are instead focusing their message on rising electricity prices and reliability.
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I would like to point out that the Paris Treaty does not require countries to set more stringent climate targets, though this is assumed. A nation could submit a Nationally Determined Contribution that backs off from previous commitments. Such action would be considered a scandal, so it is easier to not to submit an update.