For a country whose leadership has pulled out of the Paris Agreement and turned climate-sceptic under President Donald Trump, it is perhaps no surprise that the United States has almost no presence at the COP30 climate conference in Belem, Brazil.

As the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, and also the country with great financial, scientific and technological capability, the United States has both the responsibility and the capability to take the lead in the fight against climate change. But under Trump, for the first time, the US seems to have decided to do a no-show at COP30. The provisional list of country delegates released by the organisers, and published by UK publication Carbon Brief, has no names from the US.

Ironically, from the COP30 perspective, this might

See Full Page