Jump In GHG Ouput Jan-Jun 2025 Puts US Well On The Road To Global 2C Outcome; Biden-Era Emissions Improvements Recede

A jump in greenhouse gas pollution in the US helped push global emissions higher in the first half of this year. This could be an omen of what’s to come, with Donald Trump’s pro-fossil fuel agenda set to significantly slow down the emissions cuts required to avoid disastrous climate impacts, a new forecast has found. The “most abrupt shift in energy and climate policy in recent memory” that has occurred since Trump re-entered the White House will have profound consequences for the global climate crisis by slowing the pace of US emissions cuts by as much as half the rate achieved over the past two decades, the Rhodium Group forecast states.

The US is still expected to reduce its planet-heat emissions by between 26% and 35% by 2035 compared with 2005 levels, according to the report. But this is well down from a 38% to 56% reduction by 2035, which Rhodium forecast just last year during Joe Biden’s presidency. None of these scenarios will be sufficient to allow the US, the world’s largest historic emitter of carbon pollution, to play its full part in helping the world avert a worsening climate breakdown coming from 2C (3.6F) or more in global heating.

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The emissions impact of all of this will become obvious over the next couple of years, Rhodium’s King said. A preview of this can be seen in the first six months of the year, during which US emissions rose by 1.4% compared with the same period last year, according to Climate Trace. This bump in emissions, aided by a similar rise in Brazil, ensured that global emissions were slightly higher than the first half of 2024, a stark sign of the task ahead for governments in tackling the climate crisis without the leadership of the US, the world’s second largest emitter.

“We won’t see the impacts of the Trump administration in the emissions data for a couple of years, I think,” said King. “But we are already seeing a slowdown in renewables installations and, to be honest, even a flatlining of emissions is a pretty bad indicator of the trajectory we need to be on.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/10/us-greenhouse-gas-emissions