ClimateChangeFork

Figure 1 – Drawing of the Boston Tea Party (Source: SC Daily Gazette)

The last two blogs promised that I would focus on different efforts to adapt to the demographic changes that the world is going through. Currently, there are two main aspects to this effort; both have the same objective: continuing (or accelerating) economic growth in a world with a declining workforce. One approach works with the premise that we don’t need that many people for economic growth—we can replace the decreasing workforce with computers. The other tactic is to shift demographic trends by encouraging people to have more babies. These approaches require separate blogs. This blog will discuss the first—balancing the decreasing workforce by giving computers an increasing economic role in running the economy (either directly with robots or indirectly with AI). This involves a large increase in productivity, as defined by the ratio of economic output to number of workers.

This approach of restructuring the economy with computers to compensate for a diminishing  workforce can be divided into two forms: “Sustainable Abundance” and “Silver Economies.”  Both forms are described in this blog. Sustainable Abundance is outlined in Figure 2. It redefines growth by challenging the traditional tradeoff between economic growth and environmental sustainability, arguing that advances in technology can enable both. The concept became recently the flagship of Tesla and its chairman, Elon Musk. Tesla started as an environmental centric company focusing mainly on replacing fossil fuel transportation with electric cars. I discussed in earlier blogs (March 12 – 26, 2019), that such a shift only counts toward climate change mitigation if the charging is done with sustainable electricity sources. Recently, Tesla amplified its efforts in commercial applications of sustainable electricity sources with activity in solar cells as shown below:

Recent Tesla efforts in solar cell production – according to AI (Google):

Tesla concept as of early 2026, Tesla is aggressively expanding its role in solar cell production, shifting from a reseller to a major US manufacturer. By 2026, Tesla has begun in-house manufacturing of new, proprietary solar panels at its Buffalo, New York, Gigafactory, aiming for a massive 100-gigawatt (GW) annual production capacity to support terrestrial and space data centers, making it a potential industry leader.

Figure 2 (Source: Medium)

The New York Times (NYT) describes “Sustainable Abundance” the following way:

A World Where All Is Free? That’s Elon Musk’s Theory of ‘Sustainable Abundance.’

The Tesla and SpaceX chief has told his followers that they will live in a world where robots will take care of every need and people do not have to work, in what has become his latest slogan. In the future that Elon Musk envisions, humans won’t just live on Mars. They will also never have to work again. Money will be irrelevant. And everything they could ever want will be immediately accessible. This is what Mr. Musk calls “sustainable abundance,” a post-scarcity society where humans have created technologies so ubiquitous and so powerful that they have eliminated the need for labor. Over the past six months, the utopian phrase has become central to the billionaire’s businesses, belief system and lexicon, according to Mr. Musk’s social media posts and what he has said on podcasts and at company events. Now his electric carmaker, Tesla, is developing humanoid robots; his rocket company, SpaceX, is promoting orbital data centers; and his artificial intelligence start-up, xAI, is creating A.I. that Mr. Musk has said will solve most, if not all, of humanity’s problems.

What this NYT entry is missing, but which is emphasized in Figure 2, is the environmental changes that this approach promises. What the piece emphasizes is the replacement of people in a declining workforce with computers and AI. I live in NYC and we just elected Zohran Mamdani as our new Mayor. Mamdani’s successful election campaign was based on fixing affordability. Just replace millionaires and billionaires with of computers; and everybody in “Tesla’s sustainable abundance with “average New Yorker”:

Food prices are out of control. Nearly 9 in 10 New Yorkers say the cost of groceries is rising faster than their income. Only the very wealthiest aren’t feeling squeezed at the register.

As Mayor, Zohran will create a network of city-owned grocery stores focused on keeping prices low, not making a profit. Without having to pay rent or property taxes, they will reduce overhead and pass on savings to shoppers. They will buy and sell at wholesale prices, centralize warehousing and distribution, and partner with local neighborhoods on products and sourcing. With New York City already spending millions of dollars to subsidize private grocery store operators (which are not even required to take SNAP/WIC!), we should redirect public money to a real “public option.”

 

Public transit should be reliable, safe and universally accessible. But one in five New Yorkers struggle to afford the ever rising fare. Adding insult to injury: our city’s buses are the slowest in the nation, robbing working people of precious time for family, leisure and rest.

Zohran won New York’s first fare-free bus pilot on five lines across the city. As Mayor, he’ll permanently eliminate the fare on every city bus – and make them faster by rapidly building priority lanes, expanding bus queue jump signals, and dedicated loading zones to keep double parkers out of the way. Fast and free buses will not only make buses reliable and accessible but will improve safety for riders and operators – creating the world-class service New Yorkers deserve.

Next week’s blog will focus on an alternative approach to declining fertility and increase need to support retiring old population, to try to reverse the clock and take steps to increase the declining fertility. One of the central player that will be discussed is China. However, to complement that approach, China is also trying to change it economic structure to make it more responsive to the demographic changes. Other countries are starting to experiment with this approach and it got the name of “Silver Economy” that is described below (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_economy):

Silver economy is the system of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services aimed at using the purchasing potential of older and ageing people and satisfying their consumption, living, and health needs. The European Union has determined that all economic activity servicing those who are aged 50 and above is within the silver economy.^[1] The silver economy is analyzed in the field of social gerontology, not as an existing economic system, but as an instrument of ageing policy and the political idea of forming a potential, needs-oriented economic system for the aging population.^[2][3] Its main element is gerontechnology as a new scientific, research and implementation paradigm.^[4]

Similar to the non-environmental aspects of Sustainable Abundance, China is basing its Silver Economy approach on replacing declining workforce with computers:

Humanoid Robots Will Cater to China’s Aging Population

Robots will play a growing role in caring for China’s elderly, industry insiders say, as robotics firms move to tap into the country’s expanding “silver economy.”

Why It Matters

China, like the rest of East Asia, is grappling with a flagging birth rate coupled with a fast-aging workforce.

People aged 65 and older already make up about 15 percent of its 1.4 billion citizens, according to United Nations data. Demographers expect China to join Japan and South Korea as a “super-aged” society, where more than one in five residents are seniors, by 2035.

With record numbers of Chinese retiring, the country faces mounting strain on its pension system and social safety nets, alongside a shrinking workforce to support them. Beijing says it is ramping up investment in elder care, including artificial intelligence and humanoid robotics, to prepare for these demographic shifts.

Many of us react to this type of economic restructuring via technology with skepticism, feeling like we’ve seen it all before. The “before” for most of us consists of movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), in which the robot Hal 9000 takes over, with disastrous consequences. However, such movies are fiction. At the same time,  we can take a short trip to the countryside or petting zoo, and see horses and donkeys. They are trained (or born) to help us, and do not have much say over what they do.

However, in July, most of us in the US, will celebrate 250 years of statehood. The War of Independence from Britain started with the slogan, “no taxation without representation.” While the phrase came into use at the center of the 1773 Boston Tea Party, it later became a more universal slogan against tyrany. A drawing of the event opens this blog. The robots and AI that we are creating to replace our work force are suppose to be super intelligent. If they are aware of the slogan and its implications within the new economic structures that we are creating, will they strive for their independence?

I was about to finish this blog when the news broke about the US-Israel attacks on Iran. Those attacks triggered retaliatory attacks on Israel and other Middle Eastern countries that house American bases. However, last week’s blog promised that I would focus on long-term global developments. Time will tell if the present war will fall into that category. I hope that it will not, but like everybody else, I will be following new developments. This blog will focus on some impacts of the global demographic changes that are now taking place.

Every other day, I hit on a headline announcing the “end of natural population growth” in some country. Natural population growth is based on death and birth, and does not include immigration. In other words, its endpoint is when deaths start to outnumber births. Figure 1, from last week’s blog, which I am copying here for reference, shows a global map with projected dates for this transition. In that map, the grouping of places expected to reach the stage sometime during the next century includes a surprising (to me), pairing of Australia and Sweden with some countries in Central Asia and most of Africa.

Figure 1

The majority of countries that have already gone through this transition are located in Europe and Asia. Some entries mention the US as an example of an exception. Figure 2, taken from The Economist, shows the situation in the US. We are fast approaching this situation, and migration no longer seems to be functioning as a remedy. I am also citing three paragraphs from the same article.

Figure 2 – Population increase in the US

America is stagnating—demographically, that is

Demographers elsewhere might wonder what the fuss is about. America’s population is still rising, unlike that in Russia and Japan. Even at the modest growth rates of 2010-20 (when the US population expanded by 7%), the number of Americans could increase over the next 40 years to over 410m, from 332m in 2021.

But among rich countries, the United States has long been an outlier, with relatively high and rising fertility, robust immigration and an expanding labour force. Trends that Europeans view without anxiety can seem alarming to Americans accustomed to demographic dynamism. Nicholas Eberstadt, at the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, fears the possibility of “indefinite population decline barring only offsetting immigration”. Monica Duffy Toft of Tufts University even asked if America might collapse under the weight of its demographic stagnation, as the Soviet Union did (she concluded it wouldn’t).

Against that background, it makes sense to consider what the data from the ten-year census of 2020 actually say about the severity of the population downturn. A county’s population increase or decline is determined by two trends: natural increase (births minus deaths) and net migration (arrivals from abroad minus those returning home). Both are falling.

Figure 3 examines the role that international migration plays in these developments. In-migration is decreasing; out-migration is increasing. Migration is a central focus of the present Trump administration. Data from the end of the Biden administration and the beginning of the second Trump administration are estimates.

Figure 3 – Migration in and out of the US  (Source: MSN)

The net results of Figures 2 and 3 show that the end of population growth has not yet happened in the US, but is quickly approaching. In all countries that have either passed or are approaching the end of natural population growth, the population pyramids (see the February 13, 2024, blog) results in a major increase in the elderly population, a decrease in the younger population, and, as a result, a decrease in the population of active workers. Figure 4 shows the consequences in the US. We passed the tipping point, in which the number of retirees in the US surpassed the number of active workers around 2011 (Figure 4).

Figure 4 – Ratio of active workers to retirees (Source: Visual Capitalist)

Pension systems are increasingly reliant on investment returns. Meanwhile, the share of the federal budget spent on Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, targeted at old people, is now approaching 50%.

Investment returns and the rising costs of the federal government in terms of increased share of interest payment and spending on defense, require a larger workforce. In preparation for the predicted increased shortage of workforce, more emphasis is being shifted to robotics and improved productivity. Next week’s blog will focus on steps that various countries are now taking to mitigate the effects of their shifting demographics. One interesting shift is that since a shortage of workers needs to be accompanied by an increase in wealth, it must be accompanied by a major increase in productivity. The only practical way to achieve this is to develop robots and AI to replace humans to do some of the work. Almost all businesses require a supply chain to operate. If some of the components of that supply chain constitute robots (or AI), some of the business of advertising needs to be addressed to robots instead of humans. This transition is already starting to take place

(https://www.forbes.com/sites/cathyhackl/2020/06/14/marketing-to-robots-why-cmos-need-to-start-thinking-about-business-to-robot-to-consumer-b2r2c/):

Will you be selling and marketing to robots in the future? Most people would laugh at the idea, but with global spending on robots expected to reach $241.4 billion by 2023, per IDC, and major tech players investing heavily in voice, AR & VR, the possibility might not be too far off in the future.

Traditional marketing is all about the consumer. Marketers spend endless hours creating engaging storytelling and elaborate campaign activations in order to connect with the consumer. Marketers don’t just want to sell a brand; they want the brand and customer to have a relationship. Brand loyalty is the ultimate goal.

But, this traditional method of marketing is about to change, and marketers will need to add Business to Robot to Consumer (B2R2C) to their list of duties.

There is still some confusion between ads directed at robots and those directed, through training, at consumers who use robots. I am certain that this distinction will become clearer with time.

The Winter Olympics are over (Sunday, February 22^nd). From a NYC perspective, we are now in the middle of a blizzard that makes this winter interesting if you have a home to hide in. It’s time to go back to my theme of global threats. I defined these in a blog from September 3, 2025, “The Broader Picture of Global Threats”:

As I have tried to show in the more than 12 years that I have been writing this blog, humanity is in the middle of at least 5 existential transitions; all of these started around WWII. They include climate change, nuclear energy, declining fertility, global electrification, and digitization. These transitions started around the time that I was born, but they will hopefully last (if some of them do not lead to extinction in the meantime) at least through the lifetime of my grandchildren (I call this time “now” in some of my writing).

This blog, and the few that follow, will try to focus on the timing of these threats. I will try to separate what I view as short-term trends from the broader threats so that I can look into the  options for mitigation and adaptation.

We are all living in unsettling times right now. My sources of information, aside from professional sources, are the evening news (NBC, ABC, CBS), daily input from the NYT (both print and digital), weekly (now daily) input from The Economist, and the digital headlines from my digital providers. None of these claims to be objective; my sources reflect and reinforce my biases. I am not alone in this. Everybody else “suffers” from similar subjectivity.

As I said, I will try to stay clear of what I consider to be short-term fluctuations and focus instead on the long-term trends. To do this, I need to identify what I consider to be short-term trends, many of which are currently filling up the news. Examples of these trends are shown in the following list:

• Whatever Trump is doing
• Connections with Jeffrey Epstein
• Weather and climate – local weather storms
• The role of AI in our life
• (No short term for nuclear attack)

In the next few blogs, I will focus on the consequences of population decline. Then, the following set of blogs will focus on the impacts, adaptation, and mitigation of global demographic changes, coupled with AI and electrification in developing countries.

Figures 1 and 2 describe the projected changes (by country) of population growth (Figure 1) and the present (2025) decline in global birth rate that are at the center of the demographic changes.

Figure 1 – Population growth or stagnation (Source: Statista on Facebook)

Figure 2 – Global birth rates (Source: Visual Capitalist)

Figure 3 shows an example of how human response and robotic response are starting to mingle through AI, in a way that is now penetrating all of my discussion subjects. References to all three phenomena (population growth, birth rates, and technology) will continue to show up in future blogs.

Figure 3 – This Economist article features both human reporting and the opportunity to interact with AI response (Source: The Economist)

The short-term trends that I am “discounting” in this series are not independent of the long-term threats that I discussed in previous blogs and summarized in the beginning of this blog. The five short-term trends listed above, that I will “discount,” fall into the following three categories:

• Short-term issues that are viewed as an early experience of the long-term ones—in this case, we can study the nature and extent of the long-term threats and experiment with remedies. These include weather and climate (climate change) and the role of AI and robotics in our life.
• Current short-term issues that many of us hope will disappear with no negative long-term consequences. These include almost everything that President Trump is doing and all the present attention to connections with Jeffrey Epstein.
• Long-term threats that do not have short-term counterparts, such as the actual use of nuclear weapons to attack a country.

Future blogs will try to follow developments on all these issues.

Last week’s blog started with a paragraph about the start of the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics. My wife and I are spending our evenings watching the Olympics. We both enjoy it, but my focus is on trying to identify lessons that I can attribute to global trends. It is not surprising that the NBC coverage emphasizes the US participants.  It is likely that every country, large or small, that broadcasts the Olympics and sends a delegation to take part, is focused on its own delegation. Unlike the Summer Olympics, most sports in the Winter Olympics are unfamiliar to the global public. The only informative exposure that most of us have is through the broadcasting of the events.

Meanwhile, the participating athletes need facilities where they can train. They travel the world to train and compete before they can reach the level of the Olympics and attract the financing to have a chance of success. The US has the largest delegation (232), and as I said, it’s not surprising for the TV coverage in the US focuses on US athletes. However, there were some surprises. Perhaps the biggest one had to do with Eileen Gu; there was a slew of complaints on social media about her coverage (NBC is getting ripped for its coverage of Eileen Gu):

Freestyle skiing superstar Eileen Gu has been one of the top performers at the 2026 Winter Olympics so far and is getting plenty of coverage by NBC. That’s angered a ton of people though.

Gu has been representing China since 2019 despite being raised in the United States. For many Americans who are sickened at the notion of someone being raised in America and choosing to represent one of its biggest international rivals, NBC’s ongoing coverage and compliments of Gu throughout these Olympics are unbearable…

As is obvious from the piece, Ms. Gu is not a member of the American delegation. She is a member of the Chinese delegation. She is not alone.

Below is the relevant rule in the Olympic Charter that allows athletes to choose which country they want to represent (Chapter 2, rule 41 of the Olympic Charter):

A competitor who is a national of two or more countries at the same time may represent either one of them, as he may elect. However, after having represented one country in the Olympic Games, in continental or regional games or in world or regional championships recognized by the relevant IF, he may not represent another country unless he meets the conditions set forth in paragraph 2 below that apply to persons who have changed their nationality or acquired a new nationality.

 I asked AI (through Google) for lists of US citizens that chose to compete under different flags in the 2026 Winter Olympics and 2024 Summer Olympics. Tables 1 and 2 are the results:

Table 1 – American citizens representing other countries in the 2026 Winter Olympics

Table 2 – American citizens representing other countries in the 2024 Summer Olympics

People posting on Reddit gave somewhat more nuanced answers about why.

The choice of American athletes to participate under different flags is obviously available to all athletes who qualify. This Valentines Day, one couple stood out (Heated Rivalry and Marital Bliss: Two Wives Go Head to Head in a Scary Olympic Sport – The New York Times):

It is a wild idea to throw yourself down a frozen track headfirst on a tiny sled, picking up speeds that would earn a ticket if you were driving, whipping around icy bends in a blur. It is an even wilder idea to do so in competition with your spouse. Kim Meylemans, 29, of Belgium, and Nicole Silveira, 31, of Brazil, are both competing at the Winter Olympics in Italy in the sliding sport known as skeleton. The final races and medal ceremony are set for Saturday.

Figure 1 – Kim Meylemans and Nicole Silveira, wives competing in Olympic skeleton (Source: NYT)

The “nation-selection” for qualified individuals obviously is not restricted to sport. I asked AI (through Google) the more general question of “Reasons for qualified individuals to choose a country different than the one they live in.” Here is what I got:

Qualified individuals often relocate to new countries seeking better career prospects, higher salaries, and advanced specialized training.

Key drivers include a superior quality of life, greater political/economic stability, safer environments, and personal growth through cultural immersion. International experience also builds valuable, diverse skills that boost employability.

• • • • Career Advancement& Opportunities: Seeking better job roles, higher salaries, and opportunities in specific industries (e.g., tech, finance).
      • Better Quality of Life & Environment:Seeking safer, more stable, or cleaner environments, with better healthcare and education systems.
      • Education & Professional Development:Access to top-tier universities, specialized training, and gaining international experience to enhance resumes.
      • Economic & Political Stability:Moving away from countries with high inflation, economic downturns, or political unrest to secure financial stability.
      • Lifestyle & Cultural Exploration:Desire for a change of scenery, a different climate, or to experience new cultures, languages, and lifestyles.
      • Personal Growth & Network Building:Developing soft skills like adaptability, problem-solving, and building a global professional network.
      • Family & Safety:Relocating for family reunification or to provide a safer environment for children. 

Recent political developments have given me a very personal reasoning to address the issue of “choosing” nationality:

The Trump administration is dramatically expanding an effort to revoke U.S. citizenship for foreign-born Americans as it works to curb immigration, according to two people familiar with the plans. Over the past several months, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency within the Department of Homeland Security that’s responsible for legal immigration, has been sending experts to its offices around the country or reassigning staff members to focus on whether some citizens processed through those offices could now be denaturalized, these people said.

I am one of the 50 million Americans citizens who were not born in the US. So is my son. My next blog will expand on this issue.

I am starting this blog on Friday, February 6^th, the day of the opening ceremony for the winter Olympics. Put Olympics into the search box of this blog and you will get 17 blogs from previous years. I like to watch and comment on these events. In almost all of these, the events that I have enjoyed the most are the Parades of Nations that are at the center of all Olympics. I watched the event on Friday. More than 90 “nations” are taking place in this Olympics. Most of them are sovereign states; some of them are not (Hong Kong, Macau, Puerto Rico, etc.). The number of athletes in each delegation varies from 1 to more than 250. Almost all combinations of ratios between a nation’s population and its number of participating athletes (or delegates) show up, starting from macro nations with micro delegations (India) to mini (not micro) nations with macro delegations (Switzerland and all the Scandinavian countries) and most permutations in between. Almost every delegation works hard to look different in their winter coats, but the faces of the athletes look the same – young and happy. Through this lens, the world looks like a great place to be part of.

The last Olympics which I wrote about was the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. I used the blog (August 20, 2024 blog) to correlate the medal distribution of the 10 largest medal earners with the 10 most populated countries. To do this, I compiled the socio-economic data of the 10 most populated countries, which are responsible for more than 50% of the global population and 50% of global GDP. This table was marked as Table 1 in that blog. I am using it again here (marked as Table 2) to correlate the Olympics with the change in leadership that is now taking place in global energy use.

Figure 1 (Source: ExxonMobil)

Figure 1 shows the global energy demand, compiled by ExxonMobil Outlook from 1900 until 2050, based on the following assumptions:

The global population is projected to rise by > 1.5 billion people by 2050, a 20% increase from today, and nearly all of that growth will occur in developing countries. Over that same time period, global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is projected to nearly double, with developing nations growing twice as fast as developed nations. By 2050, the developing world will account for more than half of global GDP, up from about 40% today. The combination of 1.5 billion more people and a global economy that is projected to nearly double in size drives about 25% higher energy use in developing countries in 2050 versus today.

The basic finding of this estimate is that the non-OECD countries will sharply increase their energy consumption compared to the OECD countries, where OECD stands for Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. It includes 38 countries (OECD – Wikipedia), which describe themselves in the following way:

The majority of OECD members are generally regarded as developed countries, with high-income economies, and a very high Human Development Index.

Membership in the OECD follows this process:

Following a request by a country to begin the process, the OECD Council decides whether to open accession discussions. The Council then adopts an Accession Roadmap for the country setting out the terms, conditions and process towards membership. In line with the Roadmap, up to 25 OECD expert committees engage in a series of technical discussions with a view to agreeing on recommendations as to how the country can best align with OECD standards and best practices.

The World Bank classifies countries as “developed” or “developing” countries, depending on their GNP/Capita. GNP stands for Gross National Product; the related GDP stands for Gross Domestic Product. The difference between GDP and GNP is described as follows (Google AI):

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measures the total value of all goods and services produced within a country’s borders, regardless of the producer’s nationality. Gross National Product (GNP) measures the value of goods and services produced by a country’s residents and businesses, regardless of their location.

In this blog, I will not differentiate between these two.

Table 1 shows the development designation of the world’s countries and Table 2 is a copy of Table 1 from the August 20, 2024 blog that describes the world’s 10 most populated countries with some relevant socioeconomic indicators.

Table 1 – Income designations by the World Bank

Table 2

Recent trends in 10 large countries exceeding 50% of the global population (4.5 billion people) and 50% of the global GDP (55 trillion $US). The approximate global population is taken as 8.2 billion and the approximate global GDP is approaching 110 trillion US$ (data were compiled in 2024). Present global GDP is about 120 trillion US$.

Figure 2 shows a compilation of carbon intensity (carbon emissions divided by GDP in units of million tons/trillion US$) over the period of 1870-2050 in a combination of what were labelled as developed and developing countries. This can serve as a visual reference for the decoupling of economic development and carbon emissions discussed in a blog last month (January 14, 2026) on developed countries. The paper was posted in the form of an economic letter by Zoe Arnaut, Oscar Jorda, and Fernanda Nechio, from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Franciso. In addition to Figure 2, the letter includes global carbon intensity (also a good fit to the bell curve) and separate curves for the corresponding carbon emissions and GDP growth. Below Figure 2, I included a few paragraphs that describe the methodology that these authors used. The authors used data from three developed countries: US, Japan, and Germany; and three that they label as “developing” countries: China, India, and Russia. Japan and Germany are not included in Table 2, though there is no doubt that they are developed countries. China, India, and Russia are all included in Table 2, but only India is characterized (through its GDP/Capita and Table 1) as lower-middle income. China and Russia are characterized as upper-middle income. Nevertheless, all the data that were analyzed seem to fit bell-shaped curves.

Figure 2 – 

https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/publications/economic-letter/2023/10/bell-curve-of-global-co2-emission-intensity/

Excerpts from the fitting methodology:

In this Economic Letter, we use historical CO₂ emissions data to evaluate the evolution in the emission intensity of production. This refers to the amount of CO₂ emissions per dollar of economic output produced, which can be used as a measure of emissions efficiency. The lower the emission intensity, the more likely countries are to meet their emissions targets given current trends of output growth. In assessing trends in emission intensity, we focus on the six largest carbon-emitting countries, which collectively represent about 75% of world emissions. Three of these countries—the United States, Japan, and Germany—represent advanced economies that developed early in the 20th century with highly inefficient technologies in terms of CO₂ emissions. Over time, they have brought down their emissions per dollar significantly. The other three countries—China, India, and Russia—represent emerging economies that went through their industrial transition much later in the 20th century. Because production technologies available at that time had evolved to create less pollution, these three countries now face a quicker path toward cleaner production.

From the global intensity, that gives a single bell-shaped curve.

The dashed line shows the fit from a bell-shaped curve. We create the curve using three parameters that correspond to the peak intensity, when the peak occurs, and how long it takes for intensity to decline from the peak. The shaded regions are 68% confidence bands, which indicate the uncertainty related to the combination of our parameter estimates and how well the curve fits the data. The figure shows that a bell-shaped curve fits the historical path of emission intensity very well, capturing the rise of world intensity up to the 1920s and the gradual improvement since then.

To gain a better understanding of this pattern over time, we turn to more granular data on individual countries. We focus on the world’s six highest-emitting countries, which collectively account for about 75% of global emissions as of 2021: China with 37.88% of global emissions, the United States with 16.53%, India with 8.95%, Russia with 5.80%, Japan with 3.52%, and Germany with 2.23%.

What are bell-shaped curves?

A bell-shaped function or simply ‘bell curve’ is a mathematical function having a characteristic “bell“-shaped curve. These functions are typically continuous or smooth, asymptotically approach zero for large negative/positive x, and have a single, unimodal maximum at small x. Hence, the integral of a bell-shaped function is typically a sigmoid function. Bell shaped functions are also commonly symmetric.

The most important applications of the bell-shaped curve are:

• Gaussian function, the probability density function of the normal distribution. This is the archetypal bell shaped function and is frequently encountered in nature as a consequence of the central limit theorem.

The equation is given below:

e in the equation is known as the Euler number: 2.718281… and has very important applications in mathematics and physics. As can be seen in the equation, it has three parameters (a, b, c) that completely define the curves. One of the three parameters that the authors took is the position of the peak of the curve. The peak can be evaluated after it shows up. Once we have the peak, we can draw the full curve and extrapolate the decline as far as we wish. The tipping point of the energy transition that was previously defined as decoupling the carbon emission from economic development, can be defined here in terms of fixed time.

In earlier blogs we discussed another relationship of carbon intensity. It is an example of an acronym known as IPAT (Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology). Put the term into the search box and scan through the relevant blogs. In particular, pay attention to the blog from September 24, 2024. It expands the use of the term to discuss climate change in an identity shown in Equation 2 below,

(2) CO₂ = Population x (GDP/Capita) x (energy/GDP) x (Fossil/Energy) x (CO₂/Fossil)

We can rewrite this identity in the following form:

(3) (CO₂/Capita)/(GDP/Capita) = Carbon Intensity = (energy/GDP) x (Fossil/Energy) x (CO₂/Fossil)

Now, the energy term is isolated on the right-hand side of the equation (3).

From the time dependence of the carbon intensity, plotted in the form of a bell-shaped curve, as was done in Figure 2, one should get the right-hand side of Equation 3, which effectively describes the energy use of the country and can be adjusted by the appropriate governmental authorities to manipulate decoupling of growth policy (GDP/Capita) from emissions policy (CO₂/Capita).

I will continue to examine this concept in future blogs.

Continue reading →

During my pre-retirement life, I was focused on teaching and doing research into how to improve the odds of a global shift to sustainable energy from reliance on fossil fuels. The objective in many of these activities was to lower the price of sustainable energy compared to fossil fuels and broaden its distribution. Well, this is happening now, mainly because of the investments that China is making in sustainable energy and its export of technologies that help other countries to harvest their own energy economically.

 Figure 1 – Cumulative CO2 contributions from 1751-2017 (Source: Our World in Data)

As Figure 1 shows, the United States has been the clear leader in cumulative carbon dioxide contributions to the global atmosphere (1751-2017). Europe comes second, and China comes third, with roughly half of the US emissions. US GDP/capita in 2024 was $75,490, while China’s amounted to $23,850. Carbon dioxide has stayed in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Climate change, triggered by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, is not “respecting” national boundaries. Adaptations to climate change take place on a local level. However, to take part in carbon emissions mitigation, developing countries need help. Participation in the energy transition to sustainable energy—and actively adapting to anthropogenic climate change—both take money.

China is now classified by the World Bank as an upper-middle income country and a newly industrialized nation. It started out after WWII as a developing country. Figures 2 and 3 show that China is now far ahead of the US in both sustainable energy investment and its export.

Figure 2 – Investment in renewable energy, 2015-2024 (Source: Statista)

Figure 3 – US vs China energy exports, 2018-2025 (Source Medium)

Last week’s blog showed that China is overproducing sustainable energy beyond its ability to market it economically either internally or externally. Prices are also going down beyond the producers’ ability to sustain the supply. China is not alone:

Owing to the rapid spread of solar power, Spanish energy is increasingly cheap. Between 11am and 7pm, the sunniest hours in a sunny country, prices often loiter near zero on wholesale markets (see chart). Even in Germany, which by no reasonable definition is a sunny country, but which has plenty of wind, wholesale prices were negative in 301 of the 8,760 tradable hours last year.

As solar panels and wind farms take over Europe, the question facing the continent’s policymakers is what to do with all the power they produce. Ultra-low—and indeed negative—prices suggest that it is not being put to good use at present, reflecting failures in both infrastructure and regulation. There are three main ways that firms and regulators could establish a more efficient market: sending energy to areas where there is no surplus, shifting demand to hours when energy is plentiful, and storing energy as electricity, fuel or heat.

Not surprisingly, oil producers, including the US, are trying to fight back:

Brazilian diplomat and COP30 President André Aranha Corrêa do Lago has committed to lead an effort in 2026 to create two road maps: one on halting and reversing deforestation and another on transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner.

What those road maps will look like is still unclear. They are likely to be centered on a process for countries to discuss and debate how to reverse deforestation and phase out fossil fuels.

Over the coming months, Corrêa plans to convene high-level meetings among global leaders, including fossil fuel producers and consumers, international organizations, industries, workers, scholars and advocacy groups.

For the road map to both be accepted and be useful, the process will need to address the global market issues of supply and demand, as well as equity. For example, in some fossil fuel-producing countries, oil, gas or coal revenues are the main source of income. What can the road ahead look like for those countries that will need to diversify their economies?

Developing countries are the most sensitive to the price tension between sustainable energy and fossil fuels. I wrote about this in an earlier blog (April 29, 2014) and took part in a short movie documenting the issue in India’s Sundarbans: Quest for Energy (Short 2012).  I will return to this issue in two weeks as part of this series on changing global leadership.

I couldn’t find appropriate graphs to illuminate the conflicts, so I went to AI (through Google) to give me some help with two questions:

Q1 – Compare US and China contributions to transition developing countries to use sustainable energies:

China  dominates through massive physical infrastructure projects and supply chain control, the U.S. focuses on high-standard institutional finance and “values-driven” partnerships.

1. Financial Contributions and Mechanisms

• China’s Bilateral Lead:China’s bilateral and regional climate-related assistance has surpassed that of the U.S., providing approximately $3 billion annually in climate-friendly finance compared to the U.S.’s $1.5 billion.
• S. Multilateral Strength:The U.S. remains the larger contributor when accounting for its stake in Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs). U.S. multilateral contributions average $5.9 billion per year, while China’s are roughly $0.9 billion.
• Concessionality:A critical distinction remains the quality of finance. U.S. and other OECD contributions are typically 75% concessional (grants or low-interest loans). In contrast, only an estimated 22% of China’s climate finance is grant-equivalent, with the rest provided as non-concessional debt.

2. Strategic Infrastructure Initiatives

• China’s Green BRI:In 2025, energy projects under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) reached a record $94 billion, with renewable energy (solar, wind, waste-to-energy) accounting for $18.3 billion. However, 2025 also saw a surge in fossil fuel engagement, with oil and gas projects totaling $71.5 billion—the “dirtiest” and “greenest” year in the BRI’s history.

• S. Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGI):The U.S. leads this G7 initiative aiming to mobilize $600 billion by 2027 for high-standard infrastructure. Key projects in 2025-2026 include the Lobito Atlantic Railway Corridor in Africa, supporting clean energy access and critical mineral supply chains.

• Energy Generation Capacity:In 2025, Chinese BRI engagement added at least 2 GW of generation capacity to developing nations, including 14.6 GW of solar and 7.6 GW of wind.

3. Technology and Supply Chain Dominance

• Solar and Wind Manufacturing:China produces roughly 80% of the world’s solar components and has led the world in wind power capacity for 15 consecutive years. This allows Chinese firms to offer renewable technologies at lower costs to developing markets.

• Critical Minerals:China refines 19 out of 20 strategic minerals essential for the energy transition, maintaining a 70% average market share. The U.S. is responding by financing mining and processing facilities in countries like Brazil and Tanzania through the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to build alternative supply chains.

4. Summary Comparison

Q2: What are the second Trump’s administration efforts on these issues?

In 2026, the second Trump administration has significantly altered the U.S. approach to the global energy transition, shifting from climate-focused aid to a policy of “energy dominance” centered on fossil fuels and nuclear power.

1. Withdrawal from International Climate Frameworks

The administration has aggressively decoupled the U.S. from the global climate architecture:

2. Shift in Energy Assistance Priorities

Foreign energy aid has been reoriented away from renewables toward traditional and emerging domestic technologies:

3. Domestic Rollbacks Affecting Global Standing

The administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (2025) has neutralized many international climate commitments by:

4. Impact on the U.S.-China Rivalry

These moves have created a “leadership vacuum” that China has actively filled:

The change in global leadership in financing now extends beyond energy. One of the best indicators is the decline in US$ as an exchange currency for global trade.

THE DOLLAR is meant to be a source of safety. Lately, however, it has been a cause of fear. Since its peak in mid-January the greenback has fallen by over 9% against a basket of major currencies. Two-fifths of that fall has happened since April 1st, even as the yield on ten-year Treasuries has crept up by 0.2 percentage points. That mix of rising yields and a falling currency is a warning sign: if investors are fleeing even though returns are up, it must be because they think America has become more risky. Rumours are rife that big foreign asset managers are dumping greenbacks.

I will return to this issue in future blogs. 

July 4^th, this year, marks the 250^th birthday of the US. I will return to this issue repeatedly in the coming year. This blog and the next few, will focus on energy. This week’s focus is the connection between energy use and climate change. Just for “fun,” you can put “rnergy use and climate change” into the search box and see how the computer includes almost every blog that I have written since April 22, 2012. However, if you instead search for “energy-mass equivalence,” you will get only the blog from July 9, 2013, which directly discusses the equivalence through the most broadly used physics equation, shown below:

1. E = MC²

E is the energy, M is the mass, and C is the speed of light in a vacuum. Basically, what the equation is telling us is that in one form or another, all the “stuff” in the universe is energy. As far as we know, the only planet that can comprehend all of this is ours. When, during the 18^th – 19^th centuries, some on our planet found that a shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy (Industrial Revolution) would better their lives, it had major consequences on many activities. One of the most important transitions of the Industrial Revolution was the start of the shift toward fossil fuels as energy sources. Now, we are in the middle of the next shift in energy sources. This shift is currently experiencing changes in leadership that we will start to examine in this blog. We will continue to examine the implications of this energy shift in areas such as financing, innovations, and developing countries, in the next few blogs.

Until recently, the use of fossil fuels was directly correlated with economic progress. The relationship between the two is called energy intensity. This topic was discussed in an earlier blog (December 20, 2022) and in last week’s blog. Figure 1 from last week’s blog shows the recent emerging separation between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth in six places: the US, four European countries, and the European Union as a bloc. There are others, but all are developed countries; China is not among the list yet. This blog is focused on the shift in the leadership in energy use from the US to China.    bbbnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

The AI summary below starts by addressing why China cannot, yet, be characterized as a country that separates carbon emissions from economic growth. It continues with data about China taking the leadership role from the US in replacing fossil fuels with sustainable energy sources:

AI Through Google:

China has demonstrated a “weak decoupling” of carbon emissions from its GDP growth: its economy has grown faster than its carbon emissions. In fact, recent data indicates that national carbon emissions have plateaued or experienced slight declines, even as GDP has increased, suggesting an emerging stronger separation. 

Decoupling Status

• • • Weak Decoupling:From 1990 to 2020, China’s real GDP increased by over 14 times, while energy-related CO2 emissions increased by approximately four times. This indicates that economic growth has consistently outpaced the growth of emissions, thus achieving a state of weak decoupling at the national level.
    • Progressive Decoupling:In the period from 2012 to 2017, the annual growth rate of emissions decelerated significantly (from 10% to 0.3%) due to gains in energy efficiency and a change in consumption patterns, even as the economy continued to grow.
    • Emerging Strong Decoupling:Recent analyses (from early 2024 through Q3 2025) suggest that China’s CO2 emissions have plateaued or slightly fallen for 18 consecutive months, a trend driven by a record surge in clean energy adoption (solar, wind, electric vehicles). This is a potential shift towards strong decoupling, where absolute emissions decrease while the economy expands. 

Figure 1 clearly shows the change in countries leading the transition towards electricity powered by clean energy production. According to the graph, China surpassed the US in clean energy generation around 2013 and has continued this trend at a much higher rate than US production.

Figure 1- Clean energy generation by country, 1991-2021

However, Figure 2 shows that China’s electricity production is still heavily dependent on coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels.

Figure 2 – Graph of China’s electricity production by source, 1985-2024
(By Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser – Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser (2020) – “Energy”. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: ‘https://ourworldindata.org/energy [Online Resource], CC BY 4.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China#)

Meanwhile, Figures 3 and 4 show what seems to be a different story. The greenhouse gas emissions and the coal used by the US to generate electricity are in clear decline over the last 20 years. This is an apparent strengthening of the argument that was made in last week’s blog that, in spite of President Trump’s unchanging negative opinion about the energy transition in his first term, the US shift to sustainable energy has been resilient to his attitude. However, the argument goes, he learned from his “mistakes” in his first term to make the second term more effective. I mentioned in earlier blogs that the energy picture for 2025, the start of President Trump’s second term, are not yet fully available. However, Figures 3 and 4 are extended to include 2025. You’d need a magnifying glass to deduce the trend to 2025 but both figures show a small increase. To decide whether the small increase is “noise” in the data or the start of a new trend, one needs to wait!

Figure 3 – US greenhouse gas emissions, 2005-2025 (Source: NYT: U.S. Emissions Jumped in 2025 as Coal Power Rebounded)

Figure 4 – US electricity generation by source, 2005-2025 (Source: NYT: U.S. Emissions Jumped in 2025 as Coal Power Rebounded)

In the meantime, Figure 5 strengthens the argument of leadership change by estimating the deadline for complete energy transition to sustainable energy. PV Magazine summarizes this argument with the following short paragraphs:

The United States could nearly eliminate its carbon emissions and air pollution by 2148 if it maintained a pace of adding 43 GW of renewables per year, set during the first seven months of 2025, and achieved “near-electrification” of each energy-using sector.

Stanford University Prof. Mark Jacobson presented that finding and results for 149 other countries in a research paper that was recently published in RSC Sustainability.

The “most substantial and encouraging finding,” Jacobson said, is the “rate by which China is transitioning its energy economy.”

China, which added renewable generating capacity at an annual pace of 397 GW during the first 10 months of 2025, could at that pace eliminate carbon emissions and air pollution by 2051 with near-electrification of all energy sectors.

Figure 5 – Rate of energy transition, China vs. US, existing vs. projected (source: PV Magazine)

An article in Nature summarizes the backsliding argument:

Although climate action is undermined by political interests and institutional inertia, multiple safeguards are in place to prevent backsliding on progress so far, and positive feedbacks reinforce progress despite opposing forces. Key elements of climate action are irreversible and can be further strengthened by commitments, investments and positive narratives.

There is a growing political divide with forces at work, such as the deliberate efforts by the current US administration to weaken climate policies, discredit climate science and promote fossil fuels, which is cause for concern. This creates uncertainty in the direction of long-term policy to tackle climate change, which undermines the investments needed to drive decarbonization. Nevertheless, ambitious climate action is well underway and continues to evolve under the auspices of the Paris Agreement. Policies and investments have driven rapid cost reductions in renewable energy and batteries, while expanding the deployment of a range of low-carbon technologies.

China is continuing to accelerate the transition, both in research and data gathering:

China’s Ministry of Finance, alongside several other of the country’s ministries, central bank, and regulators, announced the release of its new “Corporate Sustainable Disclosure Standard No. 1 – Climate (Trial),” a new standard, aligned with the IFRS Foundation’s climate reporting standard, aimed at enabling companies to report on climate-related risks, opportunities and impacts, and to support China’s green development goals.

According to the ministry, the new trial climate reporting standard forms part of China’s efforts to addressing climate change and accelerating its comprehensive green economic and social development transformation, by providing a key mechanism to enable green and low-carbon development, as well as to solve greenwashing problems through the standardization of information disclosure, and support the guidance of capital flows to low-carbon projects.

The country also seems to be overproducing and reducing the prices of solar cells:

In a factory in a smoggy corner of China’s inland Shaanxi province, the country’s world-leading solar industry is on display. Robots scoot around carrying square slices of polysilicon, a substance usually made from quartz. The slices, each 180mm across and a hair’s breadth thick, are called wafers. They are bathed in chemicals, shot with lasers and etched with silver. All that turns them into solar cells, which convert sunlight into electricity. Several dozen of these cells are then bundled together into a solar module. The factory, which is owned by LONGi Green Energy Technology, a giant of solar manufacturing, can churn out about 16m cells a day.

China’s solar industry is dominant across every stage of the global supply chain, from the polysilicon to the finished product. Module production capacity in the country reached roughly 1,000 gigawatts (GW) last year, almost five times that of the rest of the world combined, according to Wood Mackenzie, a consultancy. What is more, it has tripled since 2021, outgrowing the rest of the world, despite efforts by America and others to boost domestic production. China is now able to produce more than twice as many solar modules as the world installs each year.

Meanwhile, under Trump, the US is continuing to test the resilience of the shift toward renewable energy:

By pulling the United States out of the main international climate treaty, seizing Venezuelan crude oil and using government power to resuscitate the domestic coal industry while choking off clean energy, the Trump administration is not just ignoring climate change, it is likely making the problem worse.

President Trump has never been shy about rejecting the scientific reality of global warming: It’s a “hoax,” he has said, a “scam,” and a “con job.”

In recent days his administration has slammed the door on every possible avenue of global cooperation on the environment. At the same time, it is sending the message that it wants the world to be awash in fossil fuels sold by America, no matter the consequences. The moves follow one of the hottest years on record, during which scientists say climate change supercharged raging wildfires in Los Angeles, deadly flooding in Texas, and a Category 5 hurricane that ravaged Caribbean islands.

I will continue to follow the dynamics.

Last week’s blog tried to summarize President Trump’s actions at the start of his second term to formalize his denial of climate change. It ended with the observation that his denial stands in contrast to the major progress that was made in 2025, globally and in the US, in the energy transition away from fossil fuels. The year marked great successes in mitigating the prospects of human-triggered (anthropogenic), destructive climate change.

The main argument the Trump administration raises is that any action away from fossil fuels and towards sustainable fuels will damage the economy, thus hurting the people who voted for him in the presidential election. Meanwhile, there has been plenty of progress in the global energy transition. These dynamics can be summarized as Trump trying to swim against the current of progress. Last week’s blog described the present US administration’s “swimming” in a manner similar to most press coverage throughout 2025. This blog will start discussing the “current” instead; this, too, is a more recent media trend:

‘A colossal own goal’: Trump’s exit from global climate treaties will have little effect outside US

How To Lose The War On Renewable Energy, Bigly

The correlation between economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions was summarized in the IPAT (Impact, Population, Access, and Technology) equation that was discussed in multiple previous blogs. Just put IPAT into the search box to find all the references for the term. A full discussion of the many aspects of the term can be read in my blog titled “IPAT: Math, Equation, Identity, and Opinion?” (September 24, 2024). The application of the term to the correlation between carbon dioxide emissions and the GDP is shown in equation 1.

1. CO₂= Population x (GDP/Capita) x (energy/GDP) x (Fossil/Energy) x (CO₂/Fossil)

This blog focuses on 6 figures that show the clear separation of carbon dioxide emissions in developed countries (Figure 1) and 5 other graphs focused on the progress recently made in the energy transition. Carbon dioxide emissions per capita by the three largest emitters are shown in Figure 2, the global temperature rise is shown in Figure 3, and Figure 4 shows the global rise in clean energy, electrification, and efficiency. Growth in applications needed for effective use of sustainable energy are shown in Figure 5, and the projected global trends in fossil fuel use, carbon dioxide emissions, and carbon capture and storage are shown in Figure 6.

The first three graphs are posted from Our World in Data, with the primary sources cited in the graphs.

  Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

The last three graphs are taken from a summary of energy transitions in 2025 (The Energy Transition in 2025: What to Watch For – RMI). Again, the primary sources are included in the graphs.

Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 6

President Trump’s first term spanned the period of January 20, 2017 to January 20, 2021. His attitude toward climate change has been similar in his two terms, although it seemed a bit less intense in his first term compared to what he is showing now. A thorough examination of the six graphs above shows no indication that his policies have had any visible impact upon the trend towards clean energy. The prognosis is that the impacts of this term will be similar. The focus of the next blog will be on changes in leadership within the energy transition that have resulted directly from the Trump administration’s changing attitude. 

(Source: Visual Capitalist)

Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration for his second term (January 20, 2025), The New York Times (NYT) started to include a weekly section titled “The Week In Trump.” I started to collect these sections on February 14^th, and I stopped collecting them on April 4^th. I have now forgotten my exact reasoning for starting and stopping these collections. I suspect that these decisions correlated with the density of the presidential actions, most of them through Executive Orders (EO). At last count, he had made 225 EOs. To conclude 2025, NYT, like many other publications, listed many of these decisions in its yearly roundup. This blog shows just the decisions from “Looking Back at a Historic Year of Dismantling Climate Policies – The New York Times” that directly address environmental issues:

From the moment President Trump won re-election last year, it was clear that major upheavals were coming for the nation’s climate and energy policies. Few could have predicted just how sweeping the overhauls would be.

Yesterday, my colleagues published an article detailing many of the changes. Here is a partial tally of the major environmental policy moves enacted by the Trump administration.

International Diplomacy

On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, the pact among almost all nations to fight climate change.

Weeks later, he said the United States would not be contributing a $4 billion donation to the Green Climate Fund, which helps poor countries adapt to climate change.

The administration dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded a range of climate programs around the globe.

It has pressured other companies to buy American oil and gas as part of trade negotiations.

And last month, the Trump administration did not send any representatives to COP30, the United Nations climate summit in Brazil.

Environmental Regulations

In March, Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, reframed the mission of the agency to focus on promoting economic activity rather than regulating pollution. Since then, the E.P.A. has unleashed changes that have curtailed the government’s ability to limit dangerous pollutants.

It said it would revoke the scientific determination that underpins the government’s legal authority to combat climate change.

It moved to repeal a Biden-era regulation that required coal-burning power plants to cut emissions of mercury, a neurotoxin.

It proposed freezing anti-pollution and fuel-efficiency standards for cars, setting up a clash with California, which has set more stringent standards.

The E.P.A. said it would strip federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands and streams, a move made easier by a recent Supreme Court ruling.

The agency also intends to give utilities an additional year to begin cleaning up coal ash landfills, which can leach toxic metals into nearby waterways.

And it said it would delay deadlines to meet drinking water standards for two harmful “forever chemicals” and roll back limits on four other related chemicals.

Energy

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order declaring an “energy emergency” and calling on the government to expand support for fossil fuels while curtailing support for clean energy.

Since then, his administration has opened up more than one billion acres of federal lands and waters for oil and gas drilling.

The E.P.A. has revoked regulations that would have made it more difficult to build natural gas-fired power plants.

And the Energy Department has intervened to stop aging coal plants from being shut down.

At the same time, Trump and his allies in Congress have repealed subsidies for solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles.

Agencies have slowed or stopped federal approvals for new wind and solar projects.

And the administration has repealed or blocked vehicle efficiency standards that would have pushed automakers to shift away from gasoline-burning cars.

All told, companies canceled more than $32 billion in planned clean energy investments in 2025.

Climate science

It closed the independent research arm of the E.P.A. and assigned remaining employees the task of approving the use of new chemicals.

The E.P.A. said it would strip federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands and streams, a move made easier by a recent Supreme Court ruling.

It proposed freezing anti-pollution and fuel-efficiency standards for cars, setting up a clash with California, which has set more stringent standards.

The Trump administration has defunded climate research, erased scientific data and removed terms like “climate change” from federal websites.

It proposed to erase money for climate science in next year’s budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, while eliminating climate laboratories and research on severe storms.

It slashed funding and staffing for the National Climate Assessment, the federal government’s premier report on how global warming is affecting the country. Instead, Chris Wright, the energy secretary, selected five skeptics of climate science to write their own assessment of global warming, which was criticized by dozens of climate researchers who accused them of mischaracterizing scientific findings.

And the administration also said it would break up the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, a world-leading Earth science research institution.

That’s just a snapshot of the changes we covered this year. We’ll keep reporting on this consequential story in 2026.

The agency also intends to give utilities an additional year to begin cleaning up coal ash landfills, which can leach toxic metals into nearby waterways.

And it said it would delay deadlines to meet drinking water standards for two harmful “forever chemicals” and roll back limits on four other related chemicals.

The global impact of these attacks on environmental policies is not yet fully available. Reuters summarized them in the following way:

LITTLETON, Colorado, Dec 30 (Reuters) – For supporters of the energy transition, 2025 had plenty to complain about: the scrapping of U.S. clean energy policies, wind droughts in Europe, corporate retreats from wind power generation and a resurgence in coal-fired power output.

Yet there were also developments to celebrate, including record deployment, opens new tab of battery storage systems, historic power generation shares from solar farms in dozens of countries, and continued growth in electric vehicle sales in key car markets

This blog was based on a summary of an online article in the NYT that was dated December 22, 2025, although a lot has happened since then. I subscribe to both the online and print versions of the NYT and this article has been a rather extreme example of how today’s different news delivery methods or mediums affect the story. The print version of the same article has a different title and a completely different—longer—format (How Trump’s First Year Reshaped U.S. Energy and Climate Policy – The New York Times). The online version, however, is constantly updated. You can have access anytime to both versions.

The next few blogs will address the global and US progress that was made in 2025 in mitigating and adapting to climate change against the background 2023’s distribution of fossil fuel consumption by country, shown at the top of this blog.