Sliced: Trump Sinks Global Climate Progress, Again
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Written by: Jay Tipton
Back in April, I wrote with cautious optimism about what seemed like a long-awaited breakthrough in global climate policy. In my Sliced essay “Pricing the Carbon of Marine Shipping,” I highlighted the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) plan to finally place a price on shipping emissions – one of the most ambitious steps yet toward cleaning up a sector that had long escaped accountability. But even then, I added a note of warning: “Implementation will roll out in phases, but it’s important to note that nothing is yet set in stone.”
Sadly, that caution proved prophetic. What once looked like the beginning of real progress has now run aground in the familiar shoals of politics and power – led by none other than the world’s most notorious climate villain, Donald Trump.
Six months after the IMO’s initial plan set sail, the fragile progress has cracked, and the ship is sinking fast. This week, the IMO voted 57–49 to delay adoption of its Net-Zero Framework by a full year, bowing to political pressure led by the Trump administration and a handful of petrostate allies. Trump posted: “The United States will NOT stand for this Global Green New Scam Tax on Shipping, and will not adhere to it in any way, shape, or form” and threatened sanctions and tariffs on nations that supported it, which is an act of raw geopolitical intimidation that derailed years of delicate negotiation.
Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and others joined the U.S. in pushing for postponement, citing “economic fairness” concerns. The irony, of course, is bitter – the same economies most responsible for the carbon overshoot now claim to be protecting the developing world from the costs of decarbonization.
The result is more than a procedural delay – it’s a retreat from reality. Every year of hesitation locks in emissions that no future technology can erase. Shipping produces over a billion tonnes of CO2 annually, and without a firm price on carbon, that number will rise as global trade expands. The IMO’s carbon levy, once poised to generate $10 billion a year for clean fuel transitions and climate adaptation, would have been the first global, industry-wide climate mechanism of its kind. Instead, it’s likely now destined to be another casualty of nationalist obstructionism masquerading as economic populism.
The Trump administration’s campaign against the framework is especially galling. Having already withdrawn from the Paris Agreement (again), the U.S. now actively undermines global climate governance from the outside. It is one thing to opt out of collective responsibility; it is another to use economic pressure to ensure others cannot act either. This is not leadership. It is sabotage. The self-proclaimed defenders of “energy independence” are, in practice, defending dependency on fossil fuels that imperil the planet’s stability.
The timing could hardly be worse. Just days before the IMO vote, scientists reported a record jump in atmospheric CO2 concentrations in 2024. The Guardian’s headline captured it bluntly: “Record leap in CO2 fuels fears of accelerating global heating.” We are no longer in the era of warning…we are in the era of consequence. The world’s oceans are warming faster than models predicted with extreme weather events already eroding the economic security of nations faster than diplomacy can respond. Against this backdrop, the spectacle of wealthy nations blocking modest climate measures feels not just negligent, but nihilistic.
To call the IMO’s delay “disappointing” is an understatement. It is a failure of courage. Small island nations that contributed almost nothing to the climate crisis are again told to wait while larger powers squabble over short-term trade impacts. Industry leaders who invested in low-carbon shipping now face renewed uncertainty. And the credibility of the IMO – one of the few UN bodies capable of enforcing global environmental standards – has been damaged at a critical moment.
The IMO’s one-year delay is now a test of whether multilateral climate governance can survive a resurgent era of protectionism. The next twelve months will reveal whether nations can summon the will to defend the principle that no economy, however large, is exempt from planetary limits.
Sadly, the world has lost another year it simply cannot afford to lose.
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