The world’s ice is disappearing — and with it, our planet’s memory of itself.  At a very southern ribbon-cutting ceremony on the Antarctic snowpack Wednesday, scientists stored long cores of ice taken from two dying Alpine glaciers inside a 30-meter tunnel — safe, for now, from both climate change and global geopolitical upheaval. Each ice sample contains tiny microbes and bubbles of air trapped in the ancient past. Future scientists, using techniques unknown today, might use the ice cores to unlock new information about virus evolution, or global weather patterns.  Extracting ice from glaciers around the world and carrying it to Antarctica involved complex scientific and diplomatic collaboration — exactly the type of work denigrated by the Trump Administration of the United States, said Olivier Poivre d’Arvor, a special envoy of France’s President Emmanuel Macron and ambassador to the Poles. Scientists are “threatened by those who doubt science and want to muzzle it. Climate change is not an hoax, as President Trump and others say. Not at all,” Poivre d’Arvor said during an online press conference Wednesday. Glaciers are retreating worldwide thanks to global warming. In some regions their information about the past will be lost forever in the coming decades, no matter what is done to curb the Earth’s temperature. “Our time machines are melting very quickly,” said Carlo Barbante, an Italian scientist who is the vice chair of the Ice Memory Foundation (IMF). The tunnel, known as the Ice Memory Sanctuary, is just under a kilometer from the French-Italian Concordia base in Antarctica. It rests on an ice sheet 3,200 meters thick and is a constant minus 52 degrees. Scientists said they believed the tunnel would stay structurally stable for more than 70 years before needing to be remade. As well as the two ice samples, which arrived by ship and plane this month, the scientists have collected cores from eight other glaciers from Svalbard to Kilimanjaro. These are currently in freezers awaiting transportation to Antarctica. Co-founder of the sanctuary Jérôme Chappellaz, a French sociologist, called for more such facilities to be opened across Antarctica, and said he expected China would soon create its own store for Tibetan ice. Poivre d’Arvor called for an international treaty that commits countries to donate ice to the Sanctuary and guarantee access for scientists. France and Italy have collaborated on building the sanctuary and provided resources to assist with the transportation of the samples. “This is not a short-term investment but a strategic choice grounded in scientific responsibility and international cooperation,” Gianluigi Consoli, an official from the Italian Ministry of Universities and Research. On the inside of the door that locks the ice away, someone had written in black marker “Quo Vadis?” Latin for “where are you going?” It’s a question that hangs over even the protected southern continent. Antarctica is governed by a 1959 treaty that suspended territorial claims and preserved the continent for the purposes of science and peace. With President Donald Trump’s grab for territory near the North Pole in Greenland, the internationalist ideals that have brought stability to the Antarctic for over half a century appear to no be longer shared by the U.S. But William Muntean, who was senior advisor for Antarctica at the State Department during Trump’s first term Trump and under President Joe Biden, said there had been “no sign” U.S. policy in Antarctica would change, nor did he expect it to. “The southern polar region is very different from the western hemisphere and from the Arctic,” Muntean said. The U.S. doesn’t claim sovereignty, military competition is negligible, nor are there commercially viable energy or mining projects at the South Pole. “Taking disruptive or significant actions in Antarctica would not advance any Trump administration priorities.” That said, he added, “you can never rule out a change.”

BRUSSELS — The world is rapidly closing in on the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit that serves as a threshold for ever more dangerous climate change, European scientists have warned.  Average global temperatures are now around 1.4C higher than during the pre-industrial era, according to data released Wednesday by the European Union’s Copernicus planetary observation service. The scientists also found that 2025 was the third-hottest year on record. If this warming trend continues, temperatures will breach the 1.5C limit set out in the Paris Agreement before the end of this decade. In the 2015 landmark climate accord, governments pledged to limit global warming to “well below” 2C and ideally to 1.5C.  The threats from climate change, such as more intense heat waves and rising sea levels, increase with every tenth of a degree of warming. Scientists also warn that passing 1.5C risks triggering so-called tipping points, from rainforest diebacks to ocean circulation collapse, that bring about irreversible and extreme climatic changes.  In theory, the world could return to 1.5C after crossing it by using technology to remove vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, a scenario known as “overshoot.” This technology, however, is not yet available at the scale required. “With the 1.5C in the terms of the Paris Agreement around the corner, now we are effectively entering a phase where it will be about managing that overshoot,” Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, told reporters at a press conference. “It’s basically inevitable that we will pass that threshold, and it’s up to us to decide how we want to deal with the enhanced and increased higher risk that we will face as a consequence of this,” he said. The longer and greater the overshoot, the bigger the risk, he added. The hottest year — and the only one so far to exceed the 1.5C threshold — remains 2024 with 1.6C. However, the Paris Agreement targets refer to long-term trends rather than those lasting a few years, and Buontempo said three different Copernicus models, including five-year averages and 30-year linear trends, showed warming has now reached around 1.4C.  Copernicus data shows that 2025 was the third-warmest year on record at 1.47C above pre-industrial levels, just marginally cooler than 2023. That’s despite El Niño, a naturally occurring climate pattern that tends to bring hotter temperatures on top of the human-induced warming, ending in mid-2024 and a cooling La Niña phase emerging late last year. “The last three years in particular have been extremely warm compared to earlier years,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director at Copernicus. Taken together, she noted, the three-year period exceeded 1.5C, something that had not occurred before.  “The primary reason for these record temperatures is the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, dominated by the burning of fossil fuels,” Burgess said. “As greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the air, temperatures continue to rise, including in the ocean; sea levels continue to rise, and glaciers, sea ice and ice sheets continue to melt.”  For the European continent, 2025 also marked the third-warmest year on record, the data shows. Hot and windy conditions contributed to record wildfires, resulting in Europe’s worst fire-related emissions since monitoring began 23 years ago. Half the world experienced an above-average number of days causing strong heat stress, meaning temperatures that feel like 32C or more. Burgess added that some regions — including most of Australia, parts of Northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula — saw more days with extreme heat stress, when perceived temperatures reach dangerous levels above 46C. “The summers we are facing now are very different to the summers that our parents experienced, very different to the summers that our grandparents experienced,” Burgess said. “Children today will be exposed to more heat hazards and more climate hazards than perhaps we were or our parents were.” The polar regions saw significantly higher temperatures in 2025, with the Antarctic experiencing its hottest year and the Arctic its second-warmest year on record.  Accordingly, the expanse of polar sea ice was below average throughout the year, and in February 2025 briefly hit a record low since monitoring began in the 1970s. The shrinking of the ice caps accelerates global warming by reducing the amount of sunlight reflected back into space.  European science officials also expressed concern about the Trump administration’s climate science cuts and erasure of datasets.  “Data and observations are obviously central to our efforts to confront climate change … and these challenges don’t know any borders,” said Florian Pappenberger, director of the European Centre For Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which oversees Copernicus. “Therefore, it is of course concerning that we have an issue in terms of data.”  Hanne Cokelaere contributed to this report.

The head of the U.S. oil industry’s top lobbying group said Tuesday that American producers are prepared to be a “stabilizing force” in Iran if the regime there falls — even as they remain skeptical about returning to Venezuela after the capture of leader Nicolás Maduro. “This is good news for the Iranian people — they’re taking freedom into their own hands,” American Petroleum Institute President Mike Sommers said of the mass protests that have embroiled Iran in recent days. President Donald Trump is said to be weighing his options for potential actions against the Iranian government in response to its violent crackdown on the protests. “Our industry is committed to being a stabilizing force in Iran if they decide to overturn the regime,” Sommers told reporters following API’s annual State of American Energy event in Washington. “It’s an important oil play in the world, about the sixth-largest producer now — they could absolutely do more,” he said of the country. Iran’s oil industry, despite being ravaged by years of U.S. sanctions, is still considered to be structurally sound, unlike that of Venezuela’s. In order for companies to return to Venezuela, on the other hand, they will need long-term investment certainty, operational security and rule of law — all of which will take significant time, Sommers said. “If they get those three big things right, I think there will be investment going to Venezuela,” he said. Background: Experts who spoke earlier from the stage at API’s event also underscored the differences between Iran and Venezuela, whose oil infrastructure has deteriorated under years of neglect from the socialist regime. “Iran was able to add production under the weight of the most aggressive sanctions the U.S. could possibly deploy,” said Kevin Book, managing director at the energy research firm ClearView Energy Partners. “Imagine what they could do with Western engineering.” Bob McNally, a former national security and energy adviser to President George W. Bush who now leads the energy and geopolitics consulting firm Rapidan Energy Group, said the prospects for growing Iran’s oil production are “completely different” from Venezuela’s. “You can imagine our industry going back there — we would get a lot more oil, a lot sooner than we will out of Venezuela,” McNally said. “That’s more conventional oil right near infrastructure, and gas as well.” No equity stakes: Sommers told reporters that API would oppose any efforts by the Trump administration to take a stake in oil companies that invest in Venezuela. The administration has taken direct equity stakes in a range of U.S. companies in a bid to boost the growth of sectors it sees as a geopolitical priority, such as semiconductor manufacturing and critical minerals. “We would be opposed to the United States government taking a stake in any American oil and gas companies, period,” Sommers said. “We’d have to know a little bit more about what the administration is proposing in terms of stake in [Venezuelan state-owned oil company] PdVSA, but we’re not for the nationalization of oil companies or for there to be a national oil company in the United States.”

LONDON — The U.K. government must “dare to have principles” and help Greenland repel threats by Donald Trump, a senior minister in Greenland’s government told lawmakers in London.  Speaking after a briefing with MPs in the U.K. parliament Tuesday, Greenland’s Business and Energy Minister Naaja Nathanielsen said: “Dialogue is really, really what is needed at this point. And … even though problems in this world [are] complex, this should not be a reason not to go into these complex dialogues. They can be solved through dialogue instead of violence and force.”  Nathanielsen held the meetings amid growing pressure from the White House, where Trump is ramping up his threats to take control of Greenland — a minerals-rich, semi-autonomous territory within Denmark — including by military force.  The region is essential to securing U.S. security against threats from Russia and China, Trump claims. The U.S. will take over Greenland “the easy way” or “the hard way,” he said last week.  Nathanielsen said: “We feel betrayed. We feel that the rhetoric is offensive, as we have stated many times before — but also bewildering, because we have done nothing but support the notion that Greenland is a part of the American national self-interest.”  Nathanielsen made her plea to politicians in London after Denmark warned U.S. aggression would cripple the NATO military alliance. The leaders of Denmark and Greenland both say Greenland is “not for sale”.  DEAR KEIR Asked about the message she was bringing to U.K. politicians and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Nathanielsen said: “To insist on having the dialogue, even though it’s difficult, to dare to have principles and belief in international law. I think we will all be asked about that in the next couple of years.”  She said she would “like to repeat my gratitude” for Starmer’s support of Greenland, and said the U.K. must “insist upon the global community upholding international law” and “stress the relevance of NATO as a relevant and important alliance.” Starmer has warned Trump that Greenland’s future must be decided by Denmark and Greenland alone. Danish PM Mette Frederiksen has told the U.S. it has no right to the Arctic territory.  But the U.K. leader is also keen not to get into fights with Trump on too many fronts, at a time when his government is trying to both secure a favorable U.S. trade deal and influence the White House’s approach to striking peace between Russia and Ukraine.  Trump says that securing Greenland is essential for bolstering U.S. security. But Nordic governments have rejected his claims that Chinese and Russian vessels are operating in waters near Greenland.   Nathanielsen said Greenland did not “detect an actual threat” but was “quite content” with increased monitoring around the Arctic.  Leaders in Greenland are clear that “we have no intention of becoming American” and are “quite happy with being part of the Kingdom of Denmark,” she stressed.   She would not be drawn on whether Greenland would expect backing from NATO allies, including the U.K. if the U.S. were to invade Greenland.  Keir Starmer has warned Trump that Greenland’s future must be decided by Denmark and Greenland alone. | Pool Photo by Ludovic Marin via EPA “If this scenario was to happen, I think everybody in this room and everybody in your countries would have to figure out: What is this new world order about?” she said.   In that scenario “we would all be under attack,” she added.  END OF APPEASEMENT One British MP who helped organized Nathanielsen’s visit said it was time for the U.K. government to take a firmer line on Trump’s aggression in the region.  “I have a huge sympathy, because I know and I can understand it. If you’re sitting in a foreign office right now, then this is a problem which would keep you awake at night,” said Brendan O’Hara, a Scottish National Party MP and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Greenland.   But the time for “trying to keep this guy [Trump] on board” has gone, O’Hara added.  “I don’t blame them for trying. But when you appease somebody to this extent, and then they still openly talk about invading a NATO ally — it’s incredible,” he said.   Dywne Ryan Menezes, founder of the Polar Research and Policy Initiative think tank, which also helped organize Tuesday’s briefing, said the U.K. could do more to show its support for Greenland.   “I’ve been saying for years now: With Greenland, we can’t see it as a small country. 
It might be a small country population-wise, but it is a geopolitical giant that’s getting hotter by the day,” he said.  Menezes urged ministers to prioritize free trade talks with Greenland. “It’s one thing we can do to demonstrate that, you know, we take it seriously. It is action, and not just words.”  Nathanielsen said she was meeting a trade minister from the Labour government, Chris Bryant, later on Tuesday, as part of “very early discussions” on a possible free trade agreement between the two countries.  “Of course, when hopefully all of this cools down a bit, that you continue your collaboration investments in Greenland, we are quite happy about your partnerships,” she added.  BIG DAYS But the future of Greenland, she acknowledged, may not lie in its own hands. Foreign ministers from Greenland and Denmark are set to meet U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington Wednesday. Greenland officials hope the meeting will allow them a better understanding of the “actual wishes from the American side,” Nathanielsen said.   Asked whether a deal proposing U.S. control should be put to a vote inside Greenland, she agreed this was essential.   “I think we should be able to have a say ourselves in the future of our lives. For others, this might be a piece of land, but for us it’s home.” 

BRUSSELS — On Greenland’s southern tip, surrounded by snowy peaks and deep fjords, lies Kvanefjeld — a mining project that shows the giant, barren island is more than just a coveted military base. Beneath the icy ground sits a major deposit of neodymium and praseodymium, rare earth elements used to make magnets that are essential to build wind turbines, electric vehicles and high-tech military equipment. If developed, Greenland, a semi-autonomous part of Denmark, would become the first European territory to produce these key strategic metals. Energy Transition Minerals, an Australia-based, China-backed mining company, is ready to break ground. But neither Copenhagen, Brussels nor the Greenlandic government have mobilized their state power to make the project happen. In 2009, Denmark handed Greenland’s inhabitants control of their natural resources; 12 years later the Greenlandic government blocked the mine because the rare earths are mixed with radioactive uranium. Since then the project has been in limbo, bogged down in legal disputes. “Kvanefjeld illustrates how political and regulatory uncertainty — combined with geopolitics and high capital requirements — makes even strategically important projects hard to move from potential to production,” Jeppe Kofod, Denmark’s former foreign minister and now a strategic adviser to Energy Transition Minerals, told POLITICO. Kvanefjeld’s woes are emblematic of Greenland’s broader problems. Despite having enough of some rare earth elements to supply as much as 25 percent of the world’s needs — not to mention oil and gas reserves nearly as great as those of the United States, and lots of other potential clean energy metals including copper, graphite and nickel — these resources are almost entirely undeveloped. Just two small mines, extracting gold and a niche mineral called feldspar used in glassmaking and ceramics, are up and running in Greenland. And until very recently, neither Denmark nor the European Union showed much interest in changing the situation. But that was before 2023, when the EU signed a memorandum of understanding with the Greenland government to cooperate on mining projects. The EU Critical Raw Materials Act, proposed the same year, is an attempt to catch up by building new mines both in and out of the bloc that singles out Greenland’s potential. Last month, the European Commission committed to contribute financing to Greenland’s Malmbjerg molybdenum mine in a bid to shore up a supply of the metal for the EU’s defense sector.  But with United States President Donald Trump threatening to take Greenland by force, and less likely to offer the island’s inhabitants veto power over mining projects, Europe may be too late to the party. “The EU has for many years had a limited strategic engagement in Greenland’s critical raw materials, meaning that Europe today risks having arrived late, just as the United States and China have intensified their interest,” Kofod said. In a world shaped by Trump’s increasingly belligerent foreign policy and China’s hyperactive development of clean technology and mineral supply chains, Europe’s neglect of Greenland’s natural wealth is looking increasingly like a strategic blunder. With Donald Trump threatening to take Greenland by force, and less likely to offer the island’s inhabitants veto power over mining projects, Europe may be too late to the party. | Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images A HOSTILE LAND That’s not to say building mines in Greenland, with its mile-deep permanent ice sheet, would be easy. “Of all the places in the world where you could extract critical raw materials, [Greenland] is very remote and not very easily accessible,” said Ditte Brasso Sørensen, senior analyst on EU climate and industrial policy at Think Tank Europa, pointing to the territory’s “very difficult environmental circumstances.”  The tiny population — fewer than 60,000 — and a lack of infrastructure also make it hard to build mines. “This is a logistical question,” said Eldur Olafsson, CEO of Amaroq, a gold mining company running one of the two operating mines in Greenland and also exploring rare earths and copper extraction opportunities. “How do you build mines? Obviously, with capital, equipment, but also people. [And] you need to build the whole infrastructure around those people because they cannot only be Greenlandic,” he said.  Greenland also has strict environmental policies — including a landmark 2021 uranium mining ban — which restrict resource extraction because of its impact on nature and the environment. The current government, voted in last year, has not shown any signs of changing its stance on the uranium ban, according to Per Kalvig, professor emeritus at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, a Danish government research organization. Uranium is routinely found with rare earths, meaning the ban could frustrate Greenland’s huge potential as a rare earths producer. It’s a similar story with fossil fuels. Despite a 2007 U.S. assessment that the equivalent of over 30 billion barrels in oil and natural gas lies beneath the surface of Greenland and its territorial waters — almost equal to U.S. reserves — 30 years of oil exploration efforts by a group including Chevron, Italy’s ENI and Shell came to nothing. In 2021 the then-leftist government in Greenland banned further oil exploration on environmental grounds.  Danish geologist Flemming Christiansen, who was deputy director of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland until 2020, said the failure had nothing to do with Greenland’s actual potential as an oil producer. Instead, he said, a collapse in oil prices in 2014 along with the high cost of drilling in the Arctic made the venture unprofitable. Popular opposition only complicated matters, he said. THE CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECT From the skies above Greenland Christiansen sees firsthand the dramatic effects of climate change: stretches of clear water as rising temperatures thaw the ice sheets that for centuries have made exploring the territory a cold, costly and hazardous business. “If I fly over the waters in west Greenland I can see the changes,” he said. “There’s open water for much longer periods in west Greenland, in Baffin Bay and in east Greenland.” Climate change is opening up this frozen land. Climate change is opening up this frozen land. | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images Greenland contains the largest body of ice outside Antarctica, but that ice is melting at an alarming rate. One recent study suggests the ice sheet could cease to exist by the end of the century, raising sea levels by as much as seven meters. Losing a permanent ice cap that is several hundred meters deep, though, “gradually improves the business case of resource extraction, both for … fossil fuels and also critical raw materials,” said Jakob Dreyer, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen.   But exploiting Greenland’s resources doesn’t hinge on catastrophic levels of global warming. Even without advanced climate change, Kalvig, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, argues Greenland’s coast doesn’t differ much from that of Norway, where oil has been found and numerous excavation projects operate.     “You can’t penetrate quite as far inland as you can [in Norway], but once access is established, many places are navigable year-round,” Kalvig said. “So, in that sense, it’s not more difficult to operate mines in Greenland than it is in many parts of Norway, Canada or elsewhere — or Russia for that matter. And this has been done before, in years when conditions allowed.”    A European Commission spokesperson said the EU was now working with Greenland’s government to develop its resources, adding that Greenland’s “democratically elected authorities have long favored partnerships with the EU to develop projects beneficial to both sides.” But the spokesperson stressed: “The fate of Greenland’s raw mineral resources is up to the Greenlandic people and their representatives.” The U.S. may be less magnanimous. Washington’s recent military operation in Venezuela showed that Trump is serious about building an empire on natural resources, and is prepared to use force and break international norms in pursuit of that goal. Greenland, with its vast oil and rare earths deposits, may fit neatly into his vision. Where the Greenlandic people fit in is less clear.

BRUSSELS — The EU and Mercosur will sign their long-awaited trade agreement on Saturday, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen traveling to Paraguay on Jan. 17 for the signing ceremony. Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier confirmed von der Leyen’s travel plans to POLITICO. She will be joined by European Council President António Costa, his cabinet confirmed. The trip comes after a majority of EU member countries on Friday voted in favor of signing the deal. The EU-Mercosur deal is set to create the world’s largest free-trade area, covering some 700 million people. From Brussels’ perspective, the agreement is a major geopolitical win in light of China’s rising share in trade and influence in Latin America and U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policies. Aside from Paraguay, the Mercosur bloc consists of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.

President Donald Trump’s promise to revive the Venezuelan oil industry drew praise from U.S. energy executives on Friday — but no firm commitments to invest the vast sums of money needed to bring the country’s oil output back from the doldrums. The lack of firm pledges from the heads of the companies such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips that Trump summoned to the White House raised doubts about the president’s claim that U.S. oil producers were ready to spend $100 billion or more to rebuild Venezuela’s crude oil infrastructure. The country boasts the world’s largest oil reserves, but its production has cratered since the regime pushed most of those companies out decades ago. Exxon CEO Darren Woods offered the starkest assessment, telling Trump in the live-streamed meeting in the East Room that Venezuela is “uninvestable” under current conditions. He said major changes were needed before his company would return to the country, and that big questions remain about what return Exxon could expect from any investments. “If we look at the legal and commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela today, it’s uninvestable,” Woods told Trump. “Significant changes have to be made to those commercial frameworks, the legal system. There has to be durable investment protections, and there has to be a change to the hydrocarbon laws in the country.” Still, Woods said he was confident the U.S. can help make those changes, and said he expected Exxon could put a technical team on the ground in Venezuela soon to assess the state of its oil infrastructure. Harold Hamm, a fracking executive and major Trump ally, expressed more enthusiasm but still fell short of making any commitments. “It excites me as an explorationist,” Hamm, whose experience has centered on oil production inside the U.S., said of the opportunity to invest in Venezuela. “It is a very exciting country and a lot of reserves — it’s got its challenges and the industry knows how to handle that.” Still, Energy Secretary Chris Wright pointed reporters after the meeting to a statement from Chevron — the only major U.S. oil company still operating in Venezuela — that it was ready to raise its output as a concrete sign the industry was willing to put more money into the country. Chevron currently produces about 240,000 barrels a day there with its partner, the Venezuelan state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA. Mark Nelson, Chevron’s vice chairman, told the gathering the company sees “a path forward” to increase production from its existing operations by 50 percent over the next 18 to 24 months. He did not commit to a dollar figure, however. Wright indicated that the $100 billion figure cited by Trump on Thursday was an estimate for the cost of reconstructing Venezuela’s dilapidated oil sector — rather than a firm spending commitment made by producing companies. “If you look at what’s a positive trajectory for Venezuela’s oil industry in the next decade, that’s probably going to take about $100 billion investment,” said Wright, who later told Bloomberg Television he is likely to travel to Venezuela “before too long.” Most of the nearly two dozen companies in attendance at Friday’s meeting expressed tepid support for the administration’s plan, though others indicated they were eager to jump back quickly. Wael Sawan, the CEO of the European energy giant Shell, said the company had been pushed out in Venezuela’s nationalization program in the 1970s, giving up 1 million barrels per day of oil production. Now it was seeking U.S. permits to go back, he said. “We are ready to go and looking forward to the investment in support of the Venezuelan people,” he said. Jeffery Hildebrand, CEO of independent oil and gas producer Hilcorp Energy and a major Trump donor, said his company was “fully committed and ready to go to rebuild the infrastructure in Venezuela.” Trump said during the meeting that companies that invest in Venezuela would be assured “total safety, total security,” without the U.S. government spending taxpayer dollars or putting boots on the ground. He indicated that Venezuela would provide security for the U.S. companies, and that the companies would bring their own protection as well. “These are tough people. They go into areas that you wouldn’t want to go. They go into areas that if they invited me, I’d say, ‘No, thanks. I’ll see you back in Palm Beach,’” Trump said of the oil companies. Before the executives spoke, Trump insisted that oil executives are lining up to take the administration up on the opportunity. “If you don’t want to go in, just let me know,” he said. “There are 25 people not here today willing to take your place.” Following the public meeting, the companies stayed for further discussions with administration officials behind closed doors. The president also dismissed speculation that the administration may offer financial guarantees to back up what he acknowledged would be a risky investment. “I hope I don’t have to give a backstop,” he said. “These are the biggest companies in the world sitting around this table — they know the risks.” Trump also laughed off the billions that Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips are owed for the assets seized by the Venezuelan regime decades ago. “Nice write-off,” he quipped. “You’ll get a lot of your money back,” Trump told ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance. “We’re going to start with an even plate, though — we’re not going to look at what people lost in the past because that was their fault.” ConocoPhillips spokesperson Dennis Nuss said in a statement that Lance “appreciates today’s valuable opportunity to engage with President Trump in a discussion about preparing Venezuela to be investment ready.” The White House at the last minute shifted the meeting from a closed-door session in the Cabinet Room to a live-televised spectacle in the East Room. “Everybody wants to be there,” the president wrote of the oil executives on social media just ahead of the meeting. POLITICO reported on Thursday that the White House had scrambled to invite additional companies to the meeting because of skepticism from the top oil majors about reentering the country. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent acknowledged in an appearance Thursday that “big oil companies who move slowly … are not interested,” but said the administration’s “phones are ringing off the hook” with calls from smaller players. Bethany Williams, a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute, called Friday’s meeting “a constructive, initial conversation that highlighted both the energy potential and the challenges presented in Venezuela, including the importance of rule of law, security, and stable governance.” Venezuela — even with strongman Nicolás Maduro in custody in New York — remains under the rule of the same socialist government that appropriated the rigs, pipelines and property of foreign oil companies two decades ago. Questions remain about who would guarantee the companies’ workers’ safety, particularly since Trump has publicly ruled out sending in troops. Kevin Book, a managing director at the energy research firm ClearView Energy Partners, noted that few CEOs in the meeting outright rejected the notion of returning to or investing in Venezuela, instead couching any sort of presence on several conditions. Some of those might be nearer term, such as security guarantees. Others, like reestablishing legal stability in Venezuela, appear more distant. “They need to understand the risk and they need to understand the return,” Book said. “What it sounded like most of the companies were saying … is that they want to understand the risk and the return and then they’ll look at the investment.” Evanan Romero, a Houston-based oil consultant involved in the Trump administration’s effort to bring U.S. oil producers back to Venezuela, said international oil companies will not return to the country under the same laws and government that expropriated their assets decades earlier. “The main contribution that [interim president] Delcy [Rodríguez] and her government can do is make a bonfire of those laws and put it on fire in the Venezuelan Bolivar Square,” Romero said. “With those, we cannot do any reconstruction of the oil industry.” Zack Colman and Irie Sentner contributed to this report.

LONDON — Europe’s leaders have discovered yet another hill they are unwilling to die on: their long-held dream of a world fighting climate change together. President Donald Trump launched his most far-reaching attack on the international climate process Wednesday by ordering the U.S. to withdraw from the 1992 treaty that underpins most global attempts to stave off global warming. It means the world’s richest country and second-largest greenhouse gas emitter will play no further part in United Nations-led efforts to mitigate climate change — a position that could prove impossible to reverse by a future U.S. administration. European leaders might, then, have been expected to respond with loud condemnation. But the silence was deafening. Ursula von der Leyen? Schtum. Keir Starmer? Crickets. Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, was low-key. On Thursday, in a speech to French diplomats, the French president admitted the U.S. attacks on multilateralism, including Wednesday’s pledge to withdraw from 66 international organizations spanning environmental, social and human rights issues — the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) among them — “weakens all the bodies through which we can resolve common issues.” But Macron warned his officials: “We are not here to comment, we are here to act … If we have an intelligent response to offer, we do so. If we don’t have an intelligent response to offer, we look elsewhere.” It’s a far cry from 2017, when leaders across Europe lined up to hammer Trump for ditching the Paris Agreement — a less serious violation of the international regime, given there are now questions about whether the U.S. will ever be able to rejoin the UNFCCC, in which the Paris Agreement resides. But the world looks very different now than it did in 2017. Climate change concerns have been sucked into the black hole of Trump’s geopolitical tumult, and even if Europeans feel aggrieved, little sign of it has escaped the event horizon. “With Europeans still critically reliant on U.S. intelligence and being able to purchase U.S. arms to ensure Ukraine’s survival, it makes no sense to criticize Trump’s latest assault on combating climate change, just as they haven’t criticized the Venezuela operation,” said Robin Niblett, former director of the Chatham House foreign affairs think tank.  PICK YOUR BATTLES EU leaders have demonstrated this week that violations of international law and multilateral trust are way below the bar for confronting the Trump administration. Only a direct threat to invade European territory in Greenland has stirred Europe’s leaders to respond. “This is the bigger picture we’re seeing — European leaders essentially sort of pick their battles in this environment, and unfortunately, the UNFCCC process isn’t their biggest priority right now,” said Susi Dennison, senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.  “The White House doesn’t care about environment, health or suffer[ing] of people,” Teresa Ribera said on social media. | Oscar del Pozo/AFP via Getty Images On top of that, she added, Trump’s attacks on climate action have lost their shock value. Wednesday’s announcement is “consistent with the withdrawal from climate action as a specific goal of the administration,” she said.  Officials in the offices of the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and the European Commission declined requests from POLITICO to comment on the announcement that the U.S. would ditch the UNFCCC and also withdraw from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.N. climate science body, and the Green Climate Fund.  The response was left to a smattering of lowly environment ministers, who expressed a mixture of exasperation and anger but very little shock at the announcement. (German Climate Minister Carsten Schneider simply noted that it “comes as no surprise.”)  One of the most prominent criticisms came from European Commission Executive Vice-President Teresa Ribera, a Spanish socialist who is one of the EU executive’s most outspoken advocates for strong climate action. “The White House doesn’t care about environment, health or suffer[ing] of people,” she said on social media. Meanwhile, in the U.K., the populist right-wing Reform party, currently leading in the polls, said Britain should follow suit and ditch the climate treaty. EUROPE ALONE Schneider, the German minister, also echoed a common view in saying the move would leave the U.S. isolated on the international stage. But Washington’s exit also leaves the Europeans without a key ally in global negotiations.  Europe discovered what it meant for the U.S. to be absent from U.N. climate talks in Brazil last year when the Trump administration decided to send no delegates. A coalition of emerging economies effectively quashed any chance that the conference would make meaningful advances or that the Europeans would pursue their agenda. Legal opinions vary on whether a U.S. reentry to the UNFCCC would be as straightforward as a presidential decree or if it would require the U.S. Senate to ratify the deal, as it did in the early 1990s. The chance of a lockout raises the prospect of a permanent rebalancing of power inside the U.N. climate process. The Trump administration’s withdrawal from the IPCC comes as it drafts its next round of vital climate science reports. While the move doesn’t stop individual U.S. scientists from contributing, Washington will not get to influence the report summaries that end up informing policymakers, which need to be signed off on by all governments.  As with the U.N. climate talks, others may step into the vacuum to take advantage of the U.S. absence. But Dennison thinks it won’t be the Europeans.  “I’m no longer even remotely optimistic that Europe is capable right now of playing that role,” she said, pointing to the growing divisions over climate action among EU governments and the rollbacks of key green legislation over the past year. “I don’t think that Europeans are going to step into any void.” Karl Mathiesen and Charlie Cooper reported from London. Zia Weise reported from Brussels. Josh Groeneveld contributed reporting from Berlin. Nicolas Camut contributed reporting from Paris. Emilio Casaliccio contributed reporting from London.

LONDON — The U.K. should follow Donald Trump’s example and quit the United Nations treaty that underpins global action to combat climate change, the deputy leader of Reform UK said. Richard Tice, energy spokesperson for Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist party, said the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the linked U.N. climate science body the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were “failing British voters.” Asked if the U.K. should follow the U.S. — which announced its withdrawal from the institutions, plus 64 other multilateral bodies, on Wednesday — Tice told POLITICO: “Yes I do. They are deeply flawed, unaccountable, and expensive institutions.” The 1992 UNFCCC serves as the international structure for efforts by 198 countries to slow the rate of greenhouse gas emissions. It also underpins the system of annual COP climate conferences. The U.S. will be the only country ever to leave the convention. Reform UK has led in U.K. polls for nearly a year, but the country’s next election is not expected until 2029. A theoretical U.K. exit from the UNFCCC would represent an extraordinary volteface for a country which has long boasted about global leadership on climate. Under former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the U.K. hosted COP26 in 2021. It has been one of the most active participants in recent summits under Prime Minister Keir Starmer. It was also the first major economy in the world to legislate for a net zero goal by 2050, in line with the findings of IPCC reports. Tice has repeatedly referred to the target as “net stupid zero.” The U.K. government was approached for comment on the U.S. withdrawal. Pippa Heylings, energy and net zero spokesperson for the U.K.’s centrist Liberal Democrat party, said Trump’s decision would “make the world less secure.”

KYIV — The Russian army attacked Ukraine with more than 90 killer drones in the early hours of Thursday morning, causing complete blackouts in the key industrial regions of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv’s energy ministry reported. “While energy workers managed to restore power in the Zaporizhzhia region in the morning, some 800,000 households in the nearby Dnipro region were still without electricity and heating on Thursday morning,” Artem Nekrasov, acting energy minister of Ukraine, said during a morning briefing. In Dnipro, eight coal mines stopped working because of a power outage. All the miners were safely evacuated to the surface, Nekrasov added. Power outages were also reported in Chernihiv, Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Poltava and other regions. Freezing weather is coming to Ukraine over the next three days, with temperatures forecast to drop to minus 20° C during the night, when Russia often launches massive missile and drone attacks. Precipitation and cold could cause additional electricity supply disruptions due to snow accumulating on power lines, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said Wednesday evening. “Ukraine’s energy system is under enemy attack every day, and energy workers work in extremely difficult conditions to provide people with light and heat. Deteriorating weather conditions create additional stress on critical infrastructure. We are working to minimize the consequences of bad weather,” Svyrydenko added. Local governors in the eastern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro reported that hospitals and other critical infrastructure had to turn to emergency power supplies because of the latest Russian attack. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Ukrainian energy workers for the speedy power restoration in Zaporizhzhia, and used the opportunity to remind Kyiv’s partners around the world they need to respond “to this deliberate torment of the Ukrainian people by Russia.” “There is absolutely no military rationale in such strikes on the energy sector and infrastructure that leave people without electricity and heating in wintertime. This is Russia’s war specifically against our people, against life in Ukraine — an attempt to break Ukraine,” Zelenskyy added.