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.

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.

Donald Trump will be the major draw at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, even as the U.S. president’s policies continue to undermine the spirit of global cooperation the elite gathering has championed in the past. “We’re pleased to welcome back President Trump to Davos, and he’s bringing the largest U.S. delegation ever,” WEF chief executive Børge Brende said at a press conference Tuesday. The U.S. president will bring “five secretaries and also other key players,” including a bipartisan delegation from the U.S. Congress, Brende said. The World Economic Forum, which takes place next week in the Alpine ski resort, comes as the world hangs on Trump’s words. Since the start of the month, Trump has captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, threatened to invade Greenland, hinted he could take action in Iran over violent crackdowns on protesters, announced a temporary cap on credit card interest rates that has stoked fears of a credit crunch, and opened a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Brende said the meeting will take place “against the most complex geopolitical backdrop since 1945.” According to the WEF, Trump will be joined by Canadian PM Mark Carney, China’s Vice-Premier He Lifeng, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and leaders from Israel and Palestine. From Europe, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will attend along with leaders from Germany, Spain, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and Serbia. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte will also join. The informal grouping of countries supporting Ukraine, known as the “coalition of the willing,” are expected to meet with Trump and Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the WEF to seek U.S. backing for security guarantees for Ukraine, the Financial Times reported. Business leaders, including the head of AI giant Nvidia Jensen Huang and top executives from Microsoft, Meta, Palantir, Anthropic and OpenAI, will join senior leaders from JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock and other major finance players in Davos. International organizations, which have seen their standing and funding rocked by Trump’s administration — including last week’s U.S. withdrawal from dozens of international organizations and the world’s overarching climate change treaty — will also attend. The heads of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Health Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development will take part. Celebrities and artists including David Beckham, Yo-Yo Ma, Marina Abramović, Matt Damon and will.i.am will also attend. The theme of the gathering will be “A Spirit of Dialogue.” “We do hope that a spirit of dialogue can also lead to areas where the leaders can find overlaps in interests,” Brende said.

The first American pope is on a collision course with U.S. President Donald Trump. The latest fault line between the Vatican and the White House emerged on Sunday. Shortly after Trump suggested his administration could “run” Venezuela, the Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV appeared at the Angelus window overlooking St. Peter’s Square to deliver an address calling for the safeguarding of the “country’s sovereignty.” For MAGA-aligned conservatives, this is now part of an unwelcome pattern. While Leo is less combative in tone toward Trump than his predecessor Francis, his priorities are rekindling familiar battles in the culture war with the U.S. administration on topics such as immigration and deportations, LGBTQ+ rights and climate change. As the leader of a global community of 1.4 billion Catholics, Leo has a rare position of influence to challenge Trump’s policies, and the U.S. president has to tread with uncustomary caution in confronting him. Trump traditionally relishes blasting his critics with invective but has been unusually restrained in response to Leo’s criticism, in part because he counts a large number of Catholics among his core electorate. “[Leo] is not looking for a fight like Francis, who sometimes enjoyed a fight,” said Chris White, author of “Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy.” “But while different in style, he is clearly a continuation of Francis in substance. Initially there was a wait-and-see approach, but for many MAGA Catholics, Leo challenges core beliefs.” In recent months, migration has become the main combat zone between the liberal pope and U.S. conservatives. Leo called on his senior clergy to speak out on the need to protect vulnerable migrants, and U.S. bishops denounced the “dehumanizing rhetoric and violence” leveled at people targeted by Trump’s deportation policies. Leo later went public with an appeal that migrants in the U.S. be treated “humanely” and “with dignity.” Leo’s support emboldened Florida bishops to call for a Christmas reprieve from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. “Don’t be the Grinch that stole Christmas,” said Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami. As if evidence were needed of America’s polarization on this topic, however, the Department of Homeland Security described their arrests as a “Christmas gift to Americans.” Leo also conspicuously removed Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Trump’s preferred candidate for pope and a favorite on the conservative Fox News channel, from a key post as archbishop of New York, replacing him with a bishop known for pro-migrant views. This cuts to the heart of the moral dilemma for a divided U.S. Catholic community. For Trump, Catholics are hardly a sideshow as they constitute 22 percent of his electorate, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center. While the pope appeals to liberal causes, however, many MAGA Catholics take a far stricter line on topics such as migration, sexuality and climate change. To his critics from the conservative Catholic MAGA camp, such as Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon, the pope is anathema. U.S.-born Pope Leo XIV appeared at the Angelus window overlooking St. Peter’s Square to deliver an address calling for the safeguarding of Venezuela’s “sovereignty.” | Stefano Costantino/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Last year the pope blessed a chunk of ice from Greenland and criticized political leaders who ignore climate change. He said supporters of the death penalty could not credibly claim to be pro-life, and argued that Christians and Muslims could be friends. He has also signaled a more tolerant posture toward LGBTQ+ Catholics, permitting an LGBTQ+ pilgrimage to St Peter’s Basilica. Small wonder, then, that Trump confidante and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer branded Leo the “woke Marxist pope.” Trump-aligned Catholic conservatives have denounced him as “secularist,” “globalist” and even “apostate.” Far-right pundit Jack Posobiec has called him “anti-Trump.” “Some popes are a blessing. Some popes are a penance,” Posobiec wrote on X. PONTIFF FROM CHICAGO There were early hopes that Leo might build bridges with U.S. hardliners. He’s an American, after all: He wears an Apple watch and follows baseball, and American Catholics can hardly dismiss him as as foreign. The Argentine Francis, by contrast, was often portrayed by critics as anti-American and shaped by the politics of poorer nations. Leo can’t be waved away so easily. Early in his papacy, Leo also showed signs he was keen to steady the church after years of internal conflict, and threw some bones to conservatives such as allowing a Latin Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica and wearing more ornate papal vestments. But the traditionalists were not reassured. Benjamin Harnwell, the Vatican correspondent for the MAGA-aligned War Room podcast, said conservatives were immediately skeptical of Leo. “From day one, we have been telling our base to be wary: Do not be deceived,” he said. Leo, Harnwell added, is “fully signed up to Francis’ agenda … but [is] more strategic and intelligent.” After the conclave that appointed Leo, former Trump strategist Bannon told POLITICO that Leo’s election was “the worst choice for MAGA Catholics” and “an anti-Trump vote by the globalists of the Curia.” Trump had a long-running feud with Francis, who condemned the U.S. president’s border wall and criticized his migration policies. Francis appeared to enjoy that sparring, but Leo is a very different character. More retiring by nature, he shies away from confrontation. But his resolve in defending what he sees as non-negotiable moral principles, particularly the protection of the weak, is increasingly colliding with the core assumptions of Trumpism. Trump loomed large during the conclave, with an AI-generated video depicting himself as pope. The gesture was seen by some Vatican insiders as a “mafia-style” warning to elect someone who would not criticize him, Vatican-watcher Elisabetta Piqué wrote in a new book “The Election of Pope Leo XIV: The Last Surprise of Pope Francis.” NOT PERSONAL Leo was not chosen expressly as an anti-Trump figure, according to a Vatican official. Rather, his nationality was likely seen by some cardinals as “reassuring,” suggesting he would be accountable and transparent in governance and finances. But while Leo does not seem to be actively seeking a confrontation with Trump, the world views of the two men seem incompatible. “He will avoid personalizing,” said the same Vatican official. “He will state church teaching, not in reaction to Trump, but as things he would say anyway.” Despite the attacks on Leo from his allies, Trump himself has also appeared wary of a direct showdown. When asked about the pope in a POLITICO interview, Trump was more keen to discuss meeting the pontiff’s brother in Florida, whom he described as “serious MAGA.” When pressed on whether he would meet the pope himself, he finally replied: “Sure, I will. Why not?” The potential for conflict will come into sharper focus as Leo hosts a summit called an extraordinary consistory this week, the first of its kind since 2014, which is expected to provide a blueprint for the future direction of the church. His first publication on social issues, such as inequality and migration, is also expected in the next few months. “He will use [the summit] to talk about what he sees as the future,” said a diplomat posted to the Vatican. “It will give his collaborators a sense of where he is going. He could use it as a sounding board, or ask them to suggest solutions.” It’s safe to assume Leo won’t be unveiling a MAGA-aligned agenda. The ultimate balance of power may also favor the pope. Trump must contend with elections and political clocks; Leo, elected for life, does not. At 70, and as a tennis player in good health, Leo appears positioned to shape Catholic politics well after Trump’s moment has passed. “He is not in a hurry,” the Vatican official said. “Time is on his side.”

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.”

Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.” He writes POLITICO’s From Across the Pond column In justifying his military operation against Venezuela, U.S. President Donald Trump reached back in time over two centuries and grabbed hold of the Monroe Doctrine. But it’s another 19th-century interest that propelled his extraordinary gambit in the first place — oil. According to the New York Times, what started as an effort to press the Venezuelan regime to cede power and end the flow of drugs and immigrants into the U.S., began shifting into a determination to seize the country’s oil last fall. And the president was the driving force behind this shift. That’s hardly surprising though — Trump has been obsessed with oil for decades, even as most of the world is actively trying to leave it behind. As far back as the 1980s, Trump was complaining about the U.S. protecting Japan, Saudi Arabia and others to secure the free flow of oil. “The world is laughing at America’s politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help,” he wrote in a 1987 newspaper ad. Having supported the Iraq War from the outset, he later complained that the U.S. hadn’t sufficiently benefited from it. “I would take the oil,” he told the Wall Street Journal in 2011. “I would not leave Iraq and let Iran take the oil.” That same year, he also dismissed humanitarian concerns in Libya, saying: “I am only interested in Libya if we take the oil.” In justifying his military operation against Venezuela, U.S. President Donald Trump reached back in time over two centuries and grabbed hold of the Monroe Doctrine. | Henry Chirinos/EPA Unsurprisingly, “take the oil” later became the mantra for Trump’s first presidential campaign — and for his first term in office. Complaining that the U.S. got “nothing” for all the money it spent invading Iraq: “It used to be, ‘To the victor belong the spoils’ … I always said, ‘Take the oil,’” he griped during a Commander in Chief Forum in 2016. As president, he also insisted on keeping U.S. forces in Syria for that very reason in 2019. “I like oil,” he said, “we’re keeping the oil.” But while Iraq, Libya and even Syria were all conflicts initiated by Trump’s predecessors, Venezuela is quite another matter. Weeks before seizing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump made clear what needed to happen: On Dec. 16, 2025, he announced an oil blockade of the country “until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.” Then, after capturing Maduro, Trump declared the U.S. would “run the country” in order to get its oil. “We’re in the oil business,” he stated. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies … go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, and start making money.” “We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground,” Trump insisted. “It goes also to the United States of America in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us by that country.” On Wednesday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced that Venezuela would ship its oil to the U.S. “and then infinitely, going forward, we will sell the production that comes out of Venezuela into the marketplace,” effectively declaring the expropriation of Venezuela’s most important national resources. All of this reeks of 19th-century imperialism. But the problem with Trump’s oil obsession goes deeper than his urge to steal it from others — by force if necessary. He is fixated on a depleting resource of steadily declining importance. And yet, this doesn’t seem to matter. Throughout his reelection campaign, Trump still emphasized the need to produce more oil. “Drill, baby, drill” became as central to his energy policy as “take the oil” was to his views on military intervention. He called on oil executives to raise $1 billion for his campaign, promising his administration would be “a great deal” for their industry. And he talked incessantly of the large reservoirs of “liquid gold” in the U.S., claiming: “We’re going to make a fortune.” But these weren’t just campaign promises. Upon his return to office, Trump unleashed the full force of the U.S. government to boost oil production at home and exports abroad. He established a National Energy Dominance Council, opened protected lands in Alaska and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas exploration, signed a mandate for immediate offshore oil and gas leases into law, and accelerated permitting reforms to speed up pipeline construction, refinery expansion and liquid natural gas exports. At the same time, he’s been castigating efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions as part of a climate change “hoax,” he withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement once again, and he took a series of steps to end the long-term transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. He signed a law ending credits and subsidies to encourage residential solar and electric vehicle purchases, invoked national security to halt offshore wind production and terminated grants encouraging renewable energy production. Then, after capturing Nicolás Maduro, Trump declared the U.S. would “run the country” in order to get its oil. | Henry Chirinos/EPA The problem with all these efforts is that the U.S. is now banking on fossil fuels, precisely as their global future is waning. Today, oil production is already outpacing consumption, and global demand is expected to peak later this decade. Over the last 12 months, the cost of oil has decreased by over 23 percent, pricing further exploration and production increasingly out of the market. Meanwhile, renewable energy is becoming vastly more cost-effective. The future, increasingly, lies in renewables to drive our cars; heat, cool and light up our homes; power our data centers, advanced manufacturing factories and everything else that sustains our lives on Earth. By harnessing the power of the sun, the force of wind and the heat of the Earth, China is building its future on inexhaustible resources. And while Beijing is leading the way, many others are following in its footsteps. All this, just as the U.S. goes back to relying on an exhaustive fossil fuel supply. What Trump is betting on is becoming the world’s largest — and last — petrostate. China is betting on becoming its largest and lasting electrostate. Which side would you rather be on?

President Donald Trump is withdrawing the United States from the world’s overarching treaty on climate change in a move that escalates his attempts to reverse years of global negotiations toward addressing rising temperatures. The announcement to sever ties with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change came as Trump quit dozens of international organizations that the White House says no longer serve U.S. interests by promoting radical climate policies and other issues. It was outlined in a memo by the White House. Trump has called on other countries to abandon their carbon-cutting measures, and the move appears to be his latest attempt to destabilize global climate cooperation. The 1992 UNFCCC serves as the international structure for efforts by 198 countries to slow the rate of rising climate pollution. It has universal participation. The U.S. was the first industrialized nation to join the treaty following its ratification under former President George H.W. Bush — and it will be the only nation ever to leave it. The move also marks Trump’s intensifying efforts to topple climate efforts compared to his first term, when he decided against quitting the treaty. “Many of these bodies promote radical climate policies, global governance, and ideological programs that conflict with U.S. sovereignty and economic strength,” stated a White House fact sheet. The move comes as Trump tears down U.S. climate policies amid the hottest decade ever recorded and threatens other nations for pursuing measures to address global warming, which Trump has called a hoax and a “con job.” The U.S. did not send a delegation to Brazil for the climate talks, known as COP30, late last year. Instead, Trump officials have been working to strike fossil fuels deals with other nations. Trump captured Venezuela’s strongman president, Nicolás Maduro, in an assault using U.S. commandos on Saturday and said he would control the country’s vast oil resources. The plan to leave the UNFCCC stems from Trump’s order last February requiring Secretary of State Marco Rubio to identify treaties and international organizations that “are contrary to the interests of the United States” and recommend withdrawing from them. Trump has also pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, the landmark 2015 pact that’s underpinned by the UNFCCC. “This is a shortsighted, embarrassing, and foolish decision,” Gina McCarthy, a former EPA administrator under former President Barack Obama, said in a statement. “As the only country in the world not a part of the UNFCCC treaty, the Trump administration is throwing away decades of U.S. climate change leadership and global collaboration.”

LONDON — They’re young, full of ideas — and about to be given the vote. Britain’s government has committed to lowering the voting age from 18 to 16 years — a major extension of the electorate that could have big implications for the outcome of the next race, expected by 2029. It means Brits who are just 12 today are in line to vote in the next general election, which is expected to be a fierce battle between incumbent Keir Starmer and his right-wing challenger Nigel Farage. But what do these young people actually think? In a bid to start pinning down the views of this cohort, POLITICO commissioned pollster More in Common to hold an in-depth focus group, grilling eight youngsters from across the country on everything from social media disinformation to what they would do inside No. 10 Downing Street. To protect those taking part in the study, all names used below are pseudonymous. The group all showed an interest in politics, and had strong views on major topics such as immigration and climate change — but the majority were unaware they would get the chance to vote in 2029.  In a bid to prepare the country for the change, the Electoral Commission has recommended that the school curriculum be reformed to ensure compulsory teaching on democracy and government from an early age. GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER There are few better introductions to the weird world of British politics than prime minister’s questions, the weekly House of Commons clash between Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Conservative opponent Kemi Badenoch. Our group of 12-13-year-olds was shown a clip of the clash and asked to rate what they saw. They came away distinctly unimpressed. Hanh, 13, from Surrey, said the pair seemed like children winding each other up. “It seems really disrespectful in how they’re talking to each other,” she commented. “It sounds like they’re actually kids bickering … They were just going at each other, which didn’t seem very professional in my opinion.” Sarah, 13, from Trowbridge in the west of England, said the leading politicians were “acting like a pack of wild animals.” | Clive Brunskill/Getty Images Sarah, 13, from Trowbridge in the west of England, said the leading politicians were “acting like a pack of wild animals.” In the clip, the Commons backbenches roar as Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch quips about Starmer’s MPs wanting a new leader for Christmas. In turn, the PM dismisses the Conservative chief’s performance as a “Muppet’s Christmas Carol.” Twelve-year-old Holly, from Lincolnshire, said the pair were being “really aggressive and really harsh on each other, which was definitely rude.” And she said of the PM: “It weren’t really working out for Keir Starmer.” None of the children knew who Badenoch was, but all knew Starmer — even if they didn’t have particularly high opinions of the prime minister, who is tanking in the polls and struggling to get his administration off the ground. Twelve-year-old Alex said the “promises” Starmer had made were just “lies” to get him into No. 10. Sophie, a 12-year-old from Worcester in the West Midlands, was equally withering, saying she thought the PM is doing a “bad job.” “He keeps making all these promises, but he’s probably not even doing any of them,” she added. “He just wants to show off and try to be cool, but he’s not being cool because he’s breaking all the promises. He just wants all the money and the job to make him look really good.” Sarah said: “I think that it’s quite hard to keep all of those promises, and he’s definitely bitten off more than he can chew with the fact that he’s only made those statements because he wants to be voted for and he wants to be in charge.”  While some of the young people referenced broken promises by Starmer, none offered specifics. THE FARAGE FACTOR Although they didn’t know Badenoch as leader of the opposition, the whole room nodded when asked if they knew who Nigel Farage was. Although they didn’t know Badenoch as leader of the opposition, the whole room nodded when asked if they knew who Nigel Farage was. | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images “He’s the leader of the Reform party,” said Alex, whose favorite subject is computing. “He promises lots of things and the opposite of what Starmer wants. Instead of helping immigrants, he wants to kick them out. He wants to lower taxes, wants to stop benefits.” Alex added: “I like him.” Sarah was much less taken. “I’ve heard that he’s the leader of the far right, or he’s part of the far right. I think he’s quite a racist man.” Farage has faced accusations in recent weeks of making racist remarks in his school days. The Reform UK leader replied that he had “never directly racially abused anybody.” Other participants said they’d only heard Farage’s name before. When asked who they would back if they were voting tomorrow, most children shrugged and looked bewildered. Only two of the group could name who they wanted to vote for — both Alex and Sam backed Farage. POLICY WORRIES Politicians have long tried to reach Britain’s youngsters through questionable TikTok videos and cringe memes — but there was much more going on in the minds of this group than simply staring at phones. Climate change, mental health and homelessness were dominant themes of the conversation. Climate change is “dangerous because the polar bears will die,” warned Chris, 13, from Manchester. Sophie, who enjoys horse riding, is worried about habitats being destroyed and animals having to find new homes as a result of climate change, while Sarah is concerned about rising sea levels. Thirteen-year-old Ravi from Liverpool said his main focus was homelessness. “I know [the government is] building houses, but maybe speed the process up and get homeless people off the streets as quick as they can because it’s not nice seeing them on the streets begging,” he said. Sam agreed, saying if he personally made it into No.10, he would make sure “everyone has food, water, all basic survival stuff.” Sarah’s main ask was for better mental health care amid a strained National Health Service. “The NHS is quite busy dealing with mental health, anxiety and things like that,” she said. “Maybe we should try and make an improvement with that so everyone gets a voice and everyone’s heard.” IMMIGRATION DIVISIONS When the conversation moved to the hot-button topic of immigration, views were more sharply divided. Imagining what he’d do in government, Alex said he’d focus on “lowering taxes and stopping illegal immigrants from coming over.” “Because we’re paying France billions just to stop them, but they’re not doing anything,” he said. “And also it’s spending all the tax money on them to give them home meals, stuff like that.” In July, Starmer and France’s Emmanuel Macron unveiled a “one in, one out” pilot program to tackle illegal migration, although it’s enjoyed limited success so far and has generated some embarrassing headlines for the British government. Hanh said she’d been taught at school that it’s important to show empathy, but noted some people are angry about taxes going to support asylum seekers. Chris and Sarah both said asylum seekers are fleeing war, and seemed uneasy at the thought of drawing a hard line. Holly said she wants “racism” — which she believes is tied to conversations about immigration — to end. “I often hear a lot of racism [at school] and prejudice-type stuff … I often hear the N word. People don’t understand how bad that word is and how it can affect people,” she said. “They [migrants] have moved away from something to get safer, and then they get more hate.” Hanh said she is seeing more anti-immigration messages on social media, such as “why are you in my country, get out,” she said. “Then that’s being dragged into school by students who are seeing this … it’s coming into school environment, which is not good for learning.” NEWS SNOOZE Look away now, journalists: The group largely agreed that the news is boring. Some listen in when their parents have the television or radio on, but all said they get most of their news from social media or the odd push alert. Asked why they think the news is so dull, Hanh — who plays field hockey and enjoys art at school — said: “It just looks really boring to look at, there are no cool pictures or any funny things or fun colors. It just doesn’t look like something I’d be interested in.” She said she prefers social media: “With TikTok, you can interact with stuff and look at comments and see other people’s views, [but with the news] you just see evidence and you see all these facts. Sometimes it can be about really disturbing stuff like murder and stuff like that. If it’s going to pop up with that, I don’t really want to watch that.” These children aren’t alone in pointing to social media as their preferred source of news. A 2025 report by communications watchdog Ofcom found that 57 percent of 12-15-year-olds consume news on social media, with TikTok being the most commonly used platform, followed by YouTube and then Instagram. Sophie isn’t convinced that the news is for her. “Sometimes if my parents put it on the TV and it’s about something that’s really bad that’s happened, then I’ll definitely look at it,” she said. “But otherwise, I think it would probably be more for older people because they would like to watch basically whatever’s on the TV because they can’t really be bothered to change the channel.”