The absence at the most important table by Brea Willis

The conference halls in Belém were supposed to feel like the front line of humanity’s common struggle, humid air, anxious negotiators, the faint hope that yet another global climate summit might be the one that finally cracks through the shell of geopolitical self-interest. Instead, what hung in the air was something heavier, almost metallic, the knowledge that the world had shown up, but the United States had not.

This year’s United Nations climate conference, COP30, ended as so many of its predecessors have—thick with well-intentioned language and thin on the commitments that would actually bend the planet’s overheating trajectory. Delegates managed to agree on modest steps for adaptation financing and incremental progress on transparency measures. But the elephant that has been stomping around these conferences for years, the need to phase out fossil fuels remained untouched, undiscussed in any meaningful way, and certainly uncommitted to. It was as if the very words “phase-out” were too radioactive for the diplomatic lexicon.

And yet, the absence of the United States was the real ghost wandering the corridors. The Trump administration’s refusal to send even a symbolic delegation was more than a diplomatic snub; it was a message written in thick marker: We will not play. We will not help. We will not acknowledge our role. For a nation historically responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than any other, this was not just petulance it was a dereliction of planetary responsibility.

To many delegates, especially those from small island nations whose shorelines shrink year by year, the American no-show landed with the dull inevitability of a betrayal repeated too often. But this time, the disappointment carried an edge sharper than usual, because the stakes are no longer theoretical or futuristic. Brazil, the host, is living through the climate crisis in real time: record drought punctuated by catastrophic floods, the rainforest gasping under the dual assault of illegal burning and global warming. And yet, despite the immediacy of the threat, the conference’s conclusions read like a polite shrug.

There is a kind of global emotional fatigue at these summits, a sense that everyone is required to pretend we are inching forward while knowing we’re mostly running in place. But even the most hardened doubters, the sceptics who’ve grown allergic to climate optimism, had to admit something as COP30 concluded, without the United States participating fully and forcefully, the prospects of preventing destructive warming collapse dramatically. The world may no longer revolve around Washington, but the climate still does. America’s economic weight, its technical capacity, its political influence over global energy markets, these are irreplaceable. And it is precisely these levers that Donald Trump has allowed to rust.

There is no way to speak honestly about COP30’s failures without speaking plainly about Trump. His withdrawal, literal and ideological, from climate cooperation is not simply a policy difference. It is an allegiance. And it is not to the American people. It is to the industries that have long mastered the art of pretending the future is somebody else’s problem. Fossil fuel interests have found in Trump not just a reliable ally but a kind of champion who carries their talking points with the zeal of a convert. The result is not subtle, gutted regulations, theatrical disdain for environmental science, and the normalization of climate indifference.

The paradox is that Trump claims to fight for American strength even as he weakens the very global structures that have allowed the United States to lead. Climate diplomacy, at its best, is one of the few remaining arenas where American soft power still commands respect. When America walks into a climate summit, the room shifts. When America refuses to walk in at all, the room shrinks.

Brazil’s president, along with numerous other leaders, pushed hard for a more ambitious agreement this year, but without Washington’s political gravity, every proposal rose briefly then drifted away like loose paper in an open window. Europe cannot shoulder the burden alone. China, despite massive investments in renewables, continues to approve new coal plants at a dizzying pace. The Global South remains trapped between moral urgency and economic constraints. In this fragile geometry of global interests, the United States is the anchor even when it behaves badly, even when it demands more than it gives. But this time, the anchor was simply gone.

And so the summit’s final text reads like an exercise in restraint. Words like “encourages,” “recognizes,” and “invites” appears where words like “commits,” “requires,” and “phases out” should have stood. It is the diplomatic equivalent of clearing your throat for three days and deciding that the clearing itself counts as progress.

Critics often describe climate summits as talk shops, but talking is not the problem. Talking is the precursor to action. The problem is pretending that talk alone counts as action, especially when the world’s most powerful nation can’t even be bothered to show up and talk.

There is a tragicomic quality to the global climate effort now: nations drafting elaborate plans to avert disaster while one major player insists that the disaster itself is a hoax or worse, someone else’s responsibility. But climate physics is indifferent to American politics. The atmosphere does not pause to see who won which primary. It tallies emissions with cold accuracy.

What COP30 revealed, yet again, is that humanity has the technical tools to change course, the scientific wisdom to see the danger, and even the financial capacity to cushion the transition. What we lack is the political will of one country that holds an outsized share of the power. And until that country decides to act like the indispensable nation it claims to be, climate summits will continue to end the way this one did: with exhausted applause for agreements that no longer match the urgency of the crisis.

The planet does not need American heroism. But it does desperately need American participation. And until the United States reclaims its place at the table, no matter who sits in the Oval Office the world will keep gathering, keep talking, keep waiting. The climate clock will keep ticking. And the future will keep shrinking.