Who's going to fill the U.S.-sized hole in climate diplomacy?
CBC News | Posted: March 6, 2025 7:00 PM | Last Updated: 3 hours ago
Also: Taste-testing native seaweeds
Hello, Earthlings! This is our weekly newsletter on all things environmental, where we highlight trends and solutions that are moving us to a more sustainable world. Keep up with the latest news on our Climate and Environment page.
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox every Thursday.
This week:
- Who's going to fill the U.S.-sized hole in climate diplomacy?
- Reporter's notebook: Fired U.S. scientists aren't going quietly
- Rockweed soup? How researchers are trying to boost use of native seaweeds
Who's going to fill the U.S.-sized hole in climate diplomacy?
U.S. President Donald Trump is scrambling global climate diplomacy, leaving countries around the world to figure out how to deal with an administration that's busy turning firmly away from the energy transition and efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
That uncertainty may have led most of the countries that are party to the Paris Agreement to blow the deadline to submit their updated climate targets to the UN.
"It [the U.S.] is the largest historical emitter in the world. It is still the second largest emitter now globally," said Li Shuo, who studies the energy transition in China and internationally as a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington D.C.
"So, of course the climate backsliding that we will be seeing in the next few years under the Trump administration is going to bring tremendous challenges to the global climate effort."
Trump is pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, a change that will take effect by February 2026. Under former president Joe Biden, the U.S. took a leadership role on the world stage, setting the tone by making unprecedented investments in green technologies and releasing ambitious emissions reductions targets.
All that climate leadership, and the diplomatic heft that comes with it is now gone. And it's a problem for the Paris process, which relies on a system of peer pressure to achieve emissions cuts.
Signatories to the agreement have to come up with new, more ambitious emissions reductions goals every five years. The idea is that countries can lead by example, peer-pressuring each other to do better or face criticism on the world stage.
"Somebody needs to push the other countries a little bit to move. And that used to be the U.S. to some extent," said Niklas Höhne, co-founder of the NewClimate Institute for Climate Policy and Global Sustainability, a non-profit based in Europe.
Without the U.S., there is now a gap in that system of peer pressure, and room for other countries to fill the leadership vacuum.
"I really hope that the [European Union] will step up," said Höhne.
"The EU is complicated because it has 27 member states. It's not as agile as other countries, but they can do it because they do very well at home in climate policies."
But there are encouraging signs the rest of the world can rally without the involvement of its largest economic power. Last week, at the UN biodiversity talks in Rome, countries reached a $200 billion US agreement to fund nature protection in developing countries.
The U.S. is not a part of that agreement. Negotiations were pushed by the so-called BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
As for the UN climate process, Höhne points to the European Union and China as frontrunners to play an expanded role.
Just last week, the EU's executive body released a "clean industrial deal" to push heavy sectors like energy or steel production to reduce their carbon emissions, and proposed funding of 100 billion euros to do so.
For Shuo, future leadership on climate action lies with the economics of clean energy technologies.
"Some of the most important low-carbon technologies, their costs have declined drastically, and this will be the case regardless of the geopolitical situation or national politics," he said.
"Solar, wind, electric vehicles, energy storage options, the cost decline is rather irreversible, right? So this has already been baked into the global climate agenda and that's really the good news."
And leading on that front is China, Shuo says, which has mobilized vast amounts of wind and solar energy and is the world's largest maker of electric vehicles. As the U.S. doubles down on fossil fuels, China could guide developing countries looking for a different way.
"I think it is important to realize the global market for low carbon products is much more and much broader than just North America and Europe. Much of the Global South, they are still very interested in just buying the best products out there in the market or attracting investment and creating jobs," he said.
"And China is really at the centre of this desire of many countries in the world to embrace low carbon solutions."
—Inayat Singh
Check out our podcast and radio show. In our newest episode: With a looming trade war, local fruits and vegetables are attractive. But at what price? Some consumers are suddenly seeing prices skyrocket. Fruit and vegetable farmers are struggling with climate linked extreme weather events. That's wrecking harvests and driving up production costs all over the world. But customers can help.
What On Earth drops new podcast episodes every Wednesday and Saturday. You can find them on your favourite podcast app or on demand at CBC Listen. The radio show airs Sundays at 11 a.m., 11:30 a.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Have a compelling personal story about climate change you want to share with CBC News? Pitch a First Person column here.
Reporter's notebook: Fired U.S. scientists aren't going quietly
In a recent newsletter, we told you about recent cuts and restrictions imposed on U.S. government scientists under President Donald Trump.
One of the people featured in that piece was Gretchen Goldman, with the Union of Concerned Scientists, who had been waiting anxiously to find out if her husband would lose his job with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Those fears were confirmed when her husband, Tom Di Liberto, a public affairs specialist and climate scientist, was fired from NOAA last week along with hundreds of other probationary employees.
Di Liberto told CBC News he was just 15 days shy of the end of his probationary period when he received what he described as a "boilerplate, cold, callous" email informing him that his abilities and skills no longer fit the agency's needs.
"I'm afraid of seeing more scientists pushed out for just basically doing their work, because it might come to a conclusion that the current administration doesn't want people to know [about] and they don't want to accept," Di Liberto said.
"We've already seen people fired who are developing the next generation of weather and climate models."
Di Liberto and some of his colleagues have decided they won't go quietly.
On Friday, he plans to join nationwide Stand Up for Science protests from Washington D.C.
"We don't do these things normally," Di Liberto said. "We just like to be in front of a computer screen doing our work."
"But I have seen a turn in federal scientists … this is kind of existential when it comes to the risk of U.S. science."
In response to the layoffs, Canadian not-for-profit advocacy group Evidence for Democracy has launched its own call to action with an open letter, which has received more than 200 signatures so far.
Ottawa-based executive director Sarah Laframboise said the goal was to show support for American colleagues.
"It really impacts Canadians and Canadian research," Laframboise said.
Already, freezes to U.S. federal funding have halted cross-border research on the Great Lakes. Some American government scientists have also been banned from attending meetings or communicating with Canadian counterparts about their research.
Laframboise said it's important to not be complacent when science is undermined.
"Science and research impacts almost every aspect of your daily lives, whether you see it obviously or are taking for granted things like technology or healthcare or the clean air that we breathe."
—Jaela Bernstien
Write us at whatonearth@cbc.ca. (And feel free to send photos, too!)
The Big Picture: Montreal zipper factory shares its warmth
This factory in the Montreal borough of Saint-Laurent burns natural gas to produce zippers, generating a lot of heat. Now, there's a plan to build a system of underground pipes called an energy loop so that excess heat can be used to keep nearby buildings warm, saving up to 30 per cent of the wasted energy. Here's a closer look at how it works.
Hot and bothered: Provocative ideas from around the web
- To help migrating fish get past a lock in the Dutch city of Utrecht, the city installed a human-assisted "fish doorbell." Here's how it works.
- Canada's federal government will add most PFAS to its list of toxic substances. That could lead to new regulations on its use in a huge range of products including firefighting foams, food packaging, furniture and clothing.
- Industrial boilers for factories that brew beer, pasteurize milk and dry lumber spew lots of pollution. Replacing them with heat pumps could help. Now an environmental non-profit has mapped the best places in the U.S. to make this swap.
- The biggest driver of rainforest loss is clearing land for cattle. But it's possible to create pastures that integrate trees – a practice called silvopasture. Proponents say it can decrease deforestation, while boosting dairy productivity.
Rockweed soup? How researchers are trying to boost use of native seaweeds
Slimy, salty, fishy, sour and bitter.
That's how non-consumers of seaweed often describe what they think seaweed will taste like.
"Not … things you really want to hear about a food ingredient," said Matt McSweeney, a professor at Acadia University's school of nutrition and dietetics in Wolfville, N.S.
McSweeney and other researchers at Acadia are hoping to change that perception by figuring out what people think of seaweed after they try it in food, and, ultimately, how to improve the taste experience.
A key ingredient in the study? Vegetable soup.
McSweeney and two undergraduate students, Allison Stright and Kaitlyn Frampton, served vegetable soup with seaweed powder in it to 103 people who were not regular consumers of seaweed.
The taste testers tried soup with a sprinkling of either Irish moss or rockweed in two different quantities — 1.5 per cent and three per cent by weight — or what amounted to a small "sprinkling" or two of powder mixed into the bowl, McSweeney says.
They were asked to evaluate how they liked the flavour, appearance and mouthfeel of the soup, as well as the intensity of saltiness, sourness, bitterness, sweetness and umami. Umami is a savoury, rich taste associated with meat, fish, mushrooms and ripe tomatoes.
Their study, published recently in the Journal of Sensory Studies, found that while the seaweeds increased the umami and saltiness of the soup, they also increased the bitterness and sourness. The Irish moss decreased enjoyment of the flavour of the soup with both the lower and higher amounts of seaweed, while the rockweed only decreased liking at the higher level.
McSweeney says since seaweed is an "underutilized ingredient" in the Western world, there's a bit of an uphill battle to develop the market for it in food products.
"We think about consumers, they are familiar with certain flavours and textures, and when you push them past flavours and textures they're familiar with, that usually leads to disliking."
But increasing the consumption of Irish moss and rockweed in food in Nova Scotia could have benefits, McSweeney says.
"It basically fits what we called the three Ps of sustainability — people, planet and profit. So it's going to benefit people because it's good for them. It's going to benefit the planet because it's environmentally friendly and, you know, also hopefully we can make a little money if we harvest it and put it in foods that are acceptable to people."
Seaweed is nutrient-dense, rich in minerals and low in fat, and some researchers have suggested its saltiness can be used to reduce the amount of salt added to foods.
Seaweed is also big business, with the potential to grow, says Shannon Arnold, the associate director of marine programs at the Ecology Action Centre.
Arnold and her colleagues have been working on promoting both the production and consumption of seaweed — particularly kelp. According to a report released in 2023, the kelp industry alone in North America is worth about $200 million, and Nova Scotia's portion of that kelp market could grow to $38 million in the next few years.
Arnold says food product developers have created crackers, bread, caviar, pickled salad and "Kelp-mato" (instead of Clamato) using kelp, and 26 restaurants in Halifax have kelp on their menu.
While Irish moss and rockweed have not traditionally been a headlining ingredient in food, Arnold says consumers eat it all the time without necessarily knowing.
Rockweed and Irish moss have long been used as thickening or gelling agents under the name carageenan.
"If you go to the grocery store, you can fill up a basket right away with an ingredient list that has carageenan at the bottom of it.… It's in tons of dairy products, it's in deli meat, it's in toothpaste, it's in things that need to be emulsified."
Acadian Seaplants, a Nova Scotia seaweed business, has developed a food product called Hana Tsunomata using land-cultivated seaweed that originally came from Irish moss. Arnold says that product is largely exported to Japan. Acadian Seaplants did not respond to an interview request about their product.
For McSweeney, the challenge now is to minimize the "off-flavours" such as sourness or bitterness, and figure out what food products consumers find Irish moss and rockweed acceptable in.
"I think that people are open to trying seaweed in food right now, like, they're quite positive about it. They want to try it."
— Frances Willick
Thanks for reading. If you have questions, criticisms or story tips, please send them to whatonearth@cbc.ca.
What on Earth? comes straight to your inbox every Thursday.
Editors: Emily Chung and Hannah Hoag | Logo design: Sködt McNalty