If you want to glimpse the fate of our world after the abdication of American leadership, as humanity struggles to cope with its biggest problems, cast your eye toward Antalya, Turkey.
That is where delegations from some 200 countries have gathered for COP31, the 31st conference of the United Nations treaty to slow down climate change.
You’ll see some Americans walking around that conference, including congressmen, governors, mayors and other state politicians. But for the second year in a row, you won’t run into a delegation from the administration of President Donald Trump. Because there isn’t one.
Trump is boycotting not only the conference but the entire global effort to limit climate change. For the second time, he has withdrawn the United States from the Paris Agreement of 2015, the pact in which the parties of the UN framework convention pledged to cap global warming at about 1.5 C above preindustrial levels. He’s even pulled the U.S. out of that framework convention itself, an exit that takes effect in February and a step that no other country has ever taken.
The leader of the nation that is historically and cumulatively the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and nowadays the second-largest after China, is sabotaging humanity’s attempt to clean up the mess Americans have helped to make.