CO2 emissions will decrease in the next decades but mostly because of demographics. People get older and tend to pollute less, growth is slower. It happened to Europe and it'll happen to China sooner than we think when we look at their pyramid of age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China
I think we shouldn't mix (1) negative events in the world which impact CO2 emissions (covid, Ukraine war, Iran war etc.), (2) with "normal" events such as population decline in polluting countries, (3) with an actual coordinated and effective action against global warming.
(1) and (2) can have a large impact on CO2 emissions. (3) is more difficult to notice.
China is doing real things to move their transportation to battery electric too, including big trucks. They have infrastructure to swap several hundred kwh battery packs, the truck can be back on the road in about 5 minutes.
There are other reasons. Solar and batteries now have become so cheap that there is financial incentive to use them. The war on Iran has shown the volatility of fossil fuels, adding political and strategic incentive. More and more energy use is electrified (transportation, heating), which further reduces primary energy usage.
All that builds a momentum that actually makes me somewhat optimistic that we have at least reached peak emissions.
It’s not coordinated action, it’s primarily massive renewable and nuclear buildouts in China, which will hopefully be followed by similar buildouts all throughout Asia.
Most new energy going in in the developed world (which now includes China) is renewable or nuclear.
This is still true in the USA even after electing a president who literally ran on more coal, so it’s clearly economical. Now that said president is neutered by an election bloodbath it will accelerate.
It says the report "finds that clean energy growth is not yet fast enough for a durable decline in global fossil CO2 emissions" and quotes the report's lead as “A decline in fossil CO2 emissions is encouraging, but a reduction driven partly by geopolitical shocks is not a sustainable climate solution.”
The most optimistic note was “If further acceleration of clean technology
deployment can be supported through time, a sustained peak and decline in
global CO2 emissions could be a few years away.”
> If further acceleration of clean technology deployment can be supported through time, a sustained peak and decline in global CO2 emissions could be a few years away
Unfortunately the opposite might happen in the next years. It seems this year China is starting to export less solar panels: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-18/china-sol... . Despite the low prices, some countries are investing less in solar panels and wind turbines for many different reasons. Other technologies might come but are slower to develop.
We don’t need to invest an ever increasing amount in solar panels to transition because existing panels degrade slowly. Scale things out another 20 years and at current rates solar will have squeezed out just about everything else.
Sure, we can always move faster but hydro and wind limit how much solar we actually need.
One of the things that COVID make crystal clear to me is that radical changes for the better are much more straightforward than people think, and the only reason they don't happen is the people in charge couldn't be bothered.
There is no excuse for every government in the world to not be covering every bit of rooftop or scrap land with solar. China is losing money on panels at the moment they have such production capacity. Its free money for anyone country who wants to do it.
Watching the last decade of American politics has led me to absolutely despise the culture of learned helplessness and attitude of "everything is someone else's fault."
You're absolutely right about the first part. Radical change is much more straightforward. At the individual level there are absolutely things that can be done that are pretty easy Consuming less and recycling more is a huge one. But if the attitude is, "we can't or won't do it individually. We need someone to make us behave," then that's a losing culture. The last American election reassured me that indeed, even if the elite class wants something, no amount of money will override the will of the people. The people just don't want this badly enough.
I very much think nobody can be bothered, not just the people in charge. We're all the same people and if there was an actual want by the regular person, the ones in charge in most of the world would be influenced enough to either want it too or have to do something
I, along with many other people, have fitted solar panels on my roof, installed a battery in my loft and replaced my gas boiler with a heat pump. Lots of people are bothered.
Romantic model of people being heard. 500M speaks more than a single vote. Its a shame. This already disproves your model - however, we should move towards it!
It was only for the better if you were in an industry like ours, which even benefited and also allows remote work.
For a huge number of people it ruined their lives. Which is why it’s sensitive to this day. Like the financial bailouts there was a sense that some people benefited while others got ruined.
Bad example to invoke for “beneficial change.” If that’s the answer then it can’t be done in a democracy.
> There is no excuse for every government in the world to not be covering every bit of rooftop or scrap land with solar.
is it intentional hyperbole and you mean something else, or are you making exactly this kind of claim?
because there are many many caveats to add here (even if we go with plan that specifically governments should be doing it)
For start: land with legitimate environmental protection, land where connecting power would be ruinously expensive, area likely to be destroyed by floods and landslides or scheduled to be overbuilt and so on...
The event after which dozens of governments were destabilized and incumbents were ousted from power all over the world… convinced you that radical change is easy…?
The United States was a couple feet from an actual coup dude.
Leaving aside whether they were, and whether all countries are necessarily equally unstable.
Would that not have been different? I certainly haven't heard of a suspected coup by disgruntled democrats and/or minorities.
I suspect the coup you allude to would have amounted to a coup of the people in power to stay in power. Not a popular, armed uprising. So I don't see how it's relevant to the point you are trying to make.
Given how the much-vaunted "checks and balances" seem to be, well, rather unbalanced ... and how the country is so, so, partisan over "their own side" that politics is mainly theatre... It seems like the US doesn't really need any italics in that statement. From an outside perspective, it seems fairly vulnerable to fascism actually.
In any event, over here in the UK there's a real wind-power push (with the surrounding water being so shallow that off-shore wind-farms are very possible), but even in these extended latitudes, solar power is viable and the government currently make them VAT-free for installs, with no planning requirements because they fall under 'permitted development'. Renewable energy was at ~56% Q2 2026.
The UK government set up 'Great British Energy' with £8.3B of funding for coinvestment with private firms in various clean energy generation. I think the UK is definitely doing its part.
First past the posts for a nationwide position (president) ensures two party polarization even without any external influences (and there are many). In the UK (and Canada) you use fptp for the lower house but due to regional differences that can still create multiple parties and more viewpoints within parties. Regional differences get obliterated with a nationwide fptp position, making every act of compromise a betrayal.
The pandemic was easy for me to live through, and it was easy to evolve in a wet market*, but that whole "flatten the curve" thing was because it came within a hair's breadth of overwhelming national healthcare systems and this was obviously a risk to be mitigated before the event.
* this happened in wet markets many times, not just COVID; and this will happen again if steps aren't taken to mitigate that, no matter what you may think about lab leaks which do also happen sometimes because humans are fallible and do make mistakes on occasion.
It's not always directly counted, but we count CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to check CO2 emissions and we're able to attribute a large part of these emissions to countries. It's why it takes a long time to have accurate data on CO2 emissions. I'm not sure we even have the data for 2025 yet, they're usually released at the end of the next year. So obviously for 2026 it's only a vague estimate, we'll know at the end of 2027.
Burning a refinery likely reduces emissions, because the fuel this refinery produced would be burned anyway, and the destroyed refinery will cease producing fossil fuels. So it wouldn't be a surprise if all the refineries destroyed this year in Russia and in the Middle East contributed to a reduction in CO2 emissions.
Nitpick, some of the refineries products (~10-20%) are not burned but used to make plastics and other chemicals. I agree though, the effect of destroying the refinery, pushing up prices thus reducing demand dominates.
I think we shouldn't mix (1) negative events in the world which impact CO2 emissions (covid, Ukraine war, Iran war etc.), (2) with "normal" events such as population decline in polluting countries, (3) with an actual coordinated and effective action against global warming.
(1) and (2) can have a large impact on CO2 emissions. (3) is more difficult to notice.
All that builds a momentum that actually makes me somewhat optimistic that we have at least reached peak emissions.
This is still true in the USA even after electing a president who literally ran on more coal, so it’s clearly economical. Now that said president is neutered by an election bloodbath it will accelerate.
It says the report "finds that clean energy growth is not yet fast enough for a durable decline in global fossil CO2 emissions" and quotes the report's lead as “A decline in fossil CO2 emissions is encouraging, but a reduction driven partly by geopolitical shocks is not a sustainable climate solution.”
The most optimistic note was “If further acceleration of clean technology deployment can be supported through time, a sustained peak and decline in global CO2 emissions could be a few years away.”
Unfortunately the opposite might happen in the next years. It seems this year China is starting to export less solar panels: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-18/china-sol... . Despite the low prices, some countries are investing less in solar panels and wind turbines for many different reasons. Other technologies might come but are slower to develop.
Sure, we can always move faster but hydro and wind limit how much solar we actually need.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chinas...
There is no excuse for every government in the world to not be covering every bit of rooftop or scrap land with solar. China is losing money on panels at the moment they have such production capacity. Its free money for anyone country who wants to do it.
Watching the last decade of American politics has led me to absolutely despise the culture of learned helplessness and attitude of "everything is someone else's fault."
You're absolutely right about the first part. Radical change is much more straightforward. At the individual level there are absolutely things that can be done that are pretty easy Consuming less and recycling more is a huge one. But if the attitude is, "we can't or won't do it individually. We need someone to make us behave," then that's a losing culture. The last American election reassured me that indeed, even if the elite class wants something, no amount of money will override the will of the people. The people just don't want this badly enough.
For a huge number of people it ruined their lives. Which is why it’s sensitive to this day. Like the financial bailouts there was a sense that some people benefited while others got ruined.
Bad example to invoke for “beneficial change.” If that’s the answer then it can’t be done in a democracy.
is it intentional hyperbole and you mean something else, or are you making exactly this kind of claim?
because there are many many caveats to add here (even if we go with plan that specifically governments should be doing it)
For start: land with legitimate environmental protection, land where connecting power would be ruinously expensive, area likely to be destroyed by floods and landslides or scheduled to be overbuilt and so on...
The United States was a couple feet from an actual coup dude.
Would that not have been different? I certainly haven't heard of a suspected coup by disgruntled democrats and/or minorities.
I suspect the coup you allude to would have amounted to a coup of the people in power to stay in power. Not a popular, armed uprising. So I don't see how it's relevant to the point you are trying to make.
In any event, over here in the UK there's a real wind-power push (with the surrounding water being so shallow that off-shore wind-farms are very possible), but even in these extended latitudes, solar power is viable and the government currently make them VAT-free for installs, with no planning requirements because they fall under 'permitted development'. Renewable energy was at ~56% Q2 2026.
The UK government set up 'Great British Energy' with £8.3B of funding for coinvestment with private firms in various clean energy generation. I think the UK is definitely doing its part.
The pandemic was easy for me to live through, and it was easy to evolve in a wet market*, but that whole "flatten the curve" thing was because it came within a hair's breadth of overwhelming national healthcare systems and this was obviously a risk to be mitigated before the event.
* this happened in wet markets many times, not just COVID; and this will happen again if steps aren't taken to mitigate that, no matter what you may think about lab leaks which do also happen sometimes because humans are fallible and do make mistakes on occasion.
Same with burning tankers in Iran...
Burning a refinery likely reduces emissions, because the fuel this refinery produced would be burned anyway, and the destroyed refinery will cease producing fossil fuels. So it wouldn't be a surprise if all the refineries destroyed this year in Russia and in the Middle East contributed to a reduction in CO2 emissions.