Fractured/Earth

On January 13, US President Donald Trump slapped a 25% tariff on any country doing business with Iran. The news was received with consternation in Iran and beyond. Oil is Teheran’s biggest export — with China accounting for 80% of Iran’s petroleum exports. If the middle kingdom fell in line with Trump’s demands, such an embargo would choke Iran’s oil revenues and its capacity to pay for critical imports. If China didn’t fall in line, the delicate detente between the USA and China on trade might be toast.

Other countries exporting to Iran might need to disengage as well — with hard implications for both Iran and them. Iran imports critical commodities like rice and medicines. Some of its trading partners are delicately placed as well. Exports growth, for instance, is a key part of Sri Lanka’s efforts to ensure economic stability.

With any luck, none of these dire scenarios will materialise. “The US Supreme Court is expected to rule as early as this week on the legality of Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to levy tariffs,” wrote Bloomberg columnist Menaka Doshi. It is likely, she said, the court will disallow them.

For now, though, Trump’s threat is one more reminder that the world has changed. 
Earlier this month, as the US’ capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro showed, the world is also slipping back to a Cold War-like division of regions between today’s superpowers — USA, China and Russia. The rot, however, runs deeper. Across the world, as democracies decline, the world is also seeing more naked resource-grabs by the economic and political elite in country after country.

These processes are playing out at a time when ecosystems across our planet have slipped deeper into trouble. Carbon dioxide concentrations hit a record high in 2025. The planet neared the 1.5 Celsius warming threshold, causing extreme heatwaves, floods, droughts and wildlife globally. Biodiversity loss, of course, continued unabated.

Since 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol was signed, the world has been trying to arrest climate change. It was a hopeful time. The cold war had ended. Countries could imagine implementing joint responses to planetary crises.

Today, as the world fragments again, what lies in store for global biodiversity and the world’s fight against climate change? The answer to that question, as team CarbonCopy concluded, lies in how the tussle between six emergent processes — some good, some bad — plays out. 

Out now, the first report for 2026: https://www.carboncopy.info/climate-action-in-a-fractured-world-trends-for-2026
Here we go again, etc, etc.