Delay, Denial, & Disturbing Developments in Bonn

My first direct, personal introduction to the plight that the world’s small island nations face from our climate crisis was in 2017 when I was honored to address the General Assembly of the United Nations with young people from around the world on World Oceans Day. During my time in New York that summer (you can read a bit about it here), I met children from all sorts of exotic places including Papahanamokuakea (Hawaii), Lord Howe Island and the Great Barrier Reef (Australia), Africa, Sudan, and the Wadden Sea (Netherlands), but it was the stories that the youth from the Republic of Seychelles shared that most touched my heart.

The Seychelles, a remote country in the Indian Ocean 1,500 miles off the coast of Africa, is one of the 39 countries or territories that the United Nations designates as a Small Island Developing State (“SIDS”) and that share a variety of often dire social, economic, and environmental challenges including many from our climate crisis. Abate fear covered their faces as the youth from Seychelles discussed their worries over their nation’s 115 islands being swallowed by rising seas during their lifetimes, forcing them to become climate refugees as a result of mankind’s use of fossil fuels.

I think of those children’s stories often and they were most certainly on my mind every day last month when I had the honor of traveling to Bonn, Germany, to spend over three weeks participating in the 62nd session of the Subsidiary Bodies (SB62) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), serving as a delegate for another Small Island Developing State, the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). The SB meetings are meant to be technical, forward-moving, and crucial moments that pave the way for the important global decisions that take place at the annual Conference of the Parties (COP)—in this case, COP30 later this year in Belem, Brazil.

Unfortunately, what I witnessed up close was not the steady progress that SIDS like FSM (and the rest of the world) so desperately need. Instead, I saw repeated delays, deep fractures between developed and developing nations, and worrying signs that some developed countries want to sideline or overlook science altogether.

Here are my four main takeaways from my time in Bonn:

1. The United States Was NOWHERE To Be Found

In a year where the world is on the brink of breaching the 1.5°C threshold, the absence of the United States delegation was both glaring and deeply concerning, while not entirely surprising. As one of the world’s largest historical pollution emitters, its absence sent a powerful, discouraging, and embarrassing message.

For countries like FSM (or even regions like South Florida within the U.S. itself) facing existential threats from sea level rise, the U.S.’s lack of participation is more than symbolic. It undermines trust and weakens collective momentum. Leadership doesn’t work on autopilot, and in Bonn, the silence from the U.S. was deafening.

2. Wealthy Nations Repeatedly Blocked Progress

Time and again, wealthy developed countries voiced their commitment to achieving the Paris Agreement goals, only to stall or block progress in concrete negotiations. The hypocrisy was evident across several agenda items, especially those tied to finance, loss and damage, and the need for a just transition from fossil fuels to sustainable energy.

Developed countries also overtly pushed back on language that would hold them accountable for funding adaptation or financing clean energy transitions in the Global South. It became clear that while they were willing to talk about ambition and the need for solutions, they’re not yet willing to pay for it.

3. Over 50 Agenda Items, Little Consensus 

SB62 had more than 50 active agenda items, yet very few were resolved. Instead of adopting texts or making decisions, many negotiations ended in a stalemate, with documents simply “forwarded” to the next set of such meetings at COP30 in Belem.

That’s a bureaucratic way of saying “we’ll deal with it later.” From the Global Goal on Adaptation to climate finance frameworks and just transition pathways, many of the most pressing issues failed to advance, and the “can,” as they say, was just “kicked down the road.” This kind of delay is not neutral; it actively harms countries and regions on the frontlines of the climate crisis by postponing the support and action that we need to urgently take and make now.

4. Obvious Attempts To Sideline Science

The Global Stocktake (GST) was established under the Paris Agreement as an ongoing review of the world’s progress towards meeting our collective climate goals. It’s designed to be a scientifically based report card of sorts to evaluate our progress and identify areas needing adjustment so as to meet our goals. The Stocktake’s “report card” is based on scientific findings and analyses from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), published in 2021, was based on the research of over 700 experts from 90 countries. Work on the next scientific climate assessment, AR7, began in 2023, and the plan is that its two Methodology Reports will be published in 2027, followed by its Synthesis Report in 2029.

Perhaps the most disturbing development I observed firsthand last month was a push by some countries to decouple the next Global Stocktake (GST2) from the upcoming IPCC AR7. This would deliberately weaken and diminish the role of science in shaping future climate action and transparency. Just like tobacco manufacturers spent decades covering up the truth that smoking is deadly to your health, the world’s oil and gas-producing nations would love to remove/reduce the scientific facts that tell us fossil fuel use is warming our planet from the climate debate.  

Let’s be clear: the IPCC research and reporting are the worldwide gold standard of climate science. Ignoring AR7 during the GST2 process or weakening the science would make it easier for some nations to downplay their responsibilities, avoid stronger ambition, and continue business as usual regarding fossil fuel production and use. It’s a deeply cynical strategic move designed to prolong fossil fuel production, and those of us who value science, justice, and urgency must fight against it with all of our might.

Bonn should have been a stepping stone to progress this year in Brazil at COP30. Instead, it often felt like a holding pattern—one where the stakes were too high to wait, but action was lost amongst a lack of commitment that seemed intentional. For FSM and other small island developing states, like my friends in the Seychelles or closer-to-home places like the Florida Keys in South Florida, this process is not about politics but survival. It’s about whether our homes, cultures, and future will exist in the decades to soon come.

The world must do better as we look forward to COP30 in the Amazon. Developed nations must show up—not just physically but financially and politically. Science must remain at the heart of this process and every decision. And, above all, the voices of vulnerable nations and regions must be heard and acted upon, not delayed, deflected, or denied.

Delay is denial, and our warming climate can no longer wait.

AR6, AR7, Belem, Climate Change, COP30, Delaney Reynolds, Eco Warrior, Global Warming, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Miami, Miamisearise.com, Politics, Sea Level Rise, Sea Rise, The Sink or Swim Project

Why We Must Continue Fighting for 1.5°C

I’m writing this post from Bonn, Germany, where I’m attending the UNFCCC’s 62nd session of the Subsidiary Bodies (SB62) – a critical mid-year climate negotiation aimed at helping the world stay on track to meet its climate goals (read more about my trip in a recent blog here). But, after the most recent scientific updates and a stunning rollback of U.S. environmental protections, I’m left asking myself: “What will it take for those in power to finally take the climate crisis seriously?”

According to a significant update presented here in Bonn by Climate Analytics to the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) negotiating bloc, the Earth is now truly, dangerously close to breaching the 1.5°C global warming threshold. According to the World Meteorological Organisation, the world is predicted with 70% certainty to top 1.5°C between 2025 and 2029, sometime within the next three years. The data illustrate that 2024 was already close to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and that unless we drastically cut emissions starting now, we are likely to overshoot 1.6°C or more, with devastating consequences for ecosystems, economies, and communities.

Let me be blunt: 1.5°C is not just a number, it’s a lifeline, especially for vulnerable places like my home in South Florida and for low-lying nations across the Caribbean and Pacific. Overshooting this target will lock in multi-meter sea level rise over the coming centuries, submerge coastal cities, devastate coral reefs, collapse ecosystems such as the Amazon Rainforest, and expose billions of people to lethal heat and water stress.

And yet, in this moment of scientific clarity and political urgency, the United States (one of the world’s largest emitters of fossil fuels that are causing our climate change crisis) just did the unthinkable. On June 12th, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it will no longer regulate climate pollution from power plants, effectively gutting one of the few federal policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector. I shouldn’t have to, but I do want to note that this department is titled the “Environmental Protection Agency,” not the “Energy Proliferation Agency.”

This is more than just a political decision; it’s a climate crime. It defies science, future generations, frontline communities, and decades of advocacy. And it flies in the face of decades of U.S. knowledge: even back in 1986, President Reagan’s own EPA Administrator acknowledged the need to act on global warming in an article written for the New York Times:

So, why are we moving backward?

From the science presented here at SB62, the message is crystal clear:

1. The rate of warming has doubled since the 1970s.

2. Natural carbon sinks (like forests and our oceans) are failing to keep up, reducing the Earth’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide.

3. Sea level rise is accelerating, disproportionately affecting small island nations and coastal regions, such as Miami-Dade and Monroe County, as two local Florida examples.

4. Current policies are leading us to 3°C of warming—a world of disaster and displacement.

But there is still hope.

The Climate Analytics briefing made it clear that limiting warming to 1.6-1.7°C is still achievable if we act now. And global net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the 2070s could bring temperatures back under control by the end of the century.

This isn’t about blind optimism. It’s about fact-based science, holding polluters accountable, accelerating the transition to renewable energy, and standing in solidarity with the world’s most vulnerable, who have contributed the least to this crisis but are suffering the most.

We cannot give up on 1.5°C. Giving up would be the ultimate betrayal of Small Island Developing States, such as those I am working with here at SB62, as well as global youth and every single future generation forever and ever. It would mean walking away from the most science-based and equitable goal the world has ever agreed upon, undermining net-zero targets and climate justice commitments, and legitimizing fossil fuel expansion at the exact moment we must phase them out.

1.5°C is not dead, but time is running out.

1.5 degrees, AOSIS, Climate Analytics, Climate Change, Delaney Reynolds, Eco Warrior, Environmental Protection Agency, Global Warming, Miami, Miamisearise.com, Politics, Sea Level Rise, Sea Rise, The Sink or Swim Project, US, WMO, World Meteorological Organisation

Will Theme Parks Replace “America’s Best Idea?”

“Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all, should see.”
President Theodore Roosevelt
In 1903, upon visiting Grand Canyon National Park

Someone once called our nation’s national parks “America’s best idea,” and I could not agree more. I’ve just returned from an early summer trip with my family that included visits to Acadia National Park (NP) in Maine and Virginia’s Shenandoah NP and, as I’ve posted before, my goal is to visit every one of America’s 63 amazing National Parks during my lifetime (as of today I am pleased to report that I’ve now seen 42).

These protected places are so majestic to me that I’ve come to believe that, along with the democratic values eloquently articulated by the founders in the U.S. Constitution, our country’s national parks are the foundational crown jewels of what makes America so very special. If you’ve never hiked along a rocky trail amongst a herd of deer on a misty morning in Shenandoah NP, ridden a bike through the ancient rugged mountains of South Dakota’s Badlands NP amidst a pack of curious goats, swam next to a pod of curious sea turtles in Virgin Islands NP, or any of the other countless experiences to constantly be enjoyed in our parks, then I hope your summer will allow such a visit soon.

And when I say soon, it’s not only because of how enriching these experiences are for your soul but because I am deeply worried about the future of America’s public lands given the assault they face by special interests and some elected leaders intent on diminishing, destroying, or privatizing them by selling them to the highest bidder. When America’s new Secretary of the Interior, someone seemingly charged with protecting our public resources, speaks about the United States’ public lands as “national assets on America’s balance sheet,” as he recently did, we have a serious problem.

And when our newly released proposed federal budget suggests reducing our national park funding by over $1 billion or, for that matter, is authored by an administration that is firing park and forest rangers, considering offloading some park land to states, and opening others to oil drilling, mining, and logging, the seriousness of this attack on our protected lands (and public trust) should alarm every single American. Those cuts, which you read more about here, include 30% cuts to the National Park Service staff in charge of the parks’ operations, transferring national park properties to the states, and a 31% cut to the Department of the Interior, the federal agency that houses the National Park Service.

The budget would cut $1.2 billion from the National Park Service in FY 2026, including sweeping reductions to funding park management from $2.6 billion in 2025 to $1.8 billion in 2026. It also includes slashing funds for numerous national recreation and preservation programs within the Park Service. Natural resource programs would see almost 95% of their funding cut. Cultural programs would lose 60% of their funding. The National Heritage Areas Program, which supports 62 National Heritage Areas, would lose 100% of its funding. Funding for full-time, permanent employees would decrease from an estimated $1 billion to $714 million, while funding for seasonal, temporary positions would decrease from approximately $80 million to $39 million. The proposed budget would cut 5,518 full-time positions.

If any of that concerns you, then I suspect you will find it interesting how Jon Jarvis, the 18th National Park Service Director, and Gary Machlis, former science advisor to the NPS Director, explained what’s happening in part recently:

“The administration’s plan is as clear and stunning as the sun rising over the Grand Canyon. First, severely slash the budget of the NPS, force retirements of dedicated and experienced NPS leaders, terminate the employment of those who refuse, cut the staffs of parks and historic sites, and replace park superintendents with political appointees ready to do the private sector’s bidding. Then, with failure as the goal, ignore the concerns of the public, the outdoor recreation industry, conservationists, and the communities near parks (many with Republican town governments) that are dependent upon visitor tourism for jobs and services.

Next, the administration will claim the private sector can better run (read “exploit”) the parks that the administration purposely set up to fail. Trump officials will begin to find ways around the law, Congress and the public to eliminate the NPS and centralize control among the Doge staff embedded at the Department of the Interior as a step toward putting the parks in the hands of private developers.

The first to be privatized will be what they see as “cash cows” – parks with high visitation and profit potential, such as Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. The Trump administration will suggest this is just a “pilot program” but the real intent is to test if the public, the courts and Congress can be safely ignored. If successful, the privatizing will expand to the sale, transfer or abandonment of the smaller park sites, such as Teddy Roosevelt’s home at Sagamore Hill national historic site. As clear evidence of this direction, on 2 May, the Trump administration released its fiscal year 2026 discretionary budget request proposing a $900m cut to the NPS budget and stated: “There is an urgent need to streamline staffing and transfer certain properties to State-level management.”

Or, consider Crater Lake NP in Oregon, a place I visited in the summer of 2023. This is one of America’s most unique national parks, an inactive volcanic crater formed 7,700 years ago, which today is filled with the most beautiful deep cobalt blue water you will ever see. It even has an island right in the middle of the lake with an equally magical name: Wizard Island. I visited the park on a spectacular freezing cold day in June (June!) 2023, where snow covered the forest that surrounds the lake as far as you could see.

Aside from the unique natural beauty of Crater Lake NP, it was abundantly clear that many of the Park’s facilities had been neglected and were in dire need of repair. Many buildings were closed, others were in various states of renovation, awaiting additional funding, and my overall sense was that the park could use new leadership, as well as an infusion of money to pay for the repairs.

Thankfully, all of that is part of the reasons why Superintendent Heatley took the job this past January, in hopes of upgrading those facilities and having the man-made attributes better represent the Park’s natural beauty, while also seeking ways to combat the impact our warming climate is having on the park.

“Things are not OK.
This is not a normal situation.
This is a paradigm shift that is having repercussions that will last for at least a generation.”
Crater Lake National Park’s Former Superintendent Kevin Heatly

Unfortunately, Superintendent Heatley’s tenure was extremely short-lived. Just last week, he resigned amidst news that Crater Lakes staff would suffer a permanent job cut and much-needed seasonal workers would be delayed by at least a month. In my view, the proposed federal cutbacks serve to cut the heart out of America’s park system. Like he said, “things are not ok.”

And it’s not just our national parks and other federal lands that are under attack. Let’s not forget that just last summer, less than a year ago, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced what he termed a “great” idea to turn sites at several of Florida’s public parks into pickleball courts, golf courses, 350-room resorts, and more. You can read my post about how our esteemed Governor Desantis, another man, like our nation’s current President that for reasons unknown likes to compare himself to renowned Theordore Roosevelt (a man often called the “Conservation President” because he created five national parks and protected nearly 230 million acres of America’s land while President) and his Florida Department of Environmental Protection (talk about a misnomer), announced what they called Florida’s “Great Outdoor Initiative” here.

Thankfully, after learning about that utterly horrific idea, Floridians of every political persuasion quickly spoke up and out against it which led the Florida House of Representatives to pass a bill restricting commercial development in state parks that the governor quickly signed (I presume to theoretically atone for the idiocy of supporting his own idea in the first place). Will that end the idea of developing Florida’s public parks, protected parks, and other such places in states all over America? Of course not. As long as there is money to be made, developers and other business interests will always lust for the opportunity to monetize such places at the detriment of the environment, our citizens, and future generations by placing short-term profits and political support above protecting nature.

“Imagine an awe-inspiring wilderness filled with towering trees, snowcapped mountains, breathtaking waterfalls, roaring rivers and impressive geysers. While fictional, Piston Peak is inspired by the Rocky Mountain area and the history and iconic sights of the American Frontier and its national parks.”
June 3, 2025
Disney Parks Blog

And here’s the thing: If we don’t remain ever watchful for such shenanigans by local, state, and our national governments, ever vigilant to protecting these unique and special places (including their funding), the day could come when the only place to visit a “national park” is at a theme park. To be clear, I have nothing against theme parks, Disney, or having fun. I love a good roller coaster, and two years ago, I spent a wonderful day with my family at Disneyland in California. I even thought that the small area (Grizzly Peak), which tried to mimic a national park, was “cute” and wondered (hoped) whether it could inspire their customers to visit a real National Park Service site.

With these things in mind, Disney’s news earlier this month that it was expanding its Florida park, Disney World, by adding yet another area that mimics nature and national parks, in this case called Piston Peak, caught my attention, but for different reasons. The press release that accompanied the news boldly makes it clear that our real natural parks are the direct inspiration for this imaginary place.

“Inside Piston Peak, guests will be able to see and explore the visitor lodge, Ranger HQ, trails and more all set within the Disney and Pixar “Cars” universe. To make sure these buildings fit naturally within the surrounding majestic landscapes, Imagineers are using a style of architecture called “Parkitecture,” which was developed by the National Park Service to create structures that harmonize with the natural environment.”
June 2, 2025
Disney Parks Blog

The news of such a fictional place at a time when our National and State Parks are relentlessly under attack has me deeply concerned that in time people will come to think that such a make believe place is an adequate replacement for the real thing (it is NOT) or, for that matter, serves as a timely yet cryptic metaphor of what’s to come as our government seeks to diminish, downgrade, and sell off America’s priceless natural places.

We just can’t let that happen. If you feel strongly, as I do, that our national parks are worth preserving and investing in, then contact your elected federal representatives and senator before it’s too late. Tell them to increase funding for the Park Service, not decrease it. Tell them to leave our Parks’ rangers alone and, while they are at it, increase, not decrease, staffing. And tell them to take their hands and eyes off our protected public lands, finite resources for sure, that are the heart and humanity of who we are as Americans.

Otherwise, if you don’t speak up and voice your concern now, be prepared to buy an “E” ticket or whatever the heck parks like Disney and Universal plan to sell for you to see a recreation of what was once America’s pride and joy: our natural world in a publicly protected park.

Badlands National Park, Climate Change, Crater Lake National Park, Delaney Reynolds, Disney World, Disneyland, Eco Warrior, Global Warming, Miami, Miamisearise.com, Politics, Sea Level Rise, Sea Rise, State Parks, The Sink or Swim Project
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