Ten years after its birth, Paris is at once the most successful climate accord in history and, so far, unable by itself to drive sufficient action to avert catastrophe. It is both alive and at risk of being deemed dead by a new generation of climate activists. Its fate, like Schrödinger’s cat , remains uncertain until observed. COP30 will give the world an opportunity for such a measurement. The summit will not produce a new treaty, but its political outcomes should show whether the Paris process can rise to meet the current political moment. At the very least, political commitments in Belém might help make the Amazon a global model for sustainable agriculture and forest conservation. But those commitments, or the absence of them, will also reveal whether the Paris process can continue to turbocharge global climate action.

On Nov. 10, when world leaders gather on the edge of the Amazon rainforest in Belém, Brazil, for COP30—the first global climate summit since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January—they will face the deepest crisis in climate politics since the collapse of the Kyoto Protocol. But while Trump has greatly accelerated and worsened the crisis, its origins lie in the 2015 Paris Agreement .

On Nov. 10, when world leaders gather on the edge of the Amazon rainforest in Belém, Brazil, for COP30—the first global climate summit since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January—they will face the deepest crisis in climate politics since the collapse of the Kyoto Protocol. But while Trump has greatly accelerated and worsened the crisis, its origins lie in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Ten years after its birth, Paris is at once the most successful climate accord in history and, so far, unable by itself to drive sufficient action to avert catastrophe. It is both alive and at risk of being deemed dead by a new generation of climate activists. Its fate, like Schrödinger’s cat, remains uncertain until observed. COP30 will give the world an opportunity for such a measurement.