When President Trump first took office in 2017, I was terrified that he would withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. Now I’m terrified that he won’t.

For much of November, I assumed my seat in the U.N. climate change meetings, this time for COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Over the 14 days of deliberations, I saw daylight once. Otherwise, I was in the Baku Olympic Stadium. (While Baku has yet to make an Olympic host shortlist, the British football rag FourFourTwo does name the stadium the 41st best in the world, claiming its “design is as slick as the nearby oil.”) Inside was a different world. No clocks, no windows, 24/7 fluorescent lights, unaffordable food ($35 sandwiches?), chaos, heavy security, badged access into rooms and, new this year, the Taliban. I wasn’t the only one to joke that this felt more like some immersive prison experience than a U.N. summit.

On the surface, the mandate of the Paris Agreement is simple: reduce emissions to keep the average global temperature below 2°C, ideally 1.5°C. At last year’s COP28 in Dubai, leaders unanimously agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels.” While that language was nebulous, it was embarrassingly notable given it was the first mention of fossil fuels in any Paris text.

As a climate researcher, my invitation to these summits is largely to support decision makers in integrating science into policy through helping them understand the mechanisms behind topics such as sea level rise, climate-smart agriculture or the rapid intensification of hurricanes. Being in the room during negotiations, however, has given me a front-row seat to the increasingly cunning – and brazen – tactics of those set on destroying the Paris Agreement from within. Whereas the United States was widely considered a lame duck in Baku, Saudi Arabia “came in like a wrecking ball,” to quote Miley Cyrus.

Needless to say, job description aside, I once again found myself in an escalated firing line between those fighting for the continuation of their lives and those fighting for the continuation of their lifestyles.

The Achilles’ heel of the Paris Agreement is consensus. Consensus has governed all decisions under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change since the convention’s founding in 1992. There remains a draft provision for a majority vote but, ironically, it never achieved consensus to be enacted.

At the conclusion of one of the six-day-long meetings comprising COP29, we still had not achieved consensus to even open discussions in the so-called Mitigation Work Programme negotiation. The day before, Saudi Arabia had repeatedly argued procedural objections before they finally walked out, citing dinner plans. In the end, the stalling worked. Despite more hours added the following day, the Mitigation Work Programme remained at an impasse and got booted to next year. Coincidentally, the same had happened at the last meeting, bringing the text to Baku.

In another negotiation track, toward the end of the summit, a minister from Panama cried as he made his final intervention over the environmental devastation of his country. With the Panamanian still in tears, the minister from Saudi Arabia raised his flag, smiled, and had the final word, “No.” Discussion over. That track, too, got pushed to 2025.

On what would be the final evening of COP, already 24 hours overtime with everyone gearing up for what would be a third straight all-nighter under the fluorescent lights, my phone pinged, alerting me to the news that a Saudi Arabian negotiator, a facilitator for one of the other negotiation tracks, had even made edits to final texts – under his own name – after discussions had closed.

The process isn’t set up for any repercussions, and very few parties are ready to call out dishonest actors. The reality is that, until some form of majority vote is enacted, a signee to the Agreement has significant sway in any decision against its strengthening. The paradox of the country’s blatant obstructionism, of course, is that Saudi Arabia is “already at the verge of livability” per a 2023 study by its own King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center. Even much of its existing coastal oil infrastructure would be subsumed at sea levels expected by just 2070. Despite this, while many countries are striving to get their emissions below 1990 levels, Saudi Arabia’s petroleum growth puts the Gulf state on target to increase its emissions by 680% over 1990 levels.

Saudi Arabia isn’t alone. Other members of the LMDC, the Like-Minded Developing Countries, negotiating bloc behave similarly. Despite announcing intentions to withdraw from the Paris Agreement in 2017, President Trump was not eligible to do so until the day after he lost the 2020 election due to no country being able to withdraw within three years of its initial ratification (2016) followed by an additional year of mandated notice. During these few years, the United States also used its platform to advocate for continued fossil fuel development.

ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods is one voice among many in the industry dissuading Trump’s withdrawal. Woods is a regular feature at COPs, and one whose presence is on par with inviting Big Tobacco to convene an event on lung cancer prevention. Exxon’s current portfolio is overwhelmingly dominated by petroleum and recent acquisitions have helped it achieve its highest oil production in the company’s 140-year history. Woods, however, knows what the rest of the LMDCs know. If the United States withdraws, it is effectively sidelined from the process. If the United States remains, it can singlehandedly dismantle the Agreement from within.