Global carbon pollution dropped this year ever so slightly, but it's more because of oil shocks reverberating from the Iran war than anything the world has done to fight climate change, scientists said in a new study.

In 2026, the world emitted 42.2 billion tons (38.2 billion metric tons) of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. It’s a 0.4% decrease from last year, according to the scientists of the Global Carbon Project, which publishes its estimates in the journal Earth System Science Data Discussions.

“It’s downwards which sounds good, but this is largely driven by the war in Iran, what’s happened in the Strait of Hormuz ,” said study co-author Glen Peters, a scientist at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Norway .…