The United States sure knows how to throw cold water on international harmony.

Just two months have passed since the world’s top diplomats cobbled together the best plan we’ve ever had to start curbing emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Yet already the Supreme Court of the United States said no, delaying much of the Obama administration’s strategy to deliver America’s contribution to the collective effort.

The White House claims it will prevail, assuring a fidgety international community it will deliver on the promises made at the climate meeting in Paris in December. Those commitments proved critical to keeping the diplomacy on track and ultimately producing a deal among more than 185 countries representing more than 98 percent of global emissions.

And yet the Supreme Court’s temporary stay of the administration’s Clean Power Plan — the last decision of global consequence of the right-leaning court on which Justice Antonin Scalia had sat since the Reagan administration — underscores just how far the United States remains from its climate goals.

Consider the administration’s own assessments. Even as the American delegation in Paris offered to cut emissions to 26 to 28 percent below their 2005 levels by 2025, the Energy Information Administration of the Department of Energy was offering a different outlook.