Last week, for the second time in eight months, the world failed to come up with a global treaty to fight plastic pollution. Before that, it took two attempts to forge an international deal to halt biodiversity loss.
Nine months ago in Azerbaijan, at one of the most abject UN climate conferences ever held, the authoritarian host, President Ilham Aliyev, opened proceedings by calling oil and gas a “gift from god” and blasting western governments for lecturing about fossil fuels while buying his country’s gas. And this was before Donald Trump began doing his best to prolong the fossil fuel era, just as records showed global temperatures had soared beyond what modern humans had ever experienced.
The early 2020s will not be remembered well when it comes to global efforts to protect an environment under widening assault, not least from the multiplying effects of climate change. No wonder then that, less than 90 days before this year’s annual climate Conference of the Parties (COP), pressure to rethink the way climate policy has been shaped for the past 30 years is becoming impossible to ignore. Some ideas for reform are unhelpful. Many are incremental. But some are uplifting for the 80 per cent of people around the world who want tougher government action to tackle climate change. All ideas are likely to be too late for this year’s COP, which is unfortunate. There was relief in 2023 when Brazil was chosen to host, not only because President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had vowed to make climate policy a priority.