The UN is failing to save the world. Here’s what might

Jaw-jaw may be better than war-war, but when it comes to climate change, the world's jaw is apparently wired shut these days. If we hope to avoid the most catastrophic planetary heating, we might soon need something to fill the role that global climate negotiations have long played — if such a thing even exists.

United Nations talks on curbing the use of plastics ended in failure last weekend, just days after the failure of the latest round of UN climate talks, which came soon after the failure of UN biodiversity talks. As my Bloomberg Opinion colleague David Fickling wrote in response to the plastics debacle, "the entire edifice of environmental diplomacy is creaking."

There's no reason to expect a shoring-up anytime soon. The climate-hostile Donald Trump is returning to the White House, and Green Parties took a beating in this year's European parliamentary elections. Governments worldwide are shirking their already meager commitments to curb the greenhouse-gas emissions heating up the planet. Companies are simply ditching their climate goals altogether. Petrostates like Saudi Arabia and Russia are flexing their muscles in UN talks to thwart aggressive action. Petrostates are even running the talks. In COP29 host nation Azerbaijan, people literally bathe in crude oil.

You might hope that even oil-wallowing politicians will eventually see the problem with letting climate change run unchecked, exposing voters to everything from natural catastrophes to (gasp) higher egg prices. But for as much as voters claim to care about it, climate still has all the political juice of a year-old lemon. In fact, a new study from Bocconi University in Milan found voters rewarded climate-denying Italian politicians for simply taking credit for disaster relief after a devastating, climate-fueled windstorm hit northeast Italy in 2018. 

Rather than becoming green converts, it's also possible that right-wing politicians will instead embrace what the author Richard Seymour has called disaster nationalism — using the ravages of climate change as an excuse to lean even harder into their anti-immigrant, reactionary policies. Then you're just a few short hops away from eco-fascism. None of which is conducive to a global ethos of cooperation and shared sacrifice.

Past UN accords, such as the Paris Agreement in 2015 and the extra steps countries agreed to take at talks in Glasgow in 2021, have driven global climate progress. Together, those two agreements alone could, if honored, limit warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial averages, University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann told me — far below the 3.6C of warming scientists expected before 2015. 

At the same time, Mann has joined other climate experts in calling to overhaul an obviously problematic negotiating process. Despite their accomplishments, these talks still haven't done enough to put the world on a path to meeting the Paris Agreement's stretch goal of holding warming to 1.5C.

"There's no question these agreements have led to actions that have reduced the projected accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," Alice Hill, senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an interview. "With that said, it still hasn't been enough to keep us safe."

So what will not just replace the energy lost when talks stop being productive but amplify it? There are many candidates, none of which alone seem quite up to the job just yet. But maybe together, and over time, they can generate enough power to keep the planet habitable.

Economics:  The inexorable economic momentum of the green transition survived the first Trump administration and has grown stronger since. Kingsmill Bond, an energy strategist at the think tank RMI, suggests we're still in the early stages of an S-shaped curve of explosive growth in renewables. As this goes parabolic, banks and companies will have no choice but to ride the wave. Global economics will be turned on its head in the process.

"We are at peak confusion at the moment," Bond told me in a recent phone interview. "But there will be clarity by the end of the decade. We'll have a reckoning in financial markets when people wake up."

Locals: The first Trump regime spurred US states and cities to take their own climate action, and they're gearing up for a repeat but with slightly more political power and stronger economic arguments this time around, Bloomberg Green's Kendra Pierre-Louis has reported. Such local action is replicable around the world and within regions and industries — a bottom-up movement contrasting with the UN's top-down process. 

China: With Trump's abdication of the throne, China becomes the world's de facto climate leader. It's not yet hammering out global agreements as the US once did, but it's already bending global economics by producing cheap renewable-energy components and electric vehicles, and its carbon emissions may peak years ahead of its 2030 goal. It's also hungry for global influence, the CFR's Hill points out. This is its big chance.  

The EU: The European Union, nominally the world's second-biggest economy, is required by law to cut its emissions, which should keep pushing its transition forward. The writer Thomas Meaney has even suggested that a triumvirate of China, the EU and Wall Street will usher the world into a greener future. Such an alliance seems unlikely at the moment, with the EU levying steep tariffs on Chinese-made EVs and Wall Street sopping up fossil-fuel riches — at least until that S-curve really takes off.

Courts: Some climate activists are looking to the courts to force polluting countries and companies to clean up or pay up. The UN's International Court of Justice at The Hague this week began hearing a case brought by more than 100 countries and NGOs against developed nations. Good luck getting, say, a Trump-run US to pay any heed to what some international court decides. Or running any major judgment against fossil-fuel companies past a Supreme Court dominated by Trump picks. Still, a ruling against polluters will set a legal precedent that could add to the pressure for change. 

You: The rest of us don't have to wait for these other players to get their acts together. Consumer choices can help set trends, and public pressure can be even more effective at swaying governments and corporations. We're barely making use of these tools right now. But if you want something done right, sometimes you have to do it yourself.

Mark Gongloff. Sketch: TBS

Mark Gongloff is a Bloomberg Opinion editor and columnist covering climate change. He previously worked for Fortune.com, the Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

Disclaimer: This article first appeared on Bloomberg, and is published by special syndication arrangement.