Where Does the Climate Movement Go From Here?
This year is set to be the first on record in which global average temperatures rise to more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. It’s a harrowing sign for the fate of the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees over a long-term period—a target that, depending on whom you ask, is either already dead or in grave danger.
Meanwhile, this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Azerbaijan (COP29) inspired less optimism than past summits. That’s partly because it came just after Donald Trump’s reelection as U.S. president, which dashed hopes that the next U.S. administration would support climate action at home or abroad. But the conference was also widely criticized by activists, scientists, and policymakers for reasons ranging from its host (a petrostate whose president called oil and gas a “gift of god”) to the attendance of at least 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists.
Delegates at COP29 managed to agree on a climate finance deal, whereby wealthy nations committed to providing $300 billion annually for developing countries by 2035. But this is far less than what climate-vulnerable nations need. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres expressed disappointment at the outcome, and representatives from countries in the global south slammed the final text, with the Nigerian delegation’s representative calling it “a joke” and the Bolivian representative saying that it “enshrines climate injustice.”
Yet these are not reasons to give into doomism. Global carbon dioxide emissions could peak as early as next year. Renewable energy costs have continued to fall, and renewables are expected to overtake coal to become the largest source of electricity generation by 2025. There’s also growing evidence that reaching carbon neutrality may be much cheaper than previously expected. Even as the world falls behind on its climate targets, the energy transition is underway.
This year, Foreign Policy turned to reporters, experts, and veteran policymakers to make sense of these developments. Here are five of our top stories from 2024 on the state—and the future—of the global climate movement.
1. The Only Way to Make Climate Progress
by Samir Saran and Danny Quah, Jan. 17
“As emissions peak in the developed world, future emissions growth will be concentrated in the global south,” Samir Saran and Danny Quah write. “Yet the resources needed to limit these emissions—namely, green technology and capital—are concentrated in the global north.”
This gap has contributed to a breakdown of trust in international climate forums—one that Saran and Quah believe needs to be bridged to make genuine progress in the global energy transition. For FP, the authors lay out four key steps for the international community to take to restore trust between the global north and south and ensure that countries meet their climate targets. If governments, development banks, and multilateral forums do their part, Saran and Quah argue, they can advance climate cooperation and, in turn, renew faith in multilateralism.
2. Hard Truths Come for Germany’s Climate Prophet
by Cameron Abadi, Sept. 27
After he entered office in December 2021, Robert Habeck briefly became Germany’s most beloved politician. The vice chancellor and climate minister emerged as a leading figure in the post-Angela Merkel era—a gifted orator who promised to transform the Green Party into a major political force while staying true to its commitment to overhaul climate policy.
Now, FP Deputy Editor Cameron Abadi writes, the Greens are in disarray, and Habeck—who intends to run for chancellor in next year’s election—has not been able to make good on most of his climate plans. Habeck’s reputation has taken a major hit; in the summer of 2023, one poll found that half of all Germans wanted him to resign.
What has led Habeck’s climate project to fall apart? And what does this mean about the politics of climate action in Germany and elsewhere? Abadi addresses these questions and more, seeking to understand why “the longer he stays in office, the more Habeck may be deepening the social divisions over climate policy that he always wanted to overcome.”
3. No, It’s Not Too Late to Save the Planet
by Paul Hockenos, June 2
An aerial view of activists lying on the dry soil of La Viñuela reservoir during a demonstration calling for climate action in Spain on March 22, 2023. Jorge Guerrero/AFP via Getty Images
Climate doomism takes many forms. From conspiracy theories about humanity’s imminent end to alarmist headlines that instill fear, there is no shortage of immobilizing responses to our rapidly warming planet that “play straight into the court of the fossil fuel industry,” Paul Hockenos writes.
For Hockenos, one “particularly insidious form of doomism” can be found in philosopher Kohei Saito’s Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto, an international bestseller that contends that the climate crisis cannot be solved in a capitalist society. “Capitalism’s record is indeed damning,” Hockenos writes. But, he argues, “more-radical-than-thou theories remove [Saito’s argument] from the nuts-and-bolts debate about the way forward.”
In a joint review, Hockenos assesses Saito’s work alongside data scientist Hannah Ritchie’s Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet to push back against the narrative of doomism and contend that the world already has the resources it needs to reach climate neutrality.
4. Billionaires Must Help Fix the Planet
by Ban Ki-moon, Sept. 20
Billionaires emit a million times more carbon than the average person through their investments—and yet much of the burden of funding the energy transition and climate mitigation falls on regular, middle- and low-income taxpayers. That needs to change, writes former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Ban argues that governments “need to implement fairer tax policies that ensure the richest polluters pay their due and then use this revenue to invest heavily in a clean energy transition and public services.” In this forceful essay, Ban outlines four ways for countries to spearhead these policies and ensure that the ultra-rich “contribute their fair share” to raising the trillions of dollars needed to address the climate crisis.
5. The Oceanographer
by Christina Lu, July 27
In August, Brazilian oceanographer Leticia Carvalho won an election that could shape the fate of Earth’s last untouched frontier: the seabed, which is home to “a potential mother lode” of the minerals that help power the global energy transition, FP’s Christina Lu writes.
Carvalho was elected the next secretary-general of the United Nations-affiliated International Seabed Authority (ISA), a little-known agency based in Kingston, Jamaica, that has come to wield considerable influence as global powers vie for new supplies of battery minerals. Deep-sea mining in international waters is not legal yet, and the ISA is responsible for determining the rulebook for the controversial industry.
Just before that election, Lu interviewed Carvalho, who is determined to push for more independent research and the completion of regulations before mining can begin. The interview illuminates debates at the heart of one of the energy transition’s major battlefields, “as mining companies, countries, scientists, and big automakers clash over competing visions for the potential industry’s future.”
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