The war against climate change in increasingly becoming unwinnable because no single actor is both empowered and incentivized to fight it in earnest.
You may believe that climate change is a solvable problem that only requires the right mix of policies, technologies, and commitments. Yet, the architecture of global power is not designed to confront a challenge that transcends borders and generations.
Governments appear to be the most obvious candidates for saving the world. They command armies, levy taxes, negotiate treaties, and regulate industries. Yet their very survival depends on serving national interests. Elected leaders are tethered to electoral cycles, where voters reward jobs, subsidies, and cheap energy rather than sacrifices for future generations. Authoritarian rulers are no different; they rely on elites, militaries, and business groups that demand domestic stability above all else. At best, governments can extend their gaze to their immediate regions, where instability next door risks spilling over. But true global stewardship is beyond their training, mandate, and incentives. Governments are structurally national creatures, ill-equipped to serve planetary needs.
If governments are national, corporations are transnational. Supply chains span continents, markets are global, and capital flows freely across borders. Yet the corporate brain is wired for the bottom line. Publicly listed companies live and die by quarterly earnings. Managers’ bonuses are tied to stock prices. Within this system, the climate crisis is an “externality”, a cost not reflected on balance sheets unless regulators or consumers force it in.
Global institutions like the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund appear at first glance to be the natural custodians of global good. Their charters speak of peace, development, stability, and cooperation. Their bureaucracies are staffed by technocrats trained to think across borders. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for instance, has modeled risks with remarkable clarity. But these institutions are structurally weak. They do not generate their own resources and cannot enforce compliance. The UN depends on member states’ contributions, most agencies on voluntary donor funding. The World Bank and IMF are dominated by wealthy shareholders in Washington, Brussels, and Tokyo. The UN Security Council grants veto power to the five permanent members, ensuring that geopolitics trumps global good. Without independent revenues and enforcement powers, global institutions remain advisory bodies at best. They can sound alarms, but when push comes to shove, they cannot compel governments or corporations to act against their narrow interests.
If governments are too national, corporations too short-termist, and institutions too weak, who then truly grasps the planetary scale of the climate threat? Scientists and experts, of course. For decades, climate scientists have issued increasingly urgent warnings, supported by mountains of data and models. They have mapped the risks of rising seas, collapsing ecosystems, and extreme weather. They understand, better than anyone, the intergenerational stakes. Yet they remain politically powerless. Scientists understand the threat but are ignored. In other words, those who can act can not think globally, and those who can think globally cannot act.
Climate change is the ultimate global, intergenerational problem. It demands cooperation across borders, sacrifices today for gains decades later, and recognition of costs that are invisible in market prices. Yet our power structures are the exact opposite: fragmented by borders and trapped in short-term cycles. Even when agreements are struck, the Paris Accord, net-zero pledges, climate finance promises, the follow-through collapses under the weight of national politics, profit pressures, and geopolitical rivalries. Wars like those in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and elsewhere continue to consume resources, while worsening emissions and devastation.
The battle for the planet’s climate cannot be won because no single actor is both empowered and incentivized to fight it in earnest. Humanity faces the greatest collective action problem in history without a collective agent capable of solving it. The tragedy of climate change is that we lack a system of power that can align knowledge, resources, and authority at a planetary scale.
