Expensive climate policy is dead – and it could be an immense opportunity

THE latest climate summit has been as hypocritical and dysfunctional as every one before, with most world leaders not even bothering to turn up. Still, 50,000 people flew in from across the world, while essentially telling the rest of us to stop flying. Poor-country politicians performatively staged a “walkout”, and rich nations ended up promising a climate slush fund of US$300 billion a year.

This extravagant pay-off is unlikely to happen, just like previous fanciful pledges made over three decades of climate summits. While virtually every summit has promised to cut emissions, they’ve increased almost every year, and 2024 reached a new high. In 2021, the world promised to phase-down coal. Since then, global coal consumption has only gone up.

We need a different gameplan – and the decisive election of Donald Trump may upend these sanctimonious summits. Therein lies an opportunity for the world.