Why the Paris Agreement failed
It was embedded in a globalist institutional architecture opposed to national-interest reasoning and was promoted through apocalyptic narratives that generated fatalism instead of action
On the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, at a time when climate action and the energy transition seem to have faded into the background, I argue in my latest piece for UnHerd that both sides of the debate — climate activists and climate sceptics — were wrong all along.
Climate activists, for their part, were (are) wrong to maintain that civilisation-ending consequences are locked in unless emissions reach net zero by some unmovable date in the near future — a claim that’s both scientifically false and politically counterproductive.
But the sceptics were (are) wrong to dismiss the energy transition altogether. For countries that lack abundant domestic fossil fuel reserves, reducing dependence on imported hydrocarbons is not an act of idealism — it’s a matter of hard-nosed national interest.
However the reason the climate agenda failed — on its own terms, as well as in terms of spurring more sovereignty-based approaches — lies in how the entire debate was framed from the outset. Since its origins at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the UN Conference of the Parties (COP) process has been defined by two inseparable characteristics: catastrophism and globalism.
Not only did apocalyptic narratives generate fatalism instead of action, but more importantly, by framing climate change as a planetary problem necessarily requiring global governance and coordination, COP foreclosed more practical, interest-based approaches to decarbonisation rooted in energy sovereignty.
Any action taken by a single country was implicitly framed as futile; only coordinated global action counted. Moreover, the kind of state-directed industrial policies needed to actually build the infrastructure of decarbonisation ran counter to the market-oriented neoliberal zeitgeist. This logic delegitimised countries such as China, which were actually investing in decarbonisation through five-year plans, massive subsidies and deliberate manufacturing scale-up rather than multilateral consensus.
This framing, however, was not simply a strategic error; it was, in part, deliberate. COP took shape precisely as globalisation was being institutionally embedded: the first Rio conference in 1992 coincided with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, which marked the birth of the European Union. Arguing that democratic decision-making had to give way to technocratic governance in the name of planetary salvation served to reinforce this broader supranational project.
This globalist orientation was compounded by the ideological makeup of the climate movement itself. Stemming predominantly from liberal internationalist and pseudo-Marxist traditions, most environmental activists and writers share those traditions’ hostility to the nation-state. In their view, national sovereignty is an obstacle to be overcome by international governance.
The result was predictable: more conservative and nationally oriented people and politicians came to associate any energy transition policy with globalism and its discontents, ensuring that the issue became entangled in the Western culture wars and depriving it of any positive, sovereignty-affirming interpretation.
But it’s not too late. As I argue in the article, for any country that is serious about sovereignty, security and long-term economic resilience, the case for reducing fossil fuel import dependence remains a strong and entirely self-interested one.
Read the article here. If you’re a paid subscriber and you can’t access the article write to me at thomasfazi82@gmail.com.
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Thomas Fazi
Website: thomasfazi.net
Twitter: @battleforeurope
Latest book: The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (co-authored with Toby Green)
Having worked professionally in climate advocacy, and witnessed the ineffectiveness of the global regime, I think your analysis about trying to achieve a global framework has some cogency. My major thrust, in fact, was action at local, state and regional scale, with emphasis on economic benefits of energy transition. However, I must disagree with you downplaying the potentially catastrophic consequences of non-action. When we are already likely seeing distortion of the jet stream due to Arctic heating, with consequences including an intensification of droughts and severe storms, the situation is already dire. The prospect for failure in multiple breadbaskets is becoming more likely, threatening global food scarcity. Meanwhile, the collapse of the North Atlantic circulation is growing more probable, throwing Europe into sub-Arctic conditions, and causing monsoon failure in India, among other horrendous consequences. The real story is massive disruption of Earth’s oceanic and atmospheric circulation systems with effects ramifying to basic food and water supplies. If anything, scientists have been reserved in their assessments.
This is not the place to explain why I will never join the monetization racket whether as writer or reader, but I mention that just because as an admirer of so much of your writing, I am so disappointed to not have access to your thoughts on this topic.
Sceptic is a term that applies to any genuine scientist, but it has been usurped by some climate activists as a synonym for 'denialist', perhaps to deliberately misrepresent the scientific approach by likening it to the people (both of them?) who don't believe that the earth is, on average, warming a little.
So I'm alarmed to read the words "But the sceptics were (are) wrong to dismiss the energy transition altogether." Despite the many layers of ambiguity in that sentence, it confirms my fear that in dividing opinions between activism and scepticism, you adopt the activist abusive meaning for scepticism and fail to acknowledge the input of science: approaching the matter on the basis of evidence, i.e. scepticism.
Unable to read your article, I would like to express the hope that firstly, despite the above, you pay due attention to the contributions of Roger Pielke Jr, and secondly that you show awareness of the major thread of venal interest among the activists, as exposed by Pielke, namely the attempt to create a body of accepted falsehood for lucrative litigation against petrochemical companies for damages consequent on extreme weather events.