Climate activists have two major strategies. One demands fossil fuel producers to curtail production and shift to green energy. The other pleads for governments and corporations to invest more in projects and programs designed to defeat climate change.
Here is why these strategies have failed and will continue to fail.
Imagine sitting in your car ready to escape from your smog-ridden city to a country area vacation with cleaner air. But the car isn't moving. Why? You have one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brake. You wonder why you are not moving toward your destination.
You believe this bizarre scene couldn't last for long. The driver would eventually wake up and take action to correct the failure to move forward.
Yet, it is a perfect metaphor for the so-called "war on climate change". Surprisingly, the debate on September 10, 2024, between Donald Trump, a climate change denier, and Kamala Harris, an advocate for the defeat of climate change, illustrated the same stalemate as the stalled car. It also exposed why climate activism has failed and will continue to fail.
The two presidential candidates, ostensibly on opposite sides of the issue, argued over who would produce more atmosphere-poisoning oil. Trump proudly boasted about his policy of "drill baby drill" (foot strictly on the brake). Kamala Harris, after telling of her foot on the brake-- signaling that the U.S. is currently producing more oil than any other country in the world-- pointed out that the Biden administration had made the most aggressive investment in climate change projects in the history of the United States (foot on the accelerator) More recently (December 18, 2024), while ignoring his foot on the brake, Joe Biden made more "bold" commitments to tackle climate change. The U.S. is not alone in this duplicity. It exists in virtually all the leading fossil fuel-producing countries.
Worse than the stalled car example, in the real-life version we are moving backwards. The world today is in worse shape than when the war on climate change began. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is greater with temperatures rising to unprecedented levels each year. In 2008 scientists warned that CO2 should not exceed 380 parts per million (ppm). In 2024 NASA reported a surge to 427 ppm.
This failure is not surprising. While the world has invested hundreds of billions, if not more, in projects to defeat climate change, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports: "Globally, about $400 billion every year of taxpayers' money is spent directly subsidizing the fossil fuels that are driving climate change... damage to health and the environment that they cause, brings the real value of the subsidy to over $5 trillion per year." More disturbing, all the leading polluting nations are not only failing to meet their commitments to achieve net zero emissions, but, like the U.S. they are actually revving up their production of fossil fuels. This increased production is causing a rise in climate catastrophes. Corporations are also reneging on commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And nations with the greatest rain forests (lungs of the world) bristle at pressure to take the moral high road and invoke extreme conservation when the wealthiest industrialized nations have hugely profited from recklessly exploiting the production of fossil fuels-- and continue to do so.
Like the person in the stalled car, many wonder why there is no progress in defeating climate change.
The war on climate change is not without its supporters: A staggering number of advocates all over the world lobby for greater investments in combatting climate change. The Climate Reality Project alone reports its "community of 3.5 million grassroots activists in 192 countries fighting to end the era of fossil fuels and drive the just transition to clean energy that we need for a sustainable future". The Climate Action Network (CAN), is "a global network of more than 1,900 civil society organizations in over 130 countries driving collective and sustainable action to fight the climate crisis..." The voices of these wishful pro-life for the planet foot-on-the-accelerator activists are falling on deaf ears (the brake people). What is the response of activist organizations to the faltering war on climate change? They plead for more funds to enlist more activists. Really? More advocates will move us forward?
Consider too, the vast number of funded projects around the world-- $1 trillion annually according to the Climate Policy Initiative. We have heard about many of these "promising projects" at the annual COP (Conference of the Parties) international conference on climate change. Here is the assessment of COP29 in November 2024 by the Global Solutions Initiative: "The cycle of hope and despair is likely to continue."
Moreover, virtually every college and university in the U.S. and elsewhere boast projects designed to defeat climate change. At some universities, more than fifty faculty members are working on funded climate projects. This vast climate industry is now part of the problem rather than the solution. The volume of projects and activists feeds an illusion that we are on a positive trajectory. But the history of failure says otherwise. And no current projects can convincingly scale fast enough to stop the planet from reaching critical points of no return. These initiatives by dedicated researchers would be valuable contributions to a cleaner planet if we would achieve net zero emissions. They would then fulfill our role as stewards of the planet.
It should be clear by now that the current strategies to stop climate change are literally dead ends. The foot-on-the-brake community will not go away (it's growing among US lawmakers). Governments will continue to appease deniers and others who place economic gains over securing life on the planet in order to get funding for climate change actions. Most discouraging, the massive funding for projects worldwide has not only failed it has left us with a deeper crisis.
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