We are running out of time to avoid climate disaster.  As signatories to the 2015 Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change, more than 190 governments have committed to take action to limit the rise in average global temperatures to “well below” 2°C above preindustrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit the increase to a safer 1.5°C.  The stakes are high: failure means a very high risk of catastrophic climate change, with feedback mechanisms triggering unbearable heat waves, massive migration, mega fires, droughts and desertification of lands, and the flooding of low-lying cities.  

The UN secretary general Antonio Guterres has declared that it is “Code Red for Humanity.” And yet, according to a 2022 UN Environmental Program report that incorporates updated national pledges to limit greenhouse gas emissions, “Policies currently in place point to a 2.8°C temperature rise by the end of the century. Implementation of the current pledges will only reduce this to a 2.4-2.6°C temperature rise by the end of the century.” 

So what gives?  In short, most governments remain unwilling to change existing systems of production and patterns of consumption.  The US government, for example, continues to act as if it believes that environmentally sustainable growth, or green growth, can be achieved through the use of targeted incentives and subsidies.  In other words, that corporations will, in response to state-influenced market signals, produce the new technologies and products needed to reduce future emissions and even pull existing emissions out of the atmosphere in the nick of time, all while allowing economic growth to continue.