Wealthy governments failed to curb their emissions; now they are failing to come to terms with how bad the situation is, particularly with tipping points.
An honest response to climate change requires historic collective action and global cooperation.
It will require completely different leaders.
A record El Niño + Hormuz energy crisis, both in the coming months, is a template for what our future will look like.
Climate impacts will be mediated through failed governance systems that can no longer keep the peace or maintain global cooperation.
This is a governance and climate 'doom loop'
Not yet. Big point of discussion for the conference
Fifty countries gather in Santa Marta, Colombia next week for the first conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels.
We need these kinds of coalitions to emerge. We also need them to add teeth to international climate obligations
I'm working closely with climate scientists to bring the issue of tipping points before government actors. Check out this great video from an event at the UN in Geneva last March, where we briefed States, NGOs, and others about the real threat of tipping points on human rights
Shipping traffic in the Arctic has increased 40% in the last 12 years.
the cause: diminishing sea ice, and increasing business activity (oil shipping + natural resources extraction)
We ought to be keeping the Arctic cool. Instead, the Arctic is becoming the first frontier of the post-Holocene.
5) The vision of equal rights of peoples has never truly been fully actualized. Climate change asks us to imagine a world in which all peoples are truly free and equal. And where governments are charged with protecting human rights and maintaining a habitable planet.
4) Self-determination has transformed the world through decolonization. Self-determination remains a real issue in advancing the rights of occupied peoples, Indigenous Peoples. We must similarly transform the world if we truly wish to stabilize the climate. Self-determination provides a language
3) Self-determination protects a people's way of life. Why is it that high-energy lifestyles are never questioned? Why must the ways of life of vulnerable peoples change, but not the lifestyles of high-emitters? self-determination forces us to confront this hidden prejudice.
2) A variety of peoples are vulnerable to climate change. These including Indigenous Peoples; peoples under occupation; low-income States; and others. The most vulnerable peoples did not cause the problem. Loss of territory, resources, and sovereignty have infringed on self-determination.
1) Self-determination is the right that advanced decolonization and the rights of Indigenous Peoples. It is a powerful, fundamental right. It requires equal rights. It allows us to formulate a new kind of language that helps us catalogue the damaging behavior of high-emissions States
My PhD in international law is focused on the right to self-determination and climate change. Some insights (as I try to finish it over the coming weeks, 5 years in!).
The right to self-determination is fundamental to our understanding of international law. In the context of climate change:
The "reprieve" over Greenland is almost certainly temporary.
The underlying geopolitics, including accelerating climate change, have not gone away. At some point in the future Trump's focus will again be on Greenland.
There is no one moment that will define climate collapse this century.
ENSO shifts, AMOC, and extreme weather and heat will overlap and cascade with biodiversity collapse, food disruption, sea-level rise, and migration.
We are all strangers on a less hospitable world. Some better off than others.
This year's imminent El Niño, combined with news about AMOC collapse, are a reminder that climate disruption is a series of cascading impacts. The one-two punch. The social impacts will be extreme as well — health impacts, extreme heat, food disruption.
The US Supreme Court will decide the fate of climate lawsuits being filed in a variety of state courts.
Conservative jurists who have analyzed these issues have focused on the need to protect US energy independence and 'sovereignty'
The US Supreme Court is also likely to go down this path
A San Francisco judge paused all California climate lawsuits — the state's, San Mateo's, Oakland's, eight in total — while the Supreme Court decides Boulder v. Suncor. Over 30 climate cases nationwide now hinge on a single ruling. This entire legal pathway turns on one court.
Great Power governments downplay AMOC collapse because acknowledging it would require transforming governance, economy, and energy systems entirely. Something they don't want to do.
AMOC collapse reflects failed leadership and institutions. The consequences are profound. New post:
The AMOC will weaken further. Therefore, the real question is whether we can organize ourselves to prevent its collapse. Whether we can put the right people in charge. Or whether we will continue to sleepwalk toward a post-Holocene world that none of our institutions were built to survive.
New post - my thoughts on AMOC collapse and the challenge of facing a civilizational crisis with the wrong leaders in charge.
daveindercomar.substack.com/p/amoc-colla...
Global climate policy assumed an international order guided by cooperation.
That assumption is no longer valid. The prohibition on aggression is now openly flouted. Grave crimes are committed daily.
As we enter the Post-Holocene, Great Powers will further abandon international law.
The US has now abandoned the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement. In tandem, it has sanctioned officials at the International Criminal Court and a UN Special Rapporteur.
These are not isolated events. They reflect an intentional policy of collapsing international law on critical global issues.
Italy just delayed its coal phase-out to 2038 to survive the Hormuz closure.
Chatham House describes this as the fossil fuel "doom loop" — increasing structural crises become so chaotic that countries persist with fossil fuels to survive.
This is a worst case scenario for any just transition.
Accelerating climate change is happening at the same time we see accelerating cycles of global war and conflict.
The two issues are deeply linked.
This is why the world urgently needs a peace movement that walks with a movement to stabilize the climate system.
Each year, the challenges associated with the clean energy transition go up. Warming will get worse. And the chaos caused by Great Power energy wars will increase
A major political push is needed to transition off of fossil fuels immediately. There will never be a perfect time other than right now.
Bios for the candidates for UN Secretary General are available here:
www.un.org/en/sg-select...
The UN is being intentionally underfunded and restrained by Great Powers. The next SG is going to have to defend the institution at its weakest point in history.
Line chart showing atmospheric CO₂ concentration at Mauna Loa Observatory from 1958 to 2024. A light blue sawtooth line shows raw monthly values, reflecting the seasonal cycle of plant growth. A dark blue smooth line shows the seasonally adjusted record, rising from 315 ppm in 1958 to over 426 ppm in 2024. A dashed red curve shows the super-exponential fit, with the instantaneous growth rate rising from 0.27%/yr in 1960 to 0.64%/yr in 2024, more than doubling over the period of the record.
1/ Why is atmospheric CO₂ accelerating faster than fossil fuel emissions are growing?
The answer is buried in the data, and it's more worrying than most people realise.
A thread. 🧵👇
We need to “pattern disrupt” the way we look at our warming world.
Warming is getting much worse, quickly.
We need to discuss hard adaptation and an urgent halt to fossil fuel use.
No easy choices. Only hard ones left.
This is the “post-Holocene”
www.nbcnews.com/weather/heat...
There will be no "perfect time" for the energy transition. That ship has long sailed, maybe 30 years ago
Now we need concrete policy proposals, requiring real choices, to get our societies off of fossil fuels
This will require leadership, political will, and confronting hardened centers of power
The USA is a fossil fuel sovereign. It has no plans to stop burning fossil fuels. Ever.
Can the intransigence of a Great Power country really be left unchecked like this?
If nothing changes, will we simply watch a small group of leaders torpedo climate cooperation? A livable planet?