Latest news with #ClimateRealismInitiative
Bloomberg
12-04-2025
- Science
- Bloomberg
Putting Mirrors in Space Is a Dangerous Climate Distraction
When it comes to the climate crisis, what's a realistic path forward? Continuing to deploy renewables at breakneck speed? Or relying blindly on technologies to reflect the sun's heat away from the planet? A few prominent voices in the climate space seem to believe the latter choice — solar geoengineering — is now our best option. This interpretation is at best, bleak, and at worst, dangerous. Varun Sivaram, senior fellow for energy and climate at the American think tank Council on Foreign Relations, launched a 'Climate Realism Initiative' earlier this month. In an essay introducing the concept, Sivaram writes that the world's climate targets are unachievable, that the clean-energy transition carries 'serious risks' for US interests and that US emissions don't matter to the trajectory of climate change.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Bleak, Defeatist Rise of 'Climate Realism'
Amid all the bad climate news flowing out of the Trump administration, you might have missed a quiet new consensus congealing in think tanks and big business. The targets set out by the Paris climate agreement, they argue—to limit global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit)—are a lost cause. It's time to prepare for a world warmed by at least three degrees Celsius. Owing to 'recent setbacks to global decarbonization efforts,' Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a research report last month, they 'now expect a 3°C world.' The 'baseline' scenario that JP Morgan Chase uses to assess its own transition risk—essentially, the economic impact that decarbonization could have on its high-carbon investments—similarly 'assumes that no additional emissions reduction policies are implemented by governments' and that the world could reach '3°C or more of warming' by 2100. The Climate Realism Initiative launched on Monday by the Council on Foreign Relations similarly presumes that the world is likely on track to warm on average by three degrees or more this century. The essay announcing the initiative calls the prospect of reaching net-zero global emissions by 2050 'utterly implausible.' The prescriptions that flow from those assessments are bleak. Naturally, Wall Street is looking to find investment opportunities and avoid risks to its clients' portfolios amid severe droughts, feet of sea-level rise, and widespread crop failures. As reporter Corbin Hiar noted for E&E News, Morgan Stanley projects that a three-degrees warming scenario 'could more than double the growth rate of the $235 billion cooling market every year, from 3 percent to 7 percent until 2030.' Banks joined other corporations in bragging about their climate goals over the last several years. These more recent reports, by contrast—consistent with their widespread abandonment of those climate goals—are in keeping with what they've always done, and will always do: try to make money. When governments were eager to pour billions of dollars into subsidizing green technologies, banks and other companies advertised their willingness to take advantage of those incentives and cozied up to the wealthy, climate-minded governments that were offering them. Times have changed. While it's no longer fashionable for corporations to broadcast their green bona fides, financial institutions with an obligation to make money for their clients and shareholders still have to take costly climate risks—from rising insurance premiums to supply chain disruptions—seriously. They just aren't calling themselves climate champions for doing so. The brand of climate cynicism being voiced by the Council on Foreign Relations is more novel. In an essay outlining the founding principles of the Climate Realism Initiative, Varun Sivarum—the program's director and a former top aide to Biden-era U.S. climate envoy John Kerry—describes a zero-sum, catastrophically climate-changed world where 'other countries will single-mindedly prioritize their own interests' and the United States should do the same. Facing climate-fueled mass migration 'of at least hundreds of millions of climate refugees [that] could upend the international order, and increasingly grisly natural disasters,' the U.S. 'should provide the support it can, cooperate with countries on building resilience capabilities, and protect its borders,' as well as 'prepare for global competition for resources and military positioning that is intensifying in the melting Arctic.' As emissions continue to rise from emerging economies, Sivarum calls on policymakers to treat climate change as a 'top national security priority—on the level of averting nuclear war and engaging in great-power competition with China,' working with allies to penalize countries whose emissions continue to rise. Acknowledging that such an approach is 'fundamentally unfair,' Sivarum makes the case for an America First climate policy. 'Nevertheless, the fact is that foreign emissions are endangering the American homeland,' he argues. 'Every tool of the U.S. and allies' arsenals, spanning diplomatic and economic coercion to military might, should be on the table.' Donald Trump and his top allies don't seem to think climate change is real, or that it's a bad thing. But as the White House threatens to invade Greenland for its minerals and disappears people into Salvadoran prisons, it's helping to build precisely the kinds of climate resilience that the Council on Foreign Relations—with its roster of Biden and Obama White House alumni—seems to be championing. Bleak as warming projections are, a planet where governments and businesses fight to the death for their own profitable share of a hotter, more chaotic planet is bleaker still. The only thing worse than a right wing that doesn't take climate change seriously might be one that does, and can muster support from both sides of the aisle to put 'America First' in a warming, warring world.
Axios
07-04-2025
- Business
- Axios
"Climate realism" stresses security, mitigation and resilience
An ambitious new effort to reframe the U.S. approach to climate is taking a sledgehammer to shibboleths on the left and the right. Why it matters: The Climate Realism Initiative warns of massive threats to the U.S., while arguing the country's past approach focused on the wrong things. The big picture: The initiative "says two things that almost never get uttered in the same sentence," said Varun Sivaram, director of the new Council on Foreign Relations program. "I think climate is a grave national security threat on the level of all-out war," he said ahead of today's launch. "On the other hand, I don't actually think that spending a trillion dollars on reducing American emissions expensively and not very intelligently is the right policy response." Driving the news: Sivaram, a former top aide to Biden-era U.S. climate diplomat John Kerry (among other gigs), just penned an essay that sets the stage for the seven-figure program. It warns of"fallacies" including: Thinking that Paris temperature targets are achievable. Thinking that cutting U.S. emissions can make a meaningful difference, noting the U.S. will be roughly 5% of future cumulative emissions this century. Believing that climate change poses manageable risks to U.S. prosperity and security. What's next: His piece argues U.S. policymakers should brace for warming of at least 3°C this century. The country must prepare for the migration, security and resilience ramifications. Other parts of the "realism" doctrine that centers U.S. economic and security interests include: Focus on industries where the U.S. will have an edge, like next-gen geothermal, advanced nuclear, and solid-state batteries — and work to disseminate this tech globally. Elevate climate as a top national security priority. Develop and test geoengineering. The doctrine also says advanced economies should use trade tools that penalize nations with large, fast-rising emissions. State of play: It brings together established names in wonk-world, such as David Hart, Lindsay Iversen and Alice Hill. Sivaram tells Axios that the approach isn't pegged to the Trump administration, which largely rejects the problem of climate change. "Tomorrow, the Trump administration is probably not going to make a complete about-face and agree that climate poses deep national security threats to the United States," he said, though he adds that some work will continue quietly. But in the long run — and even within the next couple of years — the initiative's framing can "make climate palatable to administrations of both parties," he said. The bottom line: Sivaram stressed in our interview that he was speaking and writing for himself, and that different scholars taking part will have different views.
