Review of Pourquoi l’écologie perd toujours by Clément Sénéchal (Éditions du Seuil, 2024)
In 2024, average global surface temperatures were 1.55 degrees Celsius higher than preindustrial levels — the latest in a string of dismal records over the last decade. The rise was a symbolic breach of the best-case-scenario ceiling for planetary warming set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which aimed for no more than a 1.5 degree increase. This goal hasn’t been abandoned quite yet: warming is gauged over several years of data. Yet the trend is clear, with little being done to realize the collective promises made ten years ago. In fact, average temperatures for both 2023 and 2024 surpassed 1.5 degrees of warming, according to Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Meanwhile, global environmental governance is flailing, with the United States doubling down on petro-nationalism and Donald Trump again withdrawing the world’s largest economy from the Paris Accords. Facing its own insurgent far right, the European Union’s green-policy initiatives could also soon be hollowed out, as EU leaders roll back electrical-vehicle mandates for the bloc’s automobile industry and other environmental controls.
The latest COP summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, was a showcase for withering ambitions, and also illustrated how much corporate interests have captured environmental policymaking. Seeing only a slight increase in pledged financial transfers from wealthier nations to Global South economies, the conclave’s capstone text even abandoned language pointing to an eventual phase-out of fossil fuels, dropping the so-called “UAE Consensus” approved at the 2023 COP in Dubai.
There were always reasons to be…
Auteur: Harrison Stetler
