Climate policy in the world and its future
Epochal milestones in the development of modern climate policy were the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and the Paris Agreement in 2015 - international agreements in which participating countries committed to reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Today, climate change and the fight against global warming have become an integral part of the globalist agenda of Western countries, as well as those countries that want to cooperate or identify with the Western world.
Despite the declaration of noble goals, climate policy continues to be a kind of privilege for the rich and developed countries, often using climate change and environmental issues as a means of pressuring countries in the Global South. This comes against the backdrop of Western countries initiating the transfer of harmful industrial production to poor countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America 30-40 years ago. At the same time, the greatest “threat” to globalist climate policy will come from the United States, a country in the Western world where the environmental agenda is perhaps most dependent on globalist Democrats or more isolationist Republicans being in power. The new U.S. administration has already demonstrated its skepticism of climate initiatives and intends to withdraw from international climate agreements, which could create another fault line between Washington and EU countries in the near future.
Green initiatives and geopolitics
Climate policy as a separate area of global politics and international diplomacy began to emerge in Western countries in the second half of the 1960s against the backdrop of mass protests and movements in defense of minority rights, women's empowerment and demands to end colonial policies in Asia and Africa. Many active participants and political activists who took part in these protests later became members of various environmental parties and movements in favor of ecology, climate, nuclear power and disarmament.
One such example is the Green Party in Germany, which was influenced by the policy of decarbonizing the energy sector in Germany. In the 2000s, at the initiative of the Greens, the government adopted a plan to phase out nuclear power. In 2023, the last three nuclear power plants in Germany – Isar 2 in Bavaria, Emsland in Lower Saxony and Neckarwestheim 2 in Baden-Württemberg – were disconnected from the grid.
Overall, it is worth noting that climate policy originally emerged as a leftist agenda, and only since the 1990s has it been used by globalists and proponents of neoliberalism as a cover for intentions to perpetuate the underdevelopment of the Global South. At the UN level, attention to climate issues began to grow in the 1980s and 1990s amidst the concern of climate scientists about the dramatic rise in global average temperatures. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 in cooperation with the World Meteorological Organization. Gradually, a consensus emerged in the Western community on the need to develop international legislation that would legally oblige states to reduce the amount of harmful gases in the atmosphere and combat the effects of global climate change.
In 1992, the first international agreement to jointly combat the effects of dangerous human interference in natural systems, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), was signed within the framework of the United Nations. The Kyoto Protocol was signed under the UNFCCC in 1997, and in 2015 it was replaced by the Paris Climate Agreement. Currently, 198 countries are parties to the UNFCCC.
The FCCC has the highest decision-making body on climate policy, the UN Climate Change Conference. The conference holds annual meetings where countries assess progress on climate change. The most recent UN climate conference to this point was held in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November 2024. Despite a seemingly broad set of international climate measures and initiatives, developed countries in the West are often criticized by countries in the Global South. In their view, states fail to fulfill their commitments or achieve their climate goals at the expense of other countries.
In the 1980s, Western countries were indeed among the first to take early initiatives to protect the environment. However, their main contribution to their own environmental well-being was the intensive relocation of harmful industrial production to the Global South. This has led to the current state of affairs in which Western countries, except perhaps the United States under Donald Trump and the Republican majority, show high rates of involvement in climate initiatives and act as a kind of moral guide in the fight against climate change. At the same time, the countries of the Global South, where most of the harmful and polluting industries are now located, are suppliers of low-cost products (clothing, machinery, building materials) that continue to be in demand and, due to their low prices, contribute to consumer diversity in the same West.
Given the inherent isolationism and unwillingness of the US to commit itself to international obligations, even when globalist and neoliberalist Democrats were in power, there are now two clear leaders in global climate policy: the European Union (EU) and China. Whereas the EU has developed its climate policy through legislation and restrictions on certain “non-environmental” products, China began its transformation with the economy, namely the development of low-carbon transportation (electric cars).
European Union: decarbonization of the economy and climate legislation
Over the past 10 years, the European Union has developed and approved perhaps the most comprehensive climate programs. As part of the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement, in December 2019, the European Union approved and adopted the so-called European Green Pact (Green New Deal) to achieve zero CO2 emissions or decarbonization by 2050. Two years later, in 2021, the EU approved the Fit for 55 climate programme, a set of steps to implement the European Green Pact. Finally, in March 2022, the EU announced an ambitious strategy to stop importing fossil fuels from Russia and further transition to decarbonization of its energy systems.
It is important to note that the provisions of the Green Pact are written into the legislation of the member countries and are implemented at all levels of government: supranational (EU), national (EU member countries adapting the provisions of the Green Pact to their needs and conditions), regional and local.
Often at the local and regional level in countries with a high level of decentralization, local and regional governments set even more ambitious goals than in the country as a whole. For example, major European cities such as Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam or Stockholm have restrictions on the movement and speed of cars in cities, and higher taxes or tariffs for fossil fuel vehicles.
As part of the Green Pact, the EU has several large-scale initiatives underway at the moment.
Green economy. A green economy is a low-carbon and socially inclusive economy. In a green economy, job and income growth is driven by public and private investment in precision manufacturing, R&D, renewable energy, and any other sectors that use energy efficiently and improve quality of life.
Circular economy. The circular economy is a production and consumption model that extends the life cycle of products (sharing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling) to reduce waste. EU countries have been particularly successful in recycling garbage, old machinery and textile products.
Energy-efficient renovation– renovation of outdated buildings to meet new climate and environmental standards. By 2030, the EU plans to renovate 35 million buildings and create about 160,000 jobs in the construction and building materials sectors.
Currently, the biggest criticism of the EU comes from the discrepancy between Europe's energy efficiency goals and the actual policies pursued. On the one hand, European countries, except Hungary and Slovakia, proclaim the introduction of green economy principles and support for alternative energy. On the other hand, the EU, in fact, has never abandoned the purchase of Russian oil, in 2024 more money was spent on Russian gas and oil than on financial aid to Ukraine. Thus, according to estimates by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), in the third year of the conflict, European countries purchased €21.9 billion worth of Russian oil and gas. The EU allocated €18.7 billion for financial assistance to Ukraine.
China: electric vehicles and the transformation of modern industry
In the early 2000s, China was looking for ways to develop itself so that it would not remain a center of production of cheap goods for developed countries. At that time, the Chinese government decided to make a strategic move and invest in the development of technologies that provide high value-added products rather than cheap labor for workers. One of these sectors was electric cars, which at the time were talked about as a distant future technology. At the time of their inception, electric cars were expensive, and to make them more attractive to the average consumer, the Chinese government provided generous subsidies to manufacturers, and buyers were reimbursed for some of the cost of buying them. China is now the largest producer of electric vehicles in the world, accounting for about 58% of global electric vehicle production as of 2023 and more than 1.28 million exports in 2024.
Capitalizing on its economic success, China has also started to pay more attention to alternative energy, as for a long time the main fuel for the Chinese economy up until the early 2010s was coal. According to China's Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2011-2015), 80% of the raw materials for solar cell production should be localized, i.e. produced in China in Chinese factories. In 2015, the “Made in China 2025” strategy was adopted, which helped transform China into a high-precision, high-productivity economy that produces up to 70-80% of all electric vehicles and solar panels in the global market.
It would seem that China's economic success in clean manufacturing should have brought China closer to the West, but polarization between the countries is only growing. In fact, the U.S. and EU are increasingly resorting to protectionist measures to keep high-tech Chinese products out of their markets, regardless of their environmental friendliness and compliance with green standards.
This suggests that Western countries have used climate policy and ecological transformation as inherent characteristics that developing countries should not have. It can be said with a high degree of certainty that Europe and the United States have been comfortable with the status quo of the past decades, whereby they create technologies and the Global South produces mass consumption goods using these technologies and sells these products to the West at low cost.
Western countries, especially corporations from Western countries, are also using ESG, or responsible and green investment principles, to their advantage. Initially they were created with the help of the UN for large corporations to implement environmentally friendly development principles and help poor countries, but their further development has led to the fact that the largest companies have only strengthened their position in the market, displacing small and medium-sized competitors from less developed countries. In addition, the awarding of various ESG prizes to oil companies, tobacco companies and large corporations using slave labor in Africa has largely discredited the idea of ESG, making it another part of the neoliberal agenda.
While 20-30 years ago, environmental policy was one of the few areas of international politics where countries had opportunities for cooperation and collaboration, now climate initiatives have become a field for competition. This is especially true for the development of environmentally friendly and high-precision industries such as alternative energy, microelectronics, medicine, artificial intelligence, optics and cable communications. In these industries, there is active competition for resources (rare earth metals, lithium, nickel, cobalt), talent and the creation of the most advanced technologies. Instead of cooperation and joint solutions to common problems, the countries are escalating their relations: the EU and the US impose duties on Chinese electric cars and limit technology exports, while China, in turn, imposes a ban on rare earth metals exports. It is quite possible that such fierce competition will give an impetus to the development of technologies, as it is now happening with AI, but the question is whether these technologies will be used for the common good or given to large corporations and the military-industrial complex. This situation is aggravated by the fact that international organizations, which are supposed to unite the interests of the world's countries, are increasingly losing their authority and ability to mediate in the international arena.
Climate policy has for some time been one of the least politicized areas for cooperation between both developed and developing countries. Up until the 2010s, the EU countries were considered to be the leaders in climate initiatives - they began to introduce comprehensive climate legislation and support the development of alternative energy. Their leadership was largely due to the fact that they moved all harmful production to the Global South. One of the few countries that managed to gradually get out of the status of a cheap producer was China, which served as an additional dividing line between China and Western countries. Thus, instead of cooperating, countries are creating additional barriers to the climate challenges facing humanity, where the “golden billion” countries are unwilling to let others get on their level. At the same time, China, which used to be considered one of the most environmentally conservative countries, is now emerging as a global player calling for more climate justice, namely helping developing countries and giving them funds to prevent natural disasters rather than subsequently fighting them. It is also worth noting that with Donald Trump's rise to power and his negative attitude towards climate policy, the US may miss out on development opportunities in the alternative energy market in favor of the same China and the EU.
