Climate Realism at the Council on Foreign Relations

We centrists often feel lonely these days. But the good folks at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) prove that the center is not yet completely dead.

One of the CFR’s new initiatives is called Climate Realism. It is an attempt to redirect American energy and climate policy in a new geopolitical environment, where multilateral cooperation toward a net zero economy seems increasingly implausible.

The CFR’s initiative has four pillars. First, climate change is a major threat to the United States. Second, our efforts to address climate change under the Paris Agreement have mostly failed. Third, we need to focus on clean technologies where we have a competitive advantage. And finally, we need to consider emergency measures such as geoengineering.

Overall, I find Climate Realism a welcome addition to the climate discourse. However, I doubt it will have much impact given the extreme degree of political polarization in the United States.

1. Climate change is a major threat but our efforts have failed

I am going to tackle the first two points together.

The problem with most people who claim to be “realistic” about climate change is that they are only realistic about one side of the problem.

Some people, mostly on the political right, say realism means accepting that fossil fuels will be here for a long time and the energy transition is very hard.

Others, mostly on the political left and in the climate science community, say realism means accepting climate change as an existential threat.

The CFR initiative is clear that both things are true.

We are not on track with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or even well below 2.0 degrees Celsius. The energy transition is a slow process. Global energy demand is still growing, and we are not yet even meeting that demand growth entirely with clean energy. The energy transition is a massive and expensive undertaking.

But climate change is also an existential threat. The fact that moving away from fossil fuels is hard has no impact on the reality that we are on a dangerous trajectory. Human societies are not prepared for the kind of accelerated climate change that we are seeing today.

This part of climate realism is spot on.

2. What should we do with clean technology?

The CFR Climate Realists argue that the United States must acknowledge China’s lead and focus our efforts on technologies where we could ...