After more than three decades of high-level international summits, legally binding treaties, and intricate market mechanisms, global climate governance stands at a monumental crossroads. For generations, the dominant approach to addressing the climate crisis has relied heavily on what policy experts term "managing tons"—a strategy anchored in national emissions targets, carbon pricing, cap-and-trade programs, and corporate offsets. However, a growing chorus of political scientists, researchers, and institutional critics argues that this framework has fundamentally failed to alter the trajectory of global emissions or curb the political hegemony of the fossil fuel industry.
In her landmark book, Existential Politics: Why Global Climate Institutions Are Failing and How to Fix Them, University of Toronto researcher Jessica Green delivers a scathing critique of the international climate architecture, most notably the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its marquee annual gatherings, the Conference of the Parties (COP). Green argues that the prevailing market-centric toolset—designed to be palatable to corporate interests and neoliberal economists—preserves the underlying architecture of extraction rather than dismantling it.
In a wide-ranging interview with Corporate Knights managing editor Mark Mann, Green unpacks why decades of climate diplomacy have fallen short, the deceptive illusion of carbon pricing and offsets, and why the global community must embrace what she calls "radical pragmatism." This approach shifts the strategic focus away from wishful market mechanisms and toward actively disempowering fossil fuel asset owners, stripping away historical subsidies, and recognizing that the energy transition is fundamentally a political and economic struggle rather than a mere technical hurdle.
Detailed Chronology: The Evolution and Stagnation of Global Climate Governance
To understand how global climate policy arrived at its current state of paralysis, it is essential to trace the historical evolution of international environmental agreements over the past thirty years.
The Foundation and False Starts (1992–1997)
The modern era of international climate governance officially commenced with the adoption of the UNFCCC at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. For the first time, the global community formally acknowledged anthropogenic climate change as an existential threat and agreed to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations. However, the framework relied entirely on voluntary national communications, lacking any teeth to enforce compliance.
Recognizing these limitations, nations attempted to establish binding commitments through the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Yet, the Kyoto framework was plagued by structural flaws from its inception. The United States—then one of the world’s leading emitters—never ratified the treaty, and the protocol completely excluded major developing economies that were rapidly industrializing.
The Market-Based Interregnum and the Kyoto Mechanisms (2000s)
As the Kyoto Protocol limped into its first commitment period, international policymakers increasingly leaned toward market-based solutions, most notably the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and international carbon trading. Economists championed the idea that creating a global marketplace for carbon would efficiently allocate capital and drive emissions reductions.
Instead, these mechanisms created a labyrinth of complex calculations that invited widespread gaming, manipulation, and greenwashing. By the time the second commitment period rolled around, key nations, including Canada, formally withdrew from the protocol, signaling the collapse of the top-down Kyoto model.
The Paris Agreement and the Proliferation of COP (2015–Present)
Adopted in 2015, the Paris Agreement represented a philosophical shift from the rigid targets of Kyoto to a "pledge-and-review" model centered on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). While hailed at the time as a diplomatic triumph that finally brought all nations into the fold, the Paris framework has increasingly buckled under the weight of its own aspirations.
In recent years, the annual COP summits have ballooned into massive, corporate-heavy expos featuring tens of thousands of delegates, lobbyists, and observers. As Green points out, the process is now collapsing under its own weight. Legally binding deadlines for updated NDCs are routinely missed, and the monumental proliferation of side-events, subcommittees, and corporate pavilions has obscured the core mission: driving rapid decarbonization. Today, as the world breaches the critical threshold of 1.5°C of global warming, the structural deficiencies of the Paris framework are glaringly apparent.
Supporting Context & Metrics: The Fallacy of "Managing Tons" and Carbon Markets
The core argument of Green’s research targets the illusion of "managing tons"—the belief that climate change can be solved by putting a price on carbon, trading offsets, and allowing market forces to organically correct a broken energy system.
The Structural Flaws of Carbon Pricing
For decades, mainstream economists have argued that a universal carbon price is the single most effective tool for curbing emissions. However, Green notes that this approach collides with hard political reality. For a carbon price to truly reflect the social cost of carbon, it would need to reach astronomical figures—potentially thousands of dollars per tonne in some jurisdictions.
Politically, such a price is entirely unviable. When governments implement consumer-facing carbon levies, they frequently trigger severe political backlashes, turning climate policy into a toxic cultural referendum. Consequently, governments are forced to keep prices artificially low, rendering them ineffective at driving deep structural changes. As Green observes, "The price is never high enough because politics do not allow it to be that high."
The Industrial Complex of Carbon Offsets
Carbon offsets have fared even worse under scrutiny. Originating during the Kyoto era and subsequently adopted into various voluntary and compliance markets, offsets allow heavy emitters to purchase theoretical emissions reductions elsewhere rather than cleaning up their own operations.
From the outset, scientists and policy analysts warned that calculating the additionality and permanence of offset projects—such as tree-planting or renewable energy installation in developing nations—was profoundly flawed. These systems made it remarkably easy to fudge numbers, providing major fossil fuel corporations with convenient political cover to greenwash their operations while extracting immense profits from managing the bureaucracy of the offset market.
"It’s just stupid. It’s not helping anyone," Green states regarding offsets. "It gives big emitters political cover to say, ‘We’re doing our part,’ and a bunch of people in the middle get rich by managing and developing these projects."
Official Statements & Expert Perspectives
The dialogue between Mark Mann and Jessica Green highlights a profound shift in how leading thinkers view the intersection of political science, economics, and climate action.
Addressing the psychological and systemic toll of acknowledging three decades of policy failure, Green emphasizes that frontline researchers are rarely surprised by these developments. Having faced decades of resistance from mainstream economists who clung stubbornly to market mechanisms, climate scientists and political scientists have watched the evidence mount in real-time.
On the shifting geopolitical landscape, Green argues that climate policy is shedding its historical status as "low politics." For decades, environmental issues were relegated to secondary ministries and peripheral diplomatic channels. Today, climate change is inextricably bound to high-stakes geopolitics:
"In political science, we used to say climate was ‘low politics.’ Nobody studied the environment because it wasn’t seen as important… Obviously, climate is now at the top of the list, even if it’s not called climate. It’s securing minerals and technology for energy security and resilience. It’s about supply chains and economic statecraft."
Furthermore, Green addresses the complex debate surrounding carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and the role of the private sector. While international bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) make it clear that some form of carbon removal will be necessary to address residual emissions—especially as the world overshoots 1.5°C—Green warns against leaving these technologies in the hands of major fossil fuel corporations. Drawing a parallel to the healthcare industry, she notes that when private actors are permitted to profit from public goods, they inevitably prioritize corporate enrichment over planetary survival.
Future Outlook: Embracing "Radical Pragmatism"
As the global community confronts an era of escalating climate impacts, geopolitical realignment, and economic anxiety, the path forward demands a fundamental recalibration of policy instruments. Green’s concept of "radical pragmatism" offers a blueprint for navigating this turbulent transition.
Dismantling Fossil Fuel Protections
Rather than relying on the "liberal fantasy" that making green technology cheap will automatically phase out fossil fuels, governments must directly target the economic and political scaffolding that supports the oil and gas sector. Despite decades of G7 communiqués pledging to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies—dating back to 2005—governments continue to shield extraction industries with immense financial and legal privileges.
Radical pragmatism dictates that policy must pivot toward making fossil fuel production riskier and more expensive. This requires dismantling post-WWII institutional frameworks designed specifically to facilitate resource extraction and diffusion.
Rejecting Systemic Utopianism
Crucially, Green distinguishes her vision of pragmatism from radical ideological overhauls that demand the immediate dismantling of global capitalism. While capitalism itself may be inherently tied to the ecological crisis, waiting for a global socialist revolution is a luxury humanity does not possess:
"It is not pragmatic or practical to think of the end of capitalism as the solution to climate change, even if that may be the case. We don’t have time for that."
Instead, radical pragmatism calls for utilizing existing state institutions, regulatory levers, and legal frameworks to aggressively rein in corporate capital and diminish the political power of fossil asset owners.
Navigating Non-Linear Transitions
Looking ahead, Green remains cautiously optimistic by viewing the energy transition through the lens of sociotechnical systems rather than linear projections. Just as technological adoption curves do not follow a straight line, social and political systems are primed for abrupt tipping points—both positive and negative.
Ultimately, the reckoning in global climate governance is already underway, driven not by harmonious multilateral consensus, but by the chaotic convergence of industrial policy, national security, and economic survival. By casting aside the comforting illusions of carbon pricing and offsets and confronting the raw political realities of fossil capital, global policymakers can finally build an architecture capable of meeting the existential challenge of our time.
