The Realist* Guide to Solving Climate Change

Put aside all your idealistic fantasies about the world’s

biggest crisis, and here’s what’s left.

Stephen M. Walt August 13, 2021, 12:44 PM

Fires at sunset in the agriculture town of Ruropolis, in northern Brazil,

on Sept. 6, 2019. JOHANNES MYBURGH/AFP via Getty Images

As you probably already know, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just
issued its latest report detailing what the world’s leading experts think is happening to our
planet. Drawing on hundreds of rigorous scientific studies, it deals solely with the sources
and physical effects of global warming. Subsequent reports— to be released next year—will
address the social, economic, and political consequences. If you were hoping for reassuring
news from this report, however, you’re going to be massively disappointed. For a sobering
assessment of what it means, see this overview from the Economist or this quick explainer
from Foreign Policy’s Christina Lu.

The IPCC has now concluded that average global temperatures will continue to increase until
at least 2050 and the pace is accelerating. In its words: “Global surface temperature will
continue to increase until at least the mid-century under all emissions scenarios considered.
Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep
reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.”

It also says the evidence is “unequivocal” that this increased temperature is due to human
activity (mostly the burning of fossil fuels) and not to natural variation. In the unlikely event
that humanity drastically reduces greenhouse gas emissions and gets to net zero by
midcentury, then the increase could be limited to only 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-
industrial levels, the target adopted by the G-7 countries back in May. That would be a
remarkable achievement, but it would still mean more extreme weather events—droughts,
fires, floods, etc.—of the sorts we’ve experienced this year.
That target is probably too optimistic, however, because efforts to address this problem have
consistently fallen short in the past. Thus far, the nations of the world have set inadequate
targets and then failed to meet them. It takes little imagination to foresee the likely social,
economic, and political consequences of this failure, and none of them are good. The
Financial Times editorial board got it right: “Time is running short to avert ‘hell on earth.’”

The bottom line: We are currently losing the battle to prevent catastrophic human-made
changes to the environment on which all life depends. And it is the major powers—the
advanced industrial states that have the biggest economies and that produce the most
greenhouse gases—that are primarily responsible.

For realists, this outcome is both unsurprising and troubling. The central focus of all realist
thought is explaining how states will behave in a world without a legitimate central authority
that can protect them from each other or otherwise constrain their behavior. Realists argue
that this situation creates a “self-help” system where each state relies primarily on its own
resources and strategies to survive. In such a world, the major powers will compete for power
and/or security and focus on relative position as much or more than on absolute gains
because being weaker than others may leave you vulnerable to pressure or at risk of being
conquered. Trust will be scarce, altruism rare to nonexistent, and selfish national interests
will routinely override broader cosmopolitan values.

If you don’t believe me, consider how the major powers have responded to the COVID-19
crisis. They have blamed others for the problem, competed to get vaccines for themselves
while leaving billions of people with inadequate supplies, imposed unilateral travel
restrictions without consulting other nations, and generally acted like the self-interested
actors that realism depicts. And dealing with the coronavirus was an easy problem compared
with getting humanity to make the adjustments necessary to achieve net-zero carbon
emissions.

Realists recognize that cooperation is possible—indeed, it happens all the time—but they
emphasize that it is inherently fragile, usually falls short of what might be optimal, and rarely
occurs if it requires a state to make sacrifices that might leave it poorer and weaker and thus
more vulnerable to others in the long run.

For these reasons, realists do not find it odd that the major powers have failed to do enough
to address the problem of climate change. On the contrary, their behavior is precisely what
the picture I just sketched would lead you to expect. No major power is going to make big
sacrifices in the near term to deal with climate change if it thinks that doing so will leave it at
a disadvantage relative to others. Moreover, given that there is no global authority that can
enforce an agreement, states have to worry that they may make sacrifices while others cheat,
leaving themselves worse off yet still facing an overheating planet along with everyone else.

In his landmark book Man, the State, and War, Kenneth Waltz used Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s
famous parable of the Stag Hunt to elucidate this problem. If a group of hunters cooperate to
catch a stag, they will enjoy a venison dinner. But if one spies a hare and goes for that
instead, they will lose out on venison, and most of them will go hungry. So it is with climate
change: Success requires all the major industrial powers to cut emissions, but each may be
tempted to cheat and especially if they expect the others to do so as well. If one or more of
them defects, all are left worse off.
Present at the Creation of a Climate Alliance —or Climate Conflict

The United States and Europe are on the brink of decisions that could
save the planet—or tear apart the West.

To make matters worse, cooperation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions also has to
overcome the human tendency to discount the future and other issues of intergenerational
equity. Getting people to sacrifice now in order to benefit future generations is a tough sell,
and getting incumbent politicians to take positions that might cost them reelection is even
harder. There are also cross-national equity issues: Developing countries such as India
rightfully resent the United States, Canada, Germany, and other advanced industrial nations
telling them to cut emissions today, given that the former burnt fossil fuels with abandon
during their own rise to industrialized wealth.

Realists from Thucydides to John Mearsheimer have highlighted the tragic nature of
international politics— major powers seem doomed to compete and fight even when they
might prefer not to—but with climate change, the tragedy will not be confined to the
strongest or richest. On the contrary, poorer countries will suffer most, even if they
contributed least to the problem itself. That’s another irony that realists would recognize:
Justice is a scarce commodity among states. Didn’t somebody once say that “the strong do
what they can, and the weak suffer what they must”?

And let’s not lose sight of the worst-case scenario here, a set of events the IPCC says “cannot
be ruled out.” If warming greatly exceeds 1.5 or 2 degrees, then all bets are off. Ice sheets
will disappear completely; major ocean currents may shift dramatically; sea level rise could
drown dozens of coastal cities; absent large-scale migration, as much as 30 percent of the
human population may experience mean annual temperatures of 29 degrees Celsius (84
degrees Fahrenheit) or more; and areas of the planet that are now home to millions of people
may experience wet-bulb temperatures (a measure that combines heat and humidity) in
excess of 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit). Because the human body cannot cool
itself in those conditions, people in these regions will have to move or die. If this is our
future, then realism suggests that the international system will become even more Hobbesian,
with states taking increasingly extreme measures to preserve whatever they can. Even liberal
democracies are capable of fearsome savagery if they think their survival is on the line.

So, does realism also counsel girding our loins and preparing for a Mad Max future? I don’t
think so. The law of gravity doesn’t make it impossible for an airplane to fly —you just have
to take it into account—and the competitive impulses that realism highlights can also be
overcome if the power of these impulses is recognized and the need to overcome them is
apparent.

What is to be done? If this problem were easy to fix, it would have been solved already, so I
have no miracle solutions to offer. But here are a few thoughts to consider.

First, galvanizing global action will require continued and effective efforts to educate people
as to what is happening to our planet and why it is happening and to explain what needs to
take place to avoid disaster. As with COVID-19, there will still be a chorus of head-in-the-
sand politicians, hired hacks working for the fossil fuel industry, and conspiracy theorists
sowing disinformation. I am optimistic because climate change denialism has been steadily
losing ground—especially among younger people —and being smart on climate is becoming
a political advantage rather than a liability.

Changing public attitudes is the best way to exploit politicians’ own self-interest: Around the
world, more leaders need to realize being bad on climate is a good way to lose an election (in
a democracy) or face a popular uprising (in an authoritarian state). The cultural issues that
conservatives and populists routinely exploit to gain support are pretty trivial when compared
with climate change, but we can’t expect politicians to focus on what is vital unless they
know a well-informed public will punish them for ignoring it.

Realism also counsels telling people the truth about what it will take to address these issues
and not trying to fool them into thinking that fixing it will be entirely cost-free. A Green New
Deal may create good jobs for some, but the effort to mitigate and adapt to climate change
will inevitably require each of us to change how we live. Some of these adjustments will be
inconvenient or even painful, especially for poorer societies and for people whose livelihoods
are presently based on the burning of fossil fuels. Just as globalization got oversold and
eventually faced a powerful backlash, pretending that solving this problem is cost-free risks
provoking a counterproductive reaction that could undermine the entire effort.

At the global level, realism suggests that efforts to stop or reverse global warming must rely
not on idealistic appeals to our shared humanity but rather on the narrow interests of each
nation-state. As Anatol Lieven argues in an important book on this topic, humans remain
highly tribal —that impulse is what nationalism is all about—and few if any governments are
going to make big sacrifices for the sake of people in other countries. But they will make
those sacrifices if they recognize that failing to do so will leave their own country a lot worse
off.

So, even if you’re a rich country well above sea level in a more-or-less temperate zone (for
the moment) and you don’t want millions of climate refugees on your doorstep looking for a
safe haven, then you might want to get serious about curbing greenhouse gas emissions, even
if it costs you a bit of economic growth. If you’re a trading state that depends on exporting to
other thriving economies and importing food from agricultural zones, you might want to
make sure that your trading partners are still in a position to do business. And so forth.

Finally, realism sees international politics primarily in terms of the great powers: It is their
actions that shape most of what happens on the planet (though, of course, not all). It is the
major powers that have done and are doing most of the damage to the atmosphere, and
solving the problem depends more on their actions than on whatever Bolivia or Burundi or
Brunei decide to do. This situation suggests that all-inclusive climate summits involving the
entire U.N. membership list are less important than minilateral forums like the G-7 or G-20.
Therein lies a sliver of hope: Reaching agreement among the top 5, 10, or even 20
greenhouse gas emitters won’t be easy, but trying to get the entire U.N. General Assembly to
reach a meaningful consensus is improbable.

Realism is a pessimistic take on world affairs, and the challenge of addressing global
warming provides ample reason for gloom. Even so, I take some comfort in the growing
awareness of the seriousness of the problem, the bold initiatives that some countries are
beginning, and the political problems that prominent climate deniers like Donald Trump, Jair
Bolsonaro, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan have experienced in recent years. I only hope it’s not
too late.

#####

*
NB: Realism (i.e., Offensive Realism or Defensive Realism) is a structural theory in IR
or international relations that belong to the neo-realist school of thought.
The main tenets of realism are:

1. Great powers are the main actors in world politics and the international
system is anarchical (that is, international system does not command control
over the great powers, hence ‘anarchical’)
2. All states possess some offensive military capability.
3. States can never be certain of the intentions of other states.
4. States have survival as their primary goal.
5. States are rational actors, capable of coming up with sound strategies that
maximize their prospects for survival.