A ‘doom loop’ of climate change and geopolitical instability is beginning
It is a common refrain to say that geopolitics gets in the way of climate action. From the war in Ukraine to trade tensions, each year seems to bring another immediate priority that diverts focus from the imperative to act on climate change.
This dynamic was on show at the recent UN climate conference – Cop29 – in Azerbaijan. Many world leaders stayed at home, busy handling political crises and conflict. A coalition of nations dependent on fossil fuel exports blocked any mention of phasing out fossil fuels in the final agreement. Long-held divisions between wealthy and climate vulnerable countries were on show in arguments over the final finance agreement.
In many ways, this is business as usual. Climate change is an international problem requiring international cooperation, the possibilities for which are determined by geopolitics. But this year, something more unsettling is emerging: climate change is itself beginning to impact geopolitics.
This is a vicious circle. Climate change is making geopolitics less stable, which harms climate action. This will worsen climate change, meaning more geopolitical instability, and so on. The risk is that this “doom loop” runs faster and faster and ultimately derails our ability to phase out fossil fuels fast enough to avoid the worst climate consequences.
Climate-flation
The recent election of Donald Trump offers a potential case study of how this doom loop could be beginning to emerge.
Eight years ago – the first time Trump was elected – delegates at Cop22 wandered in shock around Marrakech, Morocco. Trump soon initiated the process of leaving the Paris climate agreement and his administration weakened environmental protections. While Trump damaged climate diplomacy, it would have been a stretch to argue that climate change itself played a role in his victory.
This time is different. While all the potential drivers of Trump’s 2016 victory were on show this time – inequality, misinformation, racism, and so on – they were joined by another factor: inflation.
In the years leading to the election, the US experienced its highest rates of inflation in over four decades. While inflation eventually fell, many Americans couldn’t cope with far higher prices. Trump made inflation a major focus of his campaign and it’s clear it played a role in his victory. What he didn’t mention was how climate change is increasingly a factor driving inflation.
Climate-driven inflation is usually bad news for incumbents.
dlbillings_photography / shutterstock
This is most obvious in the case of food. In 2022, drought hit the Californian rice belt, halving the amount of rice that could be planted, while a 2023 drought in the midwest hit soybean production. Similar impacts rained globally, from Argentina – which lost half its soy crop to drought – to Europe, where poor olive oil harvests sent prices spiking.
In all, extreme weather in 2022 alone is estimated to have added nearly 1% to food inflation in Europe, while as much as a third of recent UK food inflation is estimated to come from climate impacts. In turn, higher food prices directly contribute to headline inflation rates. The global interconnection of food systems means that no country is fully insulated from these effects.
Meanwhile, climate change can drive inflation in other ways, like how hotter weather is reducing labour productivity and drought is drying riverbeds and waterways, affecting waterborne freight and disrupting globalised supply chains.
Derailment risk
At the moment, the link between climate change, inflation, and politics is a “weak signal” of how the consequences of climate change can frustrate our collective ability to tackle the causes of climate change. In a recent academic paper, we called this “derailment risk”, the risk that the world ultimately cannot stick to a path that rapidly phases out fossil fuels and avoids the worst climate outcomes.
There are other examples. Economists have identified a “climate-debt doom loop”, in which worsening climate impacts divert resources away from decarbonisation and adaptation. Climate vulnerable countries experience this from two angles.
Growing climate risk increases the cost of servicing already-high debts, while climate shocks require emergency responses and recovery that sap scarce resources. So, these countries are increasingly locked in a spiral of responding to the last climate disaster at the cost of being better prepared for the next.
Many hurricane-damaged island states are being saddled with loans they cannot afford.
Multiverse / shutterstock
As warming continues – and the 1.5°C global warming target slips further from sight – the impact of climate change will grow, the world will be made even less stable, and a variety of derailment risks will escalate.
There is another way. It starts by facing up to the new climate reality. Globally dangerous climate change has not been avoided, and the consequences are mounting.
This does not mean that we have “lost” the climate struggle. The world doesn’t suddenly end beyond 1.5°C, but it does become more dangerous. The fallout from the devastating flooding in Valencia, Spain, where huge crowds have demanded resignations, is the latest example that politicians who ignore the severity of escalating climate risks do so at their peril.
Fertile ground for change
Meanwhile, history shows that periods of instability and crisis can provide fertile ground for rapid, positive change. This is the other side to derailment risk.
The conditions for doom loops also provide opportunities to accelerate virtuous circles. For example, out of the crises of the interwar period and the devastation of the second world war came legal protections for human rights, universal welfare systems and decolonisation. More recently, the first Trump administration spurred new waves of climate activism.
Read more:
Climate ’tipping points’ can be positive too – our report sets out how to engineer a domino effect of rapid changes
But for this to happen, the inequality at the heart of the climate crisis must be tackled head on. Those that did little to cause the problem disproportionately suffer the consequences, while the costs and benefits of decarbonisation are not shared equally.
The case for tackling these inequalities is often made in moral terms. But there is also another rationale. The failure to protect vulnerable communities and recognise the unfairness of their predicament may push them into the arms of nativist parties and other political forces that often seek to block climate action. A derailment risk.
Instead, if communities and countries are better protected from climate impacts and can feel the benefits of climate action, then they might be more likely to support a fossil fuel phase out even when the going gets tough.
Escalating climate shocks mean we need to do much more to adapt to climate change and protect people and places. We also need to remember this adaptation enables us to better mitigate climate change itself. This will be essential to avoiding the doom loop of derailment.
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