Evidence that the world is warming is growing harder to ignore: The hottest temperatures ever were recorded in parts of Europe this summer. Wildfires are incinerating parts of the Western United States. Floods in Australia recently forced thousands to flee Sydney. And just last week in my home state of Kentucky, flash flooding washed away hundreds of homes and filled my Facebook feed with pleas like this one — “Please if anyone has seen my cousin and her family. All we know is their house is gone.”

Climate scientists say these events will grow more frequent as atmospheric carbon levels mount, and yet our political system remains sluggish at best, impervious at worst. Despite scientists’ generally optimistic reviews of this month’s Senate climate deal, we remain far behind where we need to be to forestall the dire scenarios that fill most climate science fiction. Whether it’s national governments or international organizations like the United Nations, the political response never seems to match the scale of the threat. And scientists warn that the window is closing for the kind of policy measures that could slow disaster.

What would it take for the international political system to finally prioritize halting climate change? That’s the question that renowned science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson tackled in his 2020 novel The Ministry for the Future. Robinson has explored climate science since at least the 1990s, but instead of focusing on technology and discovery, Robinson’s plots reach toward political and policy solutions. In a 2015 New Yorker article, Tim Kreider called Robinson “one of the most important political writers working in America today.”

Robinson’s book contains plenty of warnings for today’s political leaders and policymakers. In Ministry, ever more extreme climate events coupled with political inaction eventually trigger violence and terrorism. A tiny United Nations agency, dubbed the “Ministry for the Future,” maneuvers adroitly in a desperate bid to get countries and institutions to take steps to save mankind.

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Adults across the United States and globally have damning opinions about the performance of their political leaders when it comes to climate change, and say they are noticing an escalation in extreme weather events and natural disasters.

A new POLITICO Morning Consult Global Sustainability Poll reveals frustration from citizens that they are being left to take on climate action on their own, when they believe governments and the companies with the most resources (which also tend to bear the most responsibility for carbon emissions) should shoulder the burden.

Consumers in 13 countries on five continents surveyed say companies should share more of the costs of combating climate change, including paying higher taxes. Fossil fuel companies, in particular, face the most skeptics.

Surprisingly, climate may be the only issue where President Joe Biden is getting higher marks from the right than from the left. That's not necessarily because Republican voters are concerned that Biden is doing enough, but because they’re satisfied that he is legislatively constrained.

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Disorder and disagreements at the highest levels of government left British negotiators feeling unsupported — sometimes even undermined.

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With the armada of private jets departed from Glasgow after the COP26 climate change conference, the world is left to reflect on yet another round of nonbinding commitments, watered-down resolutions and promises to revisit the problem next year. The science on climate change may be clearer than ever, but so too is the failure of the world’s current strategy for countering it: an internationalist approach, based on mutual cooperation with no real enforcement mechanism, that assumes altruistic collective action is possible between governments with different capacities and competing priorities. This is true at the best of times, but especially during a multipolar era in which the world’s largest emitters are direct competitors in almost every other policy arena.

Thus far, Republicans have had little to bring to this debate, and it’s not surprising: Conservatives in the United States have publicly questioned climate science to an extent that long ago surpassed the pretense of healthy skepticism. Thus, they surrendered the initiative almost entirely to the left, which has generally advocated government-centric solutions at home and placed too much trust in international institutions abroad. Republicans have yet to articulate an approach to climate foreign policy beyond downplaying the problem, bluntly opposing the Paris Agreement and angrily pointing the finger at China.

But a growing number of conservative leaders now accept the reality of climate change and are thinking about realistic proposals to mitigate it. In June, Rep. John Curtis launched the Conservative Climate Caucus, which is backed by more than a third of the Republican conference and sent a delegation to COP26. This may be spurred in part by a growing generational divide among Republican voters: A recent Pew poll suggests that Millennial and Gen Z conservatives are more concerned than their baby boomer counterparts about climate change, back the shift to cleaner energy and even want the federal government to do more. Indeed, it was a youth organization, the American Conservation Coalition, that put forward the conservative alternative to the Green New Deal.

By maneuvering past both their own history of denialism and public fatigue with the left’s alarmism and naivete, conservatives can put together a realistic, and even winning, global climate agenda — especially as they eye control of Congress next year and GOP presidential candidates test the waters for 2024. A Republican global climate agenda should reflect traditional conservative support for a robust foreign policy that prioritizes U.S. interests and values. This would entail, above all, publicly holding China, Russia and other egregious polluters to account — and using America’s economic clout to impose real costs when necessary. More broadly, a GOP approach would jettison the focus on climate as a standalone issue in international diplomacy and instead incorporate it into related efforts on trade, international investment, human rights and security. This strategy would be consistent with Republicans’ more hawkish foreign policy instincts and — more importantly — provide a realistic alternative to the quixotic and increasingly discredited liberal paradigm for global climate action.

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The Republican delegation went to COP26 with a clear message: both parties recognize the need to fight climate change. But did world leaders take them seriously? And how will Republican leaders sell that pivot to Republican voters? Fresh off his trip to Glasgow, Scotland, Rep. Garret Graves, a Louisiana Republican, spoke with POLITICO’s Ryan Heath. He shares — if not a commitment to the Build Back Better plan — his ideas on turning climate pledges into climate action.

About how Republicans and Democrats share more than they might think on climate policy

“If I go into a very liberal room, and I may go in there and start talking about how we need to improve the competitiveness of U.S. companies on a global scale, I may get a little bit of interest. But if I say those same words in a more conservative Republican room, I think you're going to get a lot more attention. The thing is that you can be talking about the same damn thing, but you can talk about it different ways.” — Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), ranking member on the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

On the limitations of COPs

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GLASGOW, Scotland — In a room behind the plenary hall at COP26 in Glasgow, the four biggest greenhouse gas emitters on the planet sat in a circle on Saturday evening and brokered a last minute deal to weaken a global pact to phase out coal power.

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua, EU Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans and Indian Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav sat on chairs facing one another, with Alok Sharma, the U.K. minister in charge of the U.N. climate talks.

At issue was a last minute demand from China and India: Water down language in the Glasgow Climate Pact that called for a “phase out” of coal power. Instead, Beijing wanted the wording to be “phase down” and New Delhi only wanted it to cover “inefficient” coal, according to an EU official who was in the room.

The atmosphere was tense. The Chinese were willing to put the whole conference was on the line. “We will break the whole thing down,” said one Chinese delegate, according to the EU official.

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GLASGOW, Scotland – President Joe Biden delivered a call to action to world leaders, former President Barack Obama drew a standing ovation, climate envoy John Kerry cajoled climate laggards and convened back-room arm-twisting sessions — even Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) got the star treatment.

After four years of taking a back seat in the global effort to combat climate change, the U.S. stepped into the spotlight here, helping secure an agreement to advance the promises set out under the Paris Climate Agreement, even though many nations said the final pact still fell short of what's needed to avert a crisis.

"United States took this seriously, as we should after the previous administration was absent during their time in the White House," Kerry told a Saturday night press conference.

While the world’s No. 2 greenhouse gas polluter wielded its diplomatic leverage and frequently overshadowed its U.K. government hosts, the U.S. failed to persuade China into making a firm vow to increase its climate change ambition. And the U.S., like other major economies, acquiesced to demands to soften a call to "phase down" use of coal, rather than eliminate use of the fuel most responsible for climate change. Still, the presence of the U.S. helped drive the urgency at the talks, delegates said, particularly after the four years of the Trump administration when the U.S. largely ignored the issue.

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GLASGOW, Scotland — Climate talks finished Saturday with a familiar outcome — the collective march toward action to tackle global warming is gaining momentum, but still falls short of what's needed to avert a crisis.

"The approved texts are a compromise. They reflect the interests, the conditions, the contradictions and the state of political will in the world today," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement. "They take important steps, but unfortunately the collective political will was not enough to overcome some deep contradictions."

That duality was on full display in the final moments of the two-week conference that transformed Glasgow into the hub of global climate politics.

“Not everyone gets to make choices that actually affect an entire planet. We are privileged today to do exactly that,” said United States Special Climate Envoy John Kerry.

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GLASGOW, Scotland — India’s environment minister sought to block efforts to include references to phasing out coal and fossil fuel subsidies in a deal proposed at this year’s U.N. climate summit.

Bhupender Yadav told negotiators Saturday that there was no consensus on key issues and blamed “unsustainable lifestyles and wasteful consumption patterns” in rich countries for causing global warming.

He said developing countries were “entitled to the responsible use of fossil fuels.”

European Union climate chief Frans Timmermans responded shortly after by warning that negotiators were “at risk of stumbling in this marathon a couple of meters before reaching the finish line.”

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GLASGOW, Scotland — The United States, the European Union and the U.K. drew a sharp rebuke on Thursday from developing countries who accused them of trying to shift the burden for fighting greenhouse gases under a plan calling for nations to more frequently report whether they were on track to meet their Paris climate agreement goals.

The group of developing countries, which includes China and India, slammed the effort by U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and European negotiators for countries to conduct the reviews of their climate initiatives more often, saying that the rich world had pumped most of the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that was causing the changes in the climate.

“We need to fight the war against this carbon colonialism, which is very risky for our countries and is completely ignoring that there are historical responsibilities,” said Bolivian chief negotiator Diego Pacheco Balanza, who chairs the 22-member "like-minded" countries group that includes India, China, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.

The issue has emerged as one of the most contentious in the talks among the nearly 200 governments that are aiming to finalize many of the rules laid out under the 2015 Paris agreement to keep average global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. Critics say that the policies being implemented by the largest greenhouse gas polluters are falling short of that goal, and are well off the pace of what's needed to meet the Paris agreement's stretch target of limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

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The State Department is mulling the sale of armed drones to Indonesia, but concerns over human rights abuses and the country’s past purchases of Russian equipment have set off a debate inside the Biden administration over approving the move, according to government and defense industry officials.

The Indonesian government wants a new package of armed drones as it modernizes its fleet of aging fighter planes, though the country has cast a wide and tangled net as it claims to be considering new planes from Russia, South Korea, France and the United States.

Jakarta's request to purchase armed MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones, which was confirmed by three people both in government and with ties to the defense industry, comes as Washington is also considering selling Qatar four MQ-9B Predator drones. The proposed sale to Qatar was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, but the debate over selling armed drones to Indonesia has not previously been reported.

The State Department and White House have been working for months on a new arms transfer policy that promises to place a renewed emphasis on human rights and protecting civilians, a review that could complicate some pending deals with countries that have a history of abuses.

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For the past two weeks, leaders from almost 200 countries around the world have convened in Scotland with a mandate of nothing less than to save humanity from climate catastrophe. The 26th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP26, is the latest in a series of annual meetings aiming to provide a global direction for climate action.

The stakes could not be higher. The decisions made at this conference and in the next decade will dictate the future of life on this planet and civilization as we know it. Although COP26 is not the only place for climate action, it is the only forum in which the countries of the world come together to set a global agenda.

So, what is actually going on in Glasgow? This year’s COP26 has two major goals: One, for countries to get more aggressive about reducing emissions, and two, for richer countries to put more money into a fund that will help poorer counties both mitigate emissions and adapt to a rapidly worsening climate.

Why do countries need to get more aggressive? The COP six years ago led to the Paris Agreement, in which countries were allowed to set their own, nonbinding targets. Policymakers knew that these targets wouldn’t be sufficient but it was the only way to get broad agreement, and the hope was that countries would then be shamed into further action. Another important outcome of the Paris Agreement was to raise the ambition to limiting warming from 2 degrees Celsius to 1.5 degrees. Limiting warming to 1.5 degrees by 2100 is crucial to avoiding irreversible and potentially catastrophic changes in the planet’s climate. Unfortunately, scientists calculated the Paris Agreement standards would only limit warming to 2.6-3.1 degrees by 2100.

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GLASGOW, Scotland — The outcome of COP26 will come down to this: Can the U.S. and China — the world’s two great powers and largest polluters — compromise?

The pair moved closer to something resembling an agreement on Wednesday, issuing a joint statement of principles for climate cooperation. That included a major victory for U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry: a commitment from China to rein in methane, a major greenhouse gas that has been absent from China’s official climate plan.

That is consequential for the planet since China is far and away the largest methane polluter. But friction remains in the negotiating rooms as nations try to thread together an agreement in the next two days that puts the world on course to limit the worst effects of climate change and increase the flow of money to the most vulnerable countries.

"Cooperation is the only choice for both China and the United States,” said China’s climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua. “As two major powers in the world, China and the U.S. shoulder special international responsibilities and obligations. We need to think big and be responsible.”

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President Joe Biden's plans to push the country away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy are facing an unexpected hurdle: the price of propane in Escanaba, Michigan.

Biden took the stage in Glasgow last week to promise world leaders the U.S. was ready to lead the charge against climate change. But the messy pipeline fights in the U.S. are putting his administration in the crossfire between environmentalists and Indigenous groups eager to block fossil fuel projects and Republicans who are ramping up attacks blaming the White House for soaring energy prices.

Biden was quick to win plaudits from greens for quashing the Keystone XL pipeline upon taking office, but he has drawn criticism from some of the same advocates for not stopping another pipeline project in Minnesota. Now, the administration is studying what to do about a pipeline stretching across Michigan that activists — and the state's Democratic governor — contend poses a catastrophic pollution risk to the Great Lakes. But the oil and gas industry, backed by the Canadian government, warns closing will drive fuel prices even higher.

Word that the Biden administration was quietly studying the potential market impact of killing the Line 5 pipeline, first reported by POLITICO, set off a firestorm of criticism from Republicans saying the move would worsen the spike that has already driven propane prices up 50 percent from a year ago just as Michigan residents — the nation's biggest consumers of the fuel — stock up for cold weather. Propane is stripped out of the line at the small port city of Escanaba to help feed supplies to communities in the state's Upper Peninsula.

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Dozens of initiatives were launched in Glasgow, but ensuring they're followed will be a challenge.

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