Matthew d'Ancona - Why do our leaders still see climate action as a zero-sum game?

IN 1910, the English journalist and economist Norman Angell published The Great Illusion, in which he argued that warfare simply made no sense in the modern context.

“The idea that the struggle between nations is a part of the evolutionary law of man’s advance involves a profound misreading of the biological analogy,” he wrote. “The warlike nations do not inherit the Earth; they represent the decaying human element.”

Angell’s book was hugely influential among those who shared his conviction that humanity’s path led ineluctably towards peace. Unfortunately, its central thesis was torpedoed in 1914 by the outbreak of the First World War.

On Sunday, delegates from 200 nations will gather in Glasgow for the COP26 summit: the explicit objective being to keep the rise in the global average temperature to “well below” 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, and, ideally, to 1.5 degrees. If we are to stand a chance of achieving that, global emissions must halve by 2030 and be net-zero by 2050.

Yesterday, Boris Johnson admitted that it is “touch and go” whether the UK will broker deals of sufficient strength to reach this target — and he was right. An immediate problem will be the conspicuous absence at the summit of two of the principal protagonists in the negotiations: Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.