The next great international effort to prevent climate catastrophe looks headed for let-down at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP27, which opens in Egypt on Sunday. It will be the latest effort to build upon the landmark 2015 Paris accord on climate among 193 countries.

UN chief Antonio Guterres is warning that the world is headed towards a dismal future marked by more intense flooding, wildfires, drought, heat waves and extinction of species. The recent drastic and devastating floods in Pakistan are a preview of this catastrophe.

He has been beating the drum loudly for several years to push governments towards much stronger actions to mitigate climate change but progress looks bleak at least in coming years.

“We must end our suicidal war against nature. The climate crisis is the defining issue of our time. And yet climate action is being put on the back burner,” Guterres said recently. “Global greenhouse gas emissions need to be slashed by 45 percent by 2030 to have any hope of reaching net zero emissions by 2050. And yet emissions are going up at record levels – on course to a 14 percent increase this decade.”

His words are backed by the best available scientific data. A new UN report on climate change warns that only 26 of 193 countries have followed through on promises made at last year’s COP26. Currently, the earth is on track to warm by an average of 2.1 to 2.9 degrees Celsius by 2021 compared with pre-industrial levels. That is far more than the goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius agreed in Paris and confirmed at later negotiations.

Tens of millions people are likely to suffer life-threatening heat waves, food and water scarcity, and coastal flooding with each fraction of a degree of warming. Millions of mammals, insects, birds and plants will disappear. Hurricanes, typhoons, vast forest fires and similarly lethal climate events will increase around the world, particularly affecting the Caribbean islands and American coastal areas including heavily populated urban centers.

Climate disasters are natural events accelerated and worsened by human follies that generate gases choking the earth’s atmosphere. The only solutions are whole-of-world cooperation to share the burdens of inventing, designing and implementing effective measures to slow down changes.

Regrettably and frighteningly, the geopolitical environment is no longer one of the peaceful collaboration that characterised multilateral affairs in 2015 when the Paris accords and later improvements were agreed among the US, China, Europe and other nations.

Currently, the entire US-led West is engaged in an intensifying trade war with China and Russia that is dividing the world’s financial and technology systems into rival blocs. There is an emerging “you are with us or against us” attitude in the US-led western bloc as its hostility grows towards China and especially Russia because of the invasion of Ukraine.

The European Union (EU), which was a deeply committed proponent of the Paris goals, is being forced by the Ukraine war to walk back its enthusiasm because of increasingly severe difficulties in supplying the electricity and energy needs of its industries and people. A chief reason is determination to punish Russia by stopping or drastically reducing imports of gas and oil to deny it funds to finance the Ukraine invasion.

The EU is doing so at the cost of high inflation, cutbacks in energy consumption at the risk of social unrest, and a looming economic recession. Over the next five years, it wants to sharply reduce dependence for its energy needs on Russia, which supplied almost 40% in recent years.

The EU is collectively as wealthy and productive as the US but is in the throes of a profound structural transformation away from fossil fuels to green energies like wind, solar and hydrogen. This very difficult transformation has been thrown into high gear suddenly by Russia’s reckless invasion so European governments are turning again to oil, gas and coal, but from anywhere other than Russia.

This return to hydrocarbons in both the US and EU has put the idealistic thinking underlying the Paris accords and COP27 on the back burner despite clear recognition that only green energies can save all of us from climate catastrophe. But they are not low cost and well-developed enough to make the switch in less than 10 to 20 years.

According to McKinsey’s 2022 Global Energy Perspective, fossil fuels still have critical roles to play in the years to come. Demand for natural gas is expected to increase 10 to 20 percent by 2035 and could remain an important part of total primary energy demand by 2050, even as the world transitions to alternative energy sources.

If the Democrats lose either the Congress or Senate or both on November 8, which falls before the closure of COP27 on November 18, American negotiators will lose clout because foreign governments will no longer believe in President Joe Biden’s ability to deliver global leadership. An each-country-for-itself attitude could emerge during coming years.

Transformation towards green energy sources is a massive issue estimated to cost trillions of dollars. The International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook published on 27 October estimates that annual clean energy investments of at least $2 trillion will be needed by 2030 and $4 trillion by 2050. A 2019 estimate by Stanford University places at $73 trillion the cost of a global effort to transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050.

To dampen the disparities between rich and poor countries, the US led a commitment by rich nations in 2009 to provide $100 billion annually to poorer nations by 2020. But pledges have fallen far short and the finance made available is mostly loans rather than grants. That puts additional debt burdens on poor countries, especially at a time of rising inflation and higher dollar interest rates fixed by the US Federal Reserve.