The COP is in its fourth decade. If it were capable, in its current form, of achieving its stated aim of tackling climate change, it would probably have done so by now. So why isn’t it working? How is it possible that so much fanfare, so many words, and so much work—much of it genuine and good-faith—has amounted to such little progress?

University of Toronto political science professor Jessica F. Green has some ideas. In Existential Politics: Why Global Climate Institutions Are Failing and How to Fix Them, the longtime observer of global climate negotiations and expert on carbon accounting argues that the COP embodies a “win-win” approach to a problem for which someone has to lose. The challenge, then, is to make sure the right people (and planet) do the winning, while the “fossil asset owners,” as Green describes them, do the losing.

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