climate movement

On the heels of a new United Nations report finding that over 150 “unprecedented” floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, and other climate disasters struck in 2024, the Council on Foreign Relations has launched its new “Climate Realism Initiative.” The Initiative’s goals proffer a dangerous and ahistorical set of climate politics, washing the United States’ hands of any responsibility to clean up global emissions or cooperate internationally to prevent the catastrophic impacts of 3°C of warming.

In a recent article branding the Initiative, CFR fellow Varun Sivaram shamelessly lays out the three main pillars of so-called “climate realism”: (1) that the world will overshoot the Paris agreement’s target to limit warming to 1.5 and even 2°C, (2) that the U.S. should eschew its own emissions reductions in favor of investing domestically in new clean technologies that can compete globally, and (3) that the U.S. should lead international efforts to avert catastrophic climate change.