We face multiple crises. Leaving climate change unchecked will make them worse

February has brought a major global crisis every two years in the 2020s, with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season. It is no surprise that a slower catastrophe, climate change, has dropped down the agenda. In contrast to Cop28 in Dubai in 2023, the annual UN climate conference in Antalya, Turkey, is opening to little international fanfare.

A pandemic, two wars, two energy shocks and the prospect of elimination by robot overlords have overshadowed the fight to preserve a liveable global environment.

In the US midterm elections, the Democrats’ crushing victory owed much to discontent over high energy prices, inflation, the war with Iran, mushrooming of data centres and the administration’s hostile approach to immigration enforcement.

Artificial intelligence promises remarkable technological breakthroughs. But voters in the US were worried about data centres’ hunger for electricity and water. The rush to build them means they are mostly powered by natural gas. A total of 47 measures on data centres were on the ballot across 10 states – they lost 46 times.

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On climate change and green energy, though – signature issues for past candidates such as Al Gore, Barack Obama and Joe Biden – the Democratic campaign was rather silent.

In the UK, the pro-climate Green Party has fallen sharply in opinion polls since briefly standing in second place in March. Conversely, the far-right AfD Party in Germany, which performed well in September’s regional elections, opposes most major German environmental policies, backs coal, and often dismisses climate change as harmless.

But this is a mistake.

The Gulf is only now emerging from an unusually hot summer. Europe’s summer was more shocking: a record heatwave that saw Sardinia reach a Kuwait-like 48.4°C, while 50,000 deaths were reported in urban areas across the continent amid €180 billion of economic damage. Drought shut down river traffic on the Danube and Rhine and led to devastating wildfires.

The strongest recorded El Nino is expected to peak in December, heating the globe further above the background warming. Last month was the third in succession where worldwide temperatures broke the limit of an increase no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, which was agreed to at Cop21 in Paris in 2015. Current government policies imply from 1.9°C to 3.7°C of warming by 2100.

Never mind holding down temperature increases; we have not even managed to yet reach a peak in greenhouse gas emissions. High and rapid global heating could spark irreversible collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets and the Amazon rainforest.

The Middle East and North Africa expects to see worse droughts. Lack of water already strains relations between upstream and downstream states on the major river systems – Turkey and Iraq over the Tigris and Euphrates, Ethiopia and Egypt over the Blue Nile. Mismanagement of water stressed Syria and Yemen before their descent into civil war, and harms Iran today. At the opposite end of the water problems, damaging floods from a saturated atmosphere have hit Libya, Pakistan and the UAE in recent years. A glacier burst devastated Nepal in August.

Even worse, the circulation of the Atlantic Ocean could break down as soon as mid-century. That could bring much colder European winters – down to -30°C in Scotland, with ice spreading to the North Sea – while summers would be hot and dry. The knock-on effects would push the Indian monsoon south of the subcontinent, parching farmers' crops.

The political turbulence this would bring is clear: disruption of trade routes, mass migration, civil and international wars, breakdowns of food and energy supplies, the spread of diseases and parasites. The crises of the 2020s would seem mild warnings by comparison.

And such cataclysms may burst on a world where international co-operation is already gravely weakened, where superpowers and great powers seek any advantage over their rivals from chaos, and where, beyond the current nine nuclear states, another five or even more nations wield these doomsday weapons. Speaking in Istanbul just before Cop31, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pictured climate change as a universal threat ranking with war and pandemics, and bemoaned the breakdown of international rules.

The current crises weaken our ability to tackle climate change. They cost money, they distract us, and they undermine international co-operation. With sky-high prices for diesel and liquefied natural gas, it is not surprising incumbent politicians prioritise sniffing out new supplies of hydrocarbons over conserving nature.

The more cynical or ill-informed, of course, actually blame high energy prices on the quest for net-zero carbon emissions, instead of on the military decisions made in the Kremlin and the White House.

Conversely, green politicians and environmental campaigners aim to eliminate oil and gas production. Often they are against making it easier for major projects to gain approval, fearing this will favour fossil fuels over the extensive new infrastructure required for a clean energy economy.

This means every wind or solar farm, or electricity transmission line, or mine for lithium or rare earths, faces endless legal action, community protests and repeated submissions of burdensome stacks of paperwork. Those actions overlook the imperatives of meeting energy demand, maintaining energy security, or ensuring their countries retain competitive industries and can seize AI breakthroughs.

There is a better way. The impact of the current wars on the economy and living standards would have been much worse if we had not made good progress in energy alternatives beforehand. Renewables, electric vehicles and improved efficiency have blunted the oil and gas weapon Russia and Iran are trying to wield.

The Gulf is a core player in this progress. It has achieved world record low prices for solar power, and advanced the world’s first large 24-hour solar and battery plant. Investments in green hydrogen production, green steel, carbon capture and storage, and natural hydrogen exploration are advancing the next set of essential decarbonisation tools.

Companies such as Masdar and Acwa Power are bringing the benefits of large, low-cost renewables to areas in Africa and Central Asia previously overlooked by western green investors. Gulf countries are also accelerating ventures in critical minerals mining and processing, helping to diversify supply chains beyond China.

While multiple converging crises can sometimes seem overwhelming, unchecked climate change will make them all worse. Sensible but bold moves on nuclear, renewables, electric vehicles and other low-carbon sources boost energy security and affordability. That should be good domestic politics in any country.