Jessica F. Green, "Existential Politics: Why Global Climate Institutions Are Failing and How to Fix Them" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Dec 2, 2025

Jessica F. Green, a Professor specializing in climate politics at the University of Toronto, discusses the failures of global climate institutions in addressing climate change. She critiques the focus on measuring emissions, arguing that it overlooks the political realities of asset ownership. Green highlights how fossil fuel companies resist decarbonization to protect their wealth, proposing a shift towards taxing the wealthy emitters and empowering green asset owners. Her insights reveal the complex intersection of climate policy and political power.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Assets, Not Tons

Climate policy has been misdiagnosed as a collective-action 'tons' problem focused on measuring and trading emissions.
Jessica F. Green argues the real issue is political: climate policy creates winners and losers by revaluing assets.

ANECDOTE

Global Climate Coalition Example

In 1992 fossil-fuel firms formed the Global Climate Coalition to undermine climate science and block regulation.
Green uses this historical example to show fossil asset owners acted to defend trillions in at-risk value.

INSIGHT

Why 'Managing Tons' Protects Losers

Policies like net zero, carbon pricing, and offsets primarily protect fossil asset owners by letting them avoid losses.
Green recommends shifting policy toward constraining fossil assets and building green asset owners’ power.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

It’s no secret that the Paris Agreement and voluntary efforts to address climate change are failing. Governments have spent three decades crafting international rules to manage the climate crisis yet have made little progress on decarbonization. In Existential Politics: Why Global Climate Institutions Are Failing and How to Fix Them (Princeton UP, 2025), Jessica Green explains why this is unsurprising: governments have misdiagnosed the political problem of climate change, focusing relentlessly on measuring, reporting, and trading emissions. This technical approach of “managing tons” overlooks the ways in which climate change and climate policy will revalue assets, creating winners and losers. Policies such as net zero, carbon pricing, and offsets primarily benefit the losers—owners of fossil assets.
Ultimately, Green contends, climate change is a political problem. Climate politics should be understood as existential—creating conflicts that arise when some actors face the prospect of the devaluation or elimination of their assets or competition from the creation of new ones. Fossil asset owners, such as oil and gas companies and electric utilities, stand to lose trillions in the energy transition. Thus, they are fighting to slow decarbonization and preserve the value of their assets. Green asset owners, who will be the basis of the decarbonized economy, are fewer in number and relatively weak politically.
Green proposes using international tax, finance, and trade institutions to create new green asset owners and constrain fossil asset owners, reducing their clout. Domestic investments in green assets, facilitated by global trade rules, can build the political power of green asset owners.

Our guest is Jessica Green, a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network