Photos, protests and bans don't help. Protecting the climate needs to be done differently

The COP30 climate summit comes to an end in the Brazilian Amazon city of Belém. After two weeks of rainforest photos, protests and impassioned speeches about cutting emissions, activists are dispersing. But participants overlooked a hard reality: the actions of Western countries, including Slovakia, are having less and less impact on the course of global warming.

Huge costs, minimal effect

For decades, Western governments, especially in Europe, have prioritised emissions reductions over economic growth. They have invested trillions of dollars to persuade people to buy electric cars and adopt more expensive, less reliable energy from wind and solar. Despite the enormous costs, these efforts have had only a minimal effect.

The rate of decarbonisation (measured as the amount of CO₂ emissions relative to GDP) has remained virtually unchanged since the 1960s, even after the 2015 Paris Agreement. Global emissions, on the contrary, are rising sharply, reaching a new record in 2024. But activists are still demanding that the world quadruple the pace of decarbonisation - which experts say is unrealistic.

Why are emissions still rising even though the EU and US have invested more than $700 billion in 2024 in green energy - for example, in solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, hydrogen, electric cars or grid upgrades? Because rich countries' emissions are of limited relevance in the 21st century.

Carbon tariffs will increase costs for all

While the West dominated emissions in previous centuries, the vast majority of future emissions will come from countries struggling to lift themselves out of poverty. These are mainly China, India, Africa, Brazil and Indonesia. One recent projection shows that if current policies continue, only about 13 percent of all CO₂ emissions will come from rich OECD countries by the end of this century.

The liberal West's promise to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 will require hundreds of trillions of dollars, but will have only a limited effect. In fact, it is very likely that this policy will simply shift energy-intensive production to the rest of the world, leaving overall global emissions almost unaffected. This is a phenomenon that we are already seeing: the production of batteries for electric cars is largely shifting to China, which is still dominated by coal.

If the rich countries try to solve this problem with carbon tariffs, the costs will rise even more for both rich and poor countries, depriving the poor countries of the chance to grow through exports.

Climate summits only address the emissions of the rich

Even if the West completely eliminated its emissions by 2050, with nothing shifted to other countries, global CO₂ emissions would be reduced by only eight per cent over the century. According to the UN climate model, this would have a negligible effect: by 2050, global warming would be slowed by only 0.02°C, and even by the end of the century the difference would be less than 0.1°C.

Nevertheless, what is constantly being discussed at climate summits and among activists is mainly what rich countries should do. Demonstrators are blocking roads in Europe and the US, while China is mostly ignored and India, Africa and other regions are completely overlooked.

This is no coincidence. Their demands for retrenchment and reduced consumption would find no support in countries that need to grow and improve living standards. The poorer countries certainly do not want to be inspired by Germany, which is in debt because of the climate, by Spain, which is experiencing power cuts, or by Britain, with its record energy costs.

We need new solutions instead of bans

There is a cheaper and much more effective way: innovation. Throughout history, mankind has solved big problems not with bans but with new solutions. When smog enveloped Los Angeles in the 1950s, we didn't ban cars, we invented the catalytic converter to make them cleaner. When famine threatened in the 1960s, the solution was not to force people to eat less, but to breed higher-yielding crops.

Today, we need similar breakthrough innovations in green energy. But the world almost ignores them. In the aftermath of the oil shocks of the 1980s, rich countries invested more than eight cents out of every hundred dollars of GDP in research and development of alternative sources. When fossil fuels became cheaper, investment declined. Later, as concerns about climate change grew, instead of encouraging innovation, we focused on subsidising inefficient solar and wind technologies. The result? In 2023, rich countries invested less than four cents in green energy research out of every hundred dollars of GDP. In total, that's only about $27 billion, less than two percent of all green energy spending.

The West should increase investment in green energy research and development to about $100 billion a year. This would allow a focus on breakthrough technologies. We could invest in the development of fourth-generation nuclear power with small modular reactors of approved type, promote green hydrogen production along with water purification, explore next-generation batteries, CO₂-neutral algae fuels, CO₂ capture technologies, nuclear fusion, second-generation biofuels and thousands of other options.

None of these technologies is yet efficient enough, but all it would take is for one or a few of them to become better than fossil fuels and all countries will switch to them. Moreover, innovation requires only a fraction of the cost compared to current and future expenditures to achieve carbon neutrality. Green energy research and development therefore allows us to achieve much more at significantly lower cost.

Unfortunately, the leaders who flew into the Brazilian rainforest for the climate summit remain fixated on mandates and subsidies, thereby overlooking the power of sensible research and development. It is time for the West to recognise its limited capabilities and, instead of wasting money, start investing in breakthrough technologies that actually deliver results.