The retreat from climate action is real.
Since Donald Trump returned to power, the United States has again become a brake on global climate progress. His administration’s hostility to clean energy has chilled investment, empowered fossil fuel interests, and made it easier for corporations and governments alike to back away from climate commitments. Elsewhere, even countries that still speak the language of climate leadership are moving more slowly and less boldly than the moment requires.
Many people who care about climate action are responding with a familiar instinct: wait this out. Endure the politics. Hold the line. Try again when conditions improve.
That would be a profound mistake.
Climate change is not a normal political problem. It does not pause while governments hesitate. It does not wait for a better election cycle. It does not forgive delay. The world is moving toward climatic thresholds that, once crossed, may trigger irreversible damage. We may not know the exact date or temperature at which every tipping point arrives. But we know enough to understand the basic truth: delay is dangerous, and passivity is a decision.
Nowhere is the gap between rhetoric and reality more glaring than in climate finance for the Global South.
That is where much of the world’s future emissions will be determined. It is also where the greatest opportunity lies to reduce emissions where they are most likely to increase by building clean energy systems before carbon-intensive infrastructure locks in for decades. Yet the scale of investment help coming from the developed world remains nowhere near what is needed.
The International Energy Agency estimates that the Global South needs investment on the order of $2.6 trillion a year in clean energy alone to get on track for net zero, plus hundreds of billions to support nature-based projects that sequester carbon or increase ecosystem resilience, including by protecting biodiversity. But actual investment is a fraction of that (an estimated $265 billion in clean energy projects and infrastructure in 2024). Developed countries, along with private investors who have the funds to close that gap, are supposed to help close the gap, yet there is still no serious plan to do so at the necessary scale.
The promises made at international climate summits only underscore the problem. At Baku in 2024, developed countries agreed to mobilize $300 billion a year for developing countries by 2035. That number was inadequate from the start. Worse, even it has not been backed by the kind of concrete, credible commitments that would make success plausible.
So here is the uncomfortable truth: when the political window for major climate action opens again — and it will open — the world still may not be ready.
That is because ambitious climate-finance programs cannot be invented overnight. They require years of design, negotiation, coalition-building, and testing. New mechanisms must be developed. Financial institutions must be brought in. Governments in both developed and developing countries must be persuaded. Pilot programs must be launched. Legal, regulatory, and market obstacles must be worked through. Serious proposals take time.
And that is precisely why the work must begin now, during this period of political retrenchment.
This is not the moment to scale down ambition. It is the moment to build the ideas that can scale up action when politics shift. The world needs proposals big enough to matter: mechanisms that can unlock private capital at massive scale, lower the cost of capital in emerging markets, support clean power and nature-based investment, and move money quickly enough to change the emissions trajectory of the developing world.
Incrementalism will not get the job done. Marginal improvements will not get the world to net zero. Small-bore programs may make people feel constructive and they are useful, but they will not prevent escalating climate damage, rising displacement, and mounting geopolitical instability.
The task now is clear: develop the next generation of climate-finance proposals before the political opening arrives, not after. Build the coalitions. Do the technical work. Pressure-test the mechanisms. Line up the institutions. Make the proposals real.
Because when the world is finally forced to act at the scale the climate crisis demands, it will be too late to start from scratch.