The United States is preoccupied with preventing China from threatening its hegemony in the global arena and the world will see geopolitics interfering with effective climate leadership, with common sense and rationality taking a backseat over the next decade, says Singaporean former diplomat Kishore Mahbubani.
To continue reading, subscribe to Eco‑Business.
There's something for everyone. We offer a range of subscription plans.
- Access our stories and receive our Insights Weekly newsletter with the free EB Member plan.
- Unlock unlimited access to our content and archive with EB Circle.
- Publish your content with EB Premium.
“I predict that the priority of the US and China in the next 10 years will not be climate change,” said the ex-veteran diplomat to decision-makers in the government and business sector at a sustainable finance conference held in Singapore last Thursday. “It will be about who is going to be number one,” he said.
Mahbubani, who is a distinguished fellow at the Asia Research Institute at National University of Singapore, painted a gloomy picture of a world where important decision-making is driven more by geopolitics, a phenomenon that he said will be a “big hindrance” for climate action.
He was delivering a special keynote address at the Unlocking capital for sustainability conference organised by Eco-Business, in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Mahbubani’s comments echo sentiments expressed by observers concerned that clean technology will become the new competitive arena for US and China with the Joe Biden administration slapping heavy tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and batteries, and China retaliating. Such political brinkmanship could hurt climate cooperation between the two major powers.
The possibility of the re-election of Donald Trump, a climate sceptic who rolled back many environmental policies during his 2017 to 2021 presidential term, to the White House, also looms.
Likening the world’s predicament in navigating the rough tides of a climate catastrophe to the Titanic – the famous doomed ship that sank in 1912 on her maiden voyage – hitting an iceberg, Mahbubani did not hold back when slamming global multilateral institutions like the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in his speech. He said these institutions have not been able to put strong leaders at the helm, which he attributed to exclusionary selection processes that are either Europe- or US-dominated.
“If you are in a boat that is about to hit an iceberg, the most important thing is to select the best possible captain – find the most dynamic, intelligent and committed person to steer the vessel. But humanity cannot choose its captain…If you have those good qualities, you could still be disqualified,” he said.
While in the foreign service, Mahbubani served as Singapore permanent representative to the UN for over 10 years in two separate stints in the 1980s and early 2000s. He particularly criticised contemporary UN secretary-generals for being “completely spineless” and the organisation for being in a “sad state”.
‘Massively stupid’
The UN, the World Bank and IMF – sometimes described as exclusive Western clubs – have had their leadership selection processes cast in the spotlight. For example, after the Second World War, an informal agreement between the US and Europe ensured that the president of the World Bank would traditionally be an American and the managing director of the IMF a European, reflecting the political and economic balance of power then.
Of the 12 IMF managing directors to date, five have been French, including Christine Lagarde who served from 2011 to 2019. The current IMF managing director is Kristalina Georgieva, who is Bulgarian.
Mahbubani said the world has changed and how multilateral institutions are governed, particularly their leadership selection processes, should be overhauled, if there is to be effective climate action.
He also described the irrational decisions made by these organisations, as well as how China and US – the world’s two biggest emitters – are unable to cooperate and lead on the climate front, as “massively stupid”.
“These two countries are now arguing about who should have the biggest cabin on the ship instead. It is bizarre,” he said.
“We can clearly see what is going to come if we fail to handle climate change. And yet we are going full speed ahead without any significant reduction in our emissions,” he said. “Why are we being so irrational and not coming together to deal with climate change? The answer is geopolitics.”
Election-year upheaval will make it difficult for Washington and Beijing to find areas of cooperation on trade and investment, said Mahbubani. The Biden administration’s most important climate legacy, the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in 2022 to boost investment and spending in clean energy while strengthening its domestic industrial sector, has been seen by China as trade protectionism measures that will push up the costs of green energy transition and unfairly discriminate against made-in-China products. In May, Biden signed an executive order imposing new tariffs on Chinese goods, including a 100 per cent tax on electric vehicles (EVs).
Mahbubani said he believes that the Act’s main driving force was not to help humanity fight climate change, but to ensure the US forges ahead of China, a view which he said has been expressed by US trade representative Katherine Tai.
In March this year, China initiated dispute settlement proceedings against the US at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to safeguard its interests in the EV industry. Last Thursday, its commerce ministry released a second annual report on US compliance with the WTO, describing the US as a “destroyer of the multilateral trading system”.
Mahbubani said the potential re-election of Trump at the November polls would “make matters worse”.
“Trump sincerely believes there is no such thing as climate change. What hope do you have in the world over the next four years of moving ahead [on climate] if even the world’s most powerful country does not believe in the cause? Trump will also prioritise winning the battle against China,” he said.
Bottom-up initiatives?
Another key barrier to effective climate action is democracy, as leaders preoccupied with elections might not exercise rationality and will have competing political considerations, Mahbubani told his audience. The allocation of climate funding, for example, is a divisive discussion, he said.
At least US$1.1. trillion is needed annually to meet climate mitigation and adaptation needs across Asia, but there is still a huge shortfall. Meanwhile, the US and Europe are struggling with public financing deficits and fiscal problems, Mahbubani said. “If this carries on, people will feel the pain and more populist governments will be elected,” he said, pointing at the far-right surge in Europe to make his point.
For example, the Netherlands elected Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch People’s Party for Freedom in last November’s parliamentary elections with 23 per cent of the vote. Mahbubani noted that the same political trend is happening across France and Germany.
Mahbubani ended his speech on a note of optimism, highlighting how “bottom-up initiatives” could help move the climate agenda, even if high-level global negotiations didn’t work.
He suggested that Singapore can think of innovative ideas for “making sacrifices”, including to make a push for ending private car ownership. The city-state has an extensive public transport network of buses and trains.
“Perhaps what we need to do in the fight against climate change is to encourage more bottom-up initiatives and find ways and means to mobilise people on the ground,” he said. “Tell them, let’s make sacrifices and win the battle.”
