We Need a Global Treaty for Climate

To urgently drive down carbon emissions, we need a worldwide, and equitable, fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty.

In this excerpt from his new book, The Path to a Livable Future: A New Politics to Fight Climate Change, Racism, and the Next Pandemic, Stan Cox argues that we need more than a transition to sustainable energy to effectively curb climate change. We need to immediately begin reducing the use of fossil fuels, enforced by strong international treaties.

While community and regional governance of resources should occur under a national umbrella that guarantees both limits and fair shares, the national effort must in turn connect to an international mobilization. Otherwise, humanity’s total emissions can’t be driven down to zero in time. Therefore, once the United States begins turning off the national fossil fuel tap and pursues a just transition, with local governance ensuring fairness and equity, Washington can begin forming alliances with other countries that also commit to direct elimination of fossil fuels. At that point, we would land right in the thick of a nascent global movement that’s pressing for a “Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.”

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