--- title: Did We Blow Our Last, Best Chance to Tackle Climate Change? description: 2020 and 2021 were supposed to be landmark years, but leaders didn't deliver as promised—from COVID-19 recovery spending to Build Back Better. canonical: https://time.com/6130470/climate-change-2021-build-back-better/ author: Justin Worland article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2021-12-30T12:00:35.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T10:40:00.468Z article:section: Politics og:title: Did We Just Blow Our Last, Best Chance to Tackle Climate Change? og:description: 'We're sort of standing on the precipice' og:url: https://time.com/6130470/climate-change-2021-build-back-better/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc29b6b8c361d6d35/698a20f4457a5228d5d65eef/Did-We-Blow-It.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: TOPSHOT-GREECE-FIRE og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Did We Just Blow Our Last, Best Chance to Tackle Climate Change? twitter:description: 'We're sort of standing on the precipice' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc29b6b8c361d6d35/698a20f4457a5228d5d65eef/Did-We-Blow-It.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- # Did We Just Blow Our Last, Best Chance to Tackle Climate Change? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. Senior correspondent Philip Elliott brings sharp context to the issues driving the capital, connecting the decisions made in Washington to the institutions, industries and people they affect. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ## Video: Generation Now: The Fight for Climate Justice [Watch (HLS stream): Generation Now: The Fight for Climate Justice](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/CIHrS8Mv.m3u8) (14:03)  _Published 2021-11-05. Today’s young people are coming of age just as the stable climate that has allowed previous generations to thrive on our planet begins to visibly break down—and just before our last chance to stop it falls out of reach._ Dec 30, 2021 12:00 PM UTC  by [Justin Worland](https://time.com/author/justin-worland/)  ## Justin Worland Senior Correspondent Dec 30, 2021 12:00 PM UTC In mid-2020, after the pandemic had settled in, I wrote in a [TIME cover story](https://time.com/5864692/climate-change-defining-moment/) that the stars had aligned to make 2020 and 2021 the “last, best chance” to keep the world from experiencing the worst impacts of climate change. Temperatures have risen more than 1.1°C since the Industrial Revolution, and the COVID-19 pandemic had unexpectedly opened up new pathways to rethink the global economy to help the world avoid the [1.5°C of temperature](https://time.com/5418134/ipcc-climate-change-report-2030-crisis/) rise, long seen as a marker of when the planet will start to experience the catastrophic and irreversible effects of climate change. Now, 18 months later, the world seems poised to blow it. Governments across the globe have failed to spend big on a green economic recovery. Political leaders from the world’s largest economies have made lofty promises to eliminate their carbon footprints but failed to offer concrete policies to get there. And President Joe Biden’s ambitions for bold climate legislation have been stymied in Congress. “We’re sort of standing on the precipice,” says Rob Jackson, an earth system science professor at Stanford University and the chair of the Global Carbon Project. “I am loath to say it, but I’m deeply skeptical that we will reduce emissions fast enough to keep global temperatures from rising 1.5°.” So with two landmark years for the planet—not to mention everyone who lives on it—in the rearview mirror, it’s worth looking at the missed opportunities. But it’s just as important to consider what comes next: missed chances cannot be viewed as an excuse to give up. ## **Spending money** The most obvious—and perhaps easiest—opportunity to turn the COVID-19 pandemic into progress in the fight against climate change boiled down to dollars and cents. COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns shocked the economy, requiring governments to spend trillions to keep the wheels turning. Quickly hard-nosed analysts and idealistic activists alike said governments should focus that spending on initiatives that would foster clean energy and push polluting industries to transform. This message caught on quickly, and a “green recovery” became a key talking point for heads of government from countries large and small. But, as the pandemic wore on, most of those policies failed to materialize. Only around 3% of the nearly $17 trillion countries have spent on recovery measures have been allocated to clean energy and sustainable recovery, according to an October [report](https://www.iea.org/reports/sustainable-recovery-tracker/tracking-sustainable-recoveries#abstract) from the International Energy Agency. The challenge is particularly stark in developing countries where finding financing for clean energy can be difficult. Other analyses have been more optimistic—but only slightly so. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [found](https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/the-oecd-green-recovery-database-47ae0f0d/#section-d1e334) in April that 17% of recovery spending would provide environmental benefits while another 17% was negative or mixed. The rest of it was neither, in effect meaning it propped up business as usual. These numbers present huge challenges for progress on climate. First, building new fossil fuel-based infrastructure locks in a future for oil, gas and coal for decades to come. Countries are unlikely to spend millions on, say, a pipeline only to turn around and shut it down a few years later. Moreover, spending money on infrastructure is for many countries a zero sum game. Once the money is spent, it’s gone, and the opportunity to spend big again may not come back again for years or decades. “We’ve spent a lot of money very quickly,” says Jackson. “We won’t get that money back.”  Climate protestors gather for the Global Day of Action for Climate Justice march in Glasgow, Scotland, on Nov. 6, 2021. Jeff J. Mitchell—Getty Images ## **COP26** Even before the pandemic, 2020 was meant to be a big year for action on climate change. Because of a cycle laid out in the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries were supposed to produce new climate commitments ahead of a key conference in Glasgow, Scotland, known informally as COP26. Organizers of the summit—originally scheduled for the fall of 2020 and held a year later as a result of the pandemic—planned the talks with the hope that, when the summit concluded, country commitments would leave the world with a clear and viable pathway to keep temperature rise to 1.5°C. Two heated weeks of negotiations led to a [complicated outcome](https://time.com/6120266/cop26-takeaways/). If you extrapolate from countries’ promises to eliminate their carbon footprints, temperature rise might be limited to around 1.8°C, according to an [analysis](https://time.com/6116062/cop-26-test-climate-action-tracker/) from Climate Action Tracker. Countries committed to “phasing down” coal and eliminating “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies. Perhaps more importantly, countries said they would return next year once again with new policies to bring the world even closer to the 1.5°C. “Despite what I would describe as a fractured international politics more generally, we did have consensus,” says Alok Sharma, the British minister who served as COP26’s president. But promises don’t mean much without policies to make them possible. Any leader can promise to, say, eliminate its carbon footprint by 2050\. But to do so requires concrete policies like deploying clean energy or transitioning to electric vehicles. And, if you add up the real policies that drive enacted by countries by the middle of COP26, temperatures are expected to rise 2.7°C—a big gap from the 1.8°C suggested by the vague promises. The outcome was better than many expected, but it seems fair to say that much work remains to be done to really put the world on a 1.5°C trajectory. “Is \[the agreement\] enough to hold global warming to 1.5°?” James Shaw, New Zealand’s climate minister, [asked his counterparts](https://time.com/6117499/cop26-final-agreement/) at the end of the conference. “I honestly can’t say that I think that it does, but we must never, ever give up.” ## **Political change** The U.S. is the world’s largest economy and second largest greenhouse gas emitter after China, and so what happens in Washington matters a great deal for global efforts to cut emissions. As president, Donald Trump took the U.S. backward, slashing climate rules and taking the country out of the Paris Agreement, and slowed the rest of the world down at the same time. Biden came to office promising to recommit the U.S. to climate action. He put the issue at the forefront of his domestic and international agendas, and, in April, he made a [key promise](https://time.com/5957983/biden-white-house-climate-summit/): to slash emissions by at least 50% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. The Biden Administration has described its strategy as an [“all of government” approach](https://time.com/5953374/climate-is-everything/), meaning every agency and official needs to consider how their work can help address the issue. But, despite a swathe of new rules and regulations targeting emissions, the Administration has hinged much of its agenda on a key piece of legislation dubbed Build Back Better. The spending plan, which passed the House of Representatives in November, contains more than $550 billion in clean energy and climate investment that would promote the adoption of electric vehicles, invest in conservation efforts and provide tax incentives for clean energy. At a macro level, that kind of investment would be transformational. Several independent analyses have shown that when combined with other measures, like tighter efficiency rules for automobiles and another key infrastructure package which Biden signed into law earlier this year, the investment would allow the U.S. to meet Biden’s 2030 target. Without it, or something of equal scale, the target remains an empty promise. “It’s impossible to get from here to there without these investments,” says John Podesta, the former advisor to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who now works on climate issues, of the role Build Back Better bill plays in meeting Biden’s goal. But on Dec. 19, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin told Fox News that he would not support the current version of the bill. Because the legislation needs support from every Democratic member of the Senate to pass, Manchin’s statement undermined both Biden’s climate agenda and global climate efforts more broadly. “If we don’t pass this, we basically have lost the war,” Sean Casten, a member of the House of Representatives from Illinois, told me earlier in December. “This is how we actually make sure that the fires, the floods don’t get worse every year.” ## **What comes next** If all of this sounds depressing, it is. While keeping temperature rise to 1.5°C may still be technically possible, it becomes harder and harder to imagine leaders finding the political will to do so with each passing year. That means an increasing likelihood that we may soon trigger a tipping point that leads to non-linear changes—think of the melting of Arctic permafrost that releases huge quantities of methane, for example, that in turn leads to even faster warming. Many who work on climate issues are hesitant to admit that critical threshold may already be behind us. Acknowledging that reality is often seen as tantamount to giving up. But there’s another way to look at it. On a recent panel I moderated, Michael Greenstone, a University of Chicago economics professor who served as the chief economist on Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, ran through his calculations of the damage done by each ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. His conclusion was simple: “Every ton matters.” No matter how close we are to hitting 1.5°C of warming—or by how much we’ve passed it—every ton of carbon matters, as does every new effort the world makes in reducing the harm being done. The world came up short in 2020 and 2021\. In 2022, leaders need to go back to the drawing board. ## Transcript [Namrata Iyer]: I think some of the biggest challenges my generation faces is convincing the previous generations about why it's important to talk about what we believe in. [Greta Thunberg]: We can't choose between us young people saying to adults you must behave but we can't wait for us to become the ones in charge because we don't have time for that. [Timothée Chalamet]: Your youth does not have to work against you by way of experience, your youth can be a virtue by way of what you ethically and earnestly expect of the world. [Billie Eilish]: People can be so selfish about the environment and their experience versus the globe and literally our lifespan. [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]: The America we grew up in is like nothing like the America our parents or grandparents grew up in. [Nyke Slawik]: When you have young people who are confronted with not having a future at all of course this is going to radicalize a whole generation. This is a question of survival basically. [John Kerry]: I don't doubt that we will get to a net zero carbon economy. Will we get there fast enough to heed the science and avoid the worst consequences? That's the battle. That's what we're trying to do with Glasgow. [Thunberg]: What do we want? [Audience]: Climate justice. [Thunberg]: When do we want it? [Audience]: Now. [Thunberg]: What do we want? [Audience]: Climate justice. [Thunberg]: When do we want it? [Audience]: Now. [Thunberg]: Thank you. [Justin Worland]: This generation has reframed the way we talk and think about climate to make it an issue of intergenerational justice. The question is will this anger turn into action? Will leaders who have been listening actually take the message to heart and do something about it? [Kerry]: Our diplomacy is guided by what the scientists are telling us we must achieve. Three years ago they had a report in 2018 the IPCC gave us 12 years within which to make the critical decisions to avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis. [Hoesung Lee]: Limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is not impossible but will require unprecedented transitions in all aspects of society. [Worland]: It was alarming in its the seriousness with which it portrayed the consequences of climate change. We're talking about hundreds of millions of people migrating. We're talking about the possibility of countries disappearing in their entirety. We're talking about a world that is totally transformed. Already 85 percent of the world's population has been affected by human-caused climate change. [Jim Skea]: The message is over to governments at this stage. We've told you what you—the scientific facts, the evidence, the costs. It is up to the governments now to decide what to do with it. [Ciara Nugent]: We've had loads and loads of reports about climate change over the last couple of decades and the massive threat to our planet but despite all of the science there are still people who are skeptical about how much of a big deal it really is. And I think for those people it's much harder to dismiss young people, normal school kids because they're part of their communities, they're part of their families often. [Nyke Slawik]: What we need is politicians who implement the policies in their home countries and that's—that's what has not been happening in the last years. And so now young people are saying why go to school? Why go to university? Why start planning a family? Why buy a house when I don't even know that in 50 years time or 70 years time I will still have a future, because right now that's at stake. [Ocasio-Cortez]: If we do nothing this is what's going to happen: sea levels are going rise, crops are going to die out, there will be mass starvation. There's going to be all of these things that are going to happen and kids see that, they internalize it. [Charlotte Alter]: Researchers have found that young voters form their lifelong political attitudes in response to the events of their early adulthood, mostly late teens into the late 20s. And for millennials and gen z that period of time has been defined by climate catastrophe. [Christian Hidalgo]: I'm from Bakersfield, California, central valley. Earlier today I've been getting snapchats from all of my friends talking about how orange the sky is because of the wildfire surrounding us. The closest wildfire is probably not even 60 miles away but we have horrible air quality like we're—I'm in the middle of the valley and it just it really strongly affects us and that's what—that's what's drawn me to climate activism. [Isabella Guariniello]: This is my first strike ever. I watched a bunch of like sad penguin videos on YouTube and I started to get really sad when I learned about the effects of animals and like how much earth that we're actually losing. It's hard not to get discouraged when you're constantly learning about what people before you did wrong. [Sassy Fernandez]: Like I remember being in elementary school and watching Al Gore's documentary about climate change and the effects that we could be seeing within the next 10, 15 years and so far he's been pretty right about everything that he said in his documentary. I totally forgot what it was called but shout outs to my science teacher. [Thunberg]: We are being betrayed by those in power and they are failing us but we will not back down. And if you feel threatened by that then I have some very bad news for you. We will not be silenced because we are the change and change is coming whether you like it or not. We need to work together intergenerational of course that is the only way and we need to—everyone needs to participate and help out in the way we can. So I'm doing what I can. I'm trying to use my voice to spread awareness and to—to put pressure on those in power. [Alter]: When TIME put Greta on the cover in 2019 she had just gone from being a school girl protesting alone outside of Swedish parliament to being the leader of a global climate movement. That year her activism inspired four million people to join the global climate strike in 2019 which was at that point the largest climate movement in world history. [Worland]: Across the world with very few exceptions there are examples of people who have been inspired by her and have led—who've taken up the mantle the Fridays for Future movement in countries across the world. [Thunberg]: I'm not a leader or the face of the climate movement, I'm just one of many faces. [Vanessa Nakate]: There are far too little evidence of the 100 billion dollars per year that was promised to help climate vulnerable countries to meet these challenges. In fact, those funds were promised to arrive by 2020 and we are still waiting. [Nugent]: Vanessa Nakate, a Ugandan climate activist, is one of many people who have been working to remind us that climate action is going to be expensive and many countries who are most vulnerable to climate change can't afford to pay for it alone. [Nakate]: Historically Africa is responsible for only three percent of global emissions and yet some Africans are already suffering some of the worst and brutal impacts of climate change, so to me climate justice doesn't just have to be about reducing greenhouse gas emissions it goes beyond the primary disasters that we see. It is what happens in the aftermath of those disasters, what happens to families, what happens to individuals, what happens to communities. [Worland]: You think about the fact that the U.S. has emitted a quarter of emissions historically. Africa has emitted three percent of emissions historically and the U.S. is able to isolate itself, to pay for adaptation, to pay for the costs in a way that developing countries in sub-saharan Africa and across the globe just can't. And so climate change is a justice issue on many different levels. [Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala]: We we have to bear in mind that whether you're rich or poor, a rich country or poor country, there are some things you just cannot do on your own. You can't deliver on this pandemic on your own, you cannot deliver on climate change on your own. [Nakate]: So what we really want is a future that is healthy, that is sustainable, that is clean, that is livable and equitable for all of us. [Nugent]: Some of the activists that I speak to are realizing they can't wait for the older generation to take action so they're trying to get elected to governments themselves. In Germany, the Green Party has really been in the ascendancy. In September they've almost doubled their number of seats in parliament and one of the 118 lawmakers they now have is Nyke Slawik. She's a 27 year old German politician who was elected in September to the Bundestag and she has been involved in climate activism for almost 12 years and now she has political power to make a difference. [Slawik]: The time of just implementing small changes has passed and this is a reality we as younger politicians are bringing with us to the parliament now but of course there's lots of older colleagues who have not quite grasped this yet, and I think this is why we might be more determined to not go for the small compromises, to be a bit more rebellious about these things. The last German government has decided to exit coal in 2038 which is still too late way too late but now we even have the chance to accelerate energy transition from coal to renewables way quicker and that's a major achievement of the youth climate movement. [Alter]: In the United States young voters across the political spectrum understand that climate change is a major issue that needs to be addressed, they just disagree on how best to do it. So even younger Republicans, Republicans under 40, they understand that climate change is happening, they understand that something has to be done about it, they just don't agree with their more progressive peers about the scale and scope of what that intervention needs to be. So this is a big shift from a couple generations ago when you had one side insisting that climate change was a problem and the other side basically denying that it was happening at all. [Worland]: When TIME spoke to Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, he spoke about how the youth movement had made him want to do better. When I talked to the U.N. Secretary General he talked about how he was trying to bring youth into the climate discussion because it had enthused him and he thought it would help change the conversation. Talking to members of Congress about how inspirational Greta was really made clear to me that she was changing the conversation. [Nugent]: In my reporting activists are telling me that COP 26 is a crucial moment to find out if politicians are really listening to them and really taking action or if they're just saying they're listening and delaying action. [Nakate]: Leaders keep praising young people for standing up and protesting but saving the world needs action, it needs decisions from the leaders, decisions that prioritize the lives of the people and the planet, and that is not something that we are doing. The words of the leaders are not matching up with their actions. [Thunberg]: Words. Words that sound great but so far has led to no action. Our hopes and dreams drown in their empty words and promises. Of course we need constructive dialogue but they've now had 30 years of blah blah blah and where has that led us? [Jane Goodall]: I'm about to leave the world and leave it behind me with all the mess whereas young people have to grow up into it. That's why they need every bit of help they can. And if, you know, if they succumb to the doom and gloom ,which many have, then they lose hope. If you lose hope that's the end, because if you don't hope that there's a way out, if you don't hope that your actions can make a difference then you sink into apathy and do nothing. So hope is absolutely crucial if we're to get through this. [Singing]: We're going to strike because our waters are rising. We're going to strike because our people are dying. We're going to strike for life and everything we love. We're going to strike for you, will you strike for us? We're going to strike for you, will you strike for us? We're going to strike because our waters are rising. We're going to strike because our people are dying. We're going to strike for life and everything we love. We're going to strike for you, will you strike for us? We're going to strike for you, will you strike for us? 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