Climate diplomacy as a laboratory for the new world order

COP30 was not merely a climate negotiation. It was a dress rehearsal for how global diplomacy is being reshaped in a world no longer controlled by the West — and in which the United States has ceased to act as a guarantor of order and has instead become its principal source of destabilisation.

On 18 November at COP30 in Belém, I met, with the European Climate Pact, the European Union’s negotiators. I came away with an uncomfortable certainty: they were heading for a crash. I wrote as much. I was right. Belém was saved at the last minute thanks to the G20’s two-track diplomacy and the role of China, increasingly a guarantor of the ecological transition. Today, the Commission is restructuring teams, strategy and personnel. The head of delegation has stepped down. The end of one phase — and the beginning of another that Europe still struggles to name, but which will be more transactional and more realistic.

To understand Belém, one must return to Copenhagen. In 2009, Europe arrived convinced it would lead the world towards a historic agreement. It turned out differently: while European negotiators moved through the official corridors, Obama, Lula, Manmohan Singh and Wen Jiabao were finalising the text in a separate room. Denmark presided, the EU was present behind the scenes. Yet, it was, in reality, Obama who held the cards. He played them against the backdrop of a deal with China that established a modus operandi for global climate change decision-making, in which the US–China axis became the cornerstone of consensus on the Paris Agreement and its subsequent implementation.

The crucial difference compared with 2009 is that, at the time, the United States was still, despite everything, a pillar of the multilateral order. Today it has become its principal agent of erosion. The same power that built Bretton Woods, guaranteed European security for decades, and signed the Paris Agreement is now undermining it from within: withdrawing from agreements, sabotaging negotiations, and carrying out military strikes in the Gulf without an international mandate. The figures of the resulting climate collapse are already on the table: in just 14 days of war against Iran, the conflict generated five million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent — more than 84 countries produce in an entire year. In Ukraine, four years of war have accumulated 311 million tonnes. The emissions of war answer neither to Kyoto nor to Paris: those who bomb an oil facility are accountable to no climate budget and answer to no multilateral body.

And yet those fighting for oil in the Gulf are fighting for an economy that is already giving way. In 2025, 29% of new registrations of heavy-duty trucks in China were electric or plug-in hybrid — the hardest segment to decarbonise, the one that consumes diesel in vast quantities. For cars, the figure is 54%. Around one and a half million fewer barrels of oil are sold each day. In thirty years of COP sessions, real change has come from China’s manufacturing capacity in renewables, batteries and electric vehicles — not from negotiated texts.

At the Raisina Dialogue 2026, Alexander Stubb raised an issue that goes far beyond climate: global institutions must be reformed to reflect the new balance of power, starting with the UN Security Council — built for the world of 1945 and now paralysed by those who should ensure its functioning. The Global South will shape the next world order. China, India and other major emerging economies will be the decisive force in determining whether the world tilts towards a conflictual multipolarity — spheres of influence, transactions, the law of the strongest — or towards a cooperative, fair and representative multilateral order. The figures confirm the shift: US GDP fell from 31% to 26% of the global total between 2000 and 2024; China rose from 4% to 18%.

Stubb’s message to the EU is unsparing: embrace a role fully aware of the changes that have taken place, and act in a transactional, realistic manner consistent with the interests of others. Passivity is not a strategy — and Europe has power. It can and must sit at every table, building flexible partnerships on multiple levels: weaving together markets, technology and climate, forests and green supply chains; redesigning the framework of rules by reorganising finance, trade and material flows. Bilateral in relationships, multilateral in principles, pragmatic in outcomes.

Because once Pandora’s box has been opened (the war in Ukraine will be remembered by history as that turning point), the demons of the law of the strongest become hydra-headed: in a world of deregulated climate and resource governance, those who stand by and watch pay the price for others — with interest. Those in the room who act responsibly would do well to embrace the calm, cool-headed leadership of the European Nordics.

illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.

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