The "Big Oopses"

25 Years of Delay, Distraction, and Self-Deception in Climate Policy

Last week, we took a step back to look at the broader picture—asking why we’ve failed so thoroughly, so repeatedly, in our attempts to build a sustainable future. This week, we zoom in on one particular arena of that failure: climate policy. For over two decades, it has been a stage for many bold promises, but desperately few successful outcomes. Much of it now belongs on the compost heap, along with all the broken ideas and well-meaning illusions that must decompose if anything healthier is to grow.

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For over two decades, climate policy has been driven by waves of enthusiasm, bold promises, and the belief that the right mix of innovation, markets, and diplomacy could turn the crisis around. What we call 'climate policy' has, over the last three decades, taken many forms: UN accords, national legislation, corporate pledges. But across these layers, certain patterns repeat. Many (perhaps even all?) of the policies were introduced in good faith, with leaders, scientists, and activists rallying behind them as hopeful steps toward a sustainable future. But when we look back with honest eyes, a different picture emerges.

This is the essence of a Big Oops: a policy or approach that, at the time, seemed like meaningful progress but, with hindsight, either failed to deliver or quietly made things worse. Some were naïve bets on market forces, others were technological gambles, and many were political compromises that prioritized feasibility over effectiveness.

In what follows, 20 “big oopses” from past decades are listed. This is not a catalogue of bad actors or bad ideas. It is a chronicle of how a particular economic and civilizational logic, rooted in growth, extraction, and risk-avoidance, shaped climate policy over time. We name these not to assign blame, but to learn – so we can better recognize the patterns that keep us circling the same illusions, and begin to ask what it might take to truly break from them. Naming these patterns isn’t cynical; it’s necessary. If we can’t learn from the strategies that didn’t deliver, we risk falling for them again in slightly greener clothing.

Let’s look back over recent decades—and see what they have to teach us.

1. Cap and Trade
Introduced under the Kyoto Protocol in the late 1990s and expanded in the 2000s, cap-and-trade turned emissions reductions into a market game. Polluters could keep polluting as long as they bought “credits,” many of which were poorly regulated, fraudulent, or ineffective.

2. Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)
Established in the early 2000s as part of the Kyoto Protocol, the CDM became a loophole for rich countries to outsource their climate responsibilities by funding “green projects” in the Global South. While some projects showed promise, many of them failed to deliver real emissions reductions or actively harmed local communities.

3. Choosing a Temperature Goal Instead of a PPM Goal
At the 2009 Copenhagen Summit, rather than committing to lowering CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere—such as below 350 ppm—policymakers chose a temperature target. This approach allowed for loopholes, delay tactics, and creative carbon accounting.

4. Choosing the 2-Degree Target (and Later Backtracking to 1.5°C)
In 2009, world leaders arbitrarily decided that 2°C of warming was “acceptable,” not because science supported it, but because it seemed politically feasible. By the time of the 2015 Paris Agreement, it was clear that 2°C would be catastrophic, so the target was revised to 1.5°C—without clear commitments to actually stay below it.

5. The Paris Agreement’s Voluntary Mechanisms
The 2015 Paris Agreement was hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough, but it relies entirely on voluntary commitments with no enforcement. Countries can set weak targets, fail to meet them, and face no real consequences.

6. “Let’s Leave It to Business”
Throughout the 2010s, policymakers outsourced climate action to corporations, trusting that voluntary initiatives and market forces would solve the crisis. The result was decades of greenwashing, vague pledges, and little structural change.

7. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)
First promoted in the 2010s as a “solution” to fossil fuel emissions, CCS has remained a high-cost, low-success techno-fix that oil and gas companies have used as an excuse to keep drilling. The technology has failed to work at scale and mostly just prolongs dependence on fossil fuels.

8. REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation)
Introduced in the 2000s, REDD+ was meant to conserve forests but became a land grab mechanism. Instead of protecting ecosystems, it has displaced Indigenous communities and let polluters “offset” emissions without real reductions.

9. Methane ‘Bridge Fuel’
Since the 2000s, the fossil fuel industry has marketed natural gas (methane) as a “cleaner” alternative to coal. But methane leaks make it just as bad—or worse—for the climate. Instead of transitioning away from fossil fuels, this myth expanded gas infrastructure and delayed real change.

10. Biofuels and Biomass
First promoted in the 2000s as “renewable” energy, biofuels have driven deforestation, food insecurity, and land displacement, while biomass burns forests for energy, releasing more CO₂ than coal.

11. Carbon Offsets in General
Carbon offset markets have existed since the early 2000s, based on the idea that emissions can be “neutralized” by funding projects elsewhere. Of course, more investments from the Global North towards the South are needed. But offsets have been riddled with fraud, exaggeration, and failure. Many projects either don’t work or would have happened anyway, making them a convenient way to delay real reductions.

12. Geoengineering
Since the 2010s, speculative geoengineering proposals, from blocking the sun to fertilizing the ocean, have ignored the complexity of Earth’s systems. These risky, high-tech distractions avoid tackling emissions at the source.

13. Net Zero Pledges
In the 2010s, “net zero by 2050” became a popular climate pledge. But most commitments rely on vague targets, unproven technologies, and massive loopholes, allowing emissions to continue unchecked in the present.

14. Climate Finance
The idea that trillions in “green finance” will fix the crisis gained traction in the 2010s. But financial markets prioritize short-term profit over planetary survival. Investors continue to bankroll fossil fuels while claiming climate leadership.

15. ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) Investing
Since the 2010s, ESG investing has been touted as a way to align capitalism with sustainability. In reality, it lets polluting companies greenwash their image while maintaining business as usual. Fossil fuel firms have scored high in ESG rankings.

16. The Carbon Budget
By the 2010s, policymakers framed climate policy as a “carbon budget,” giving them a false sense of control. But carbon is not capital, it’s cumulative risk. The very metaphor suggested there was something left to spend, when in reality, we were already deep in carbon debt. Every added ton didn’t just draw from a shrinking budget, it increased an unpaid bill with the biosphere, compounding future instability. This framing enabled delay, comforting decision-makers with the illusion of fiscal prudence while accelerating ecological collapse.

17. Hydrogen (Especially Blue Hydrogen)
In the 2020s, hydrogen was heavily promoted as the “fuel of the future,” but much of it has been a fossil fuel industry scam. “Blue hydrogen” is made from natural gas with carbon capture (which rarely works), and even “green hydrogen” is too energy-intensive to scale up quickly.

18. Nature-Based Solutions
By the 2020s, corporations and governments used the idea of “nature-based solutions” as an excuse to delay real climate action. And yet, when rooted in local knowledge and long-term stewardship, some efforts, like mangrove restoration in Southeast Asia, regenerative land practices in the Sahel or smart urban infrastructure projects, showed that nature-based approaches could work. The failure often lay not in the idea itself, but in how it was co-opted and stripped of ecological integrity and deployed for PR rather than planetary stability.

19. The UNFCCC and the COP Conferences (Without Enforcement)
Since 1995, world leaders have gathered every year at COP climate summits to discuss solutions. But without enforcement, emissions keep rising. These summits have become performances of action rather than actual action.

20. The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) Green Protectionism
In the 2020s, the EU introduced a carbon tax on imports, claiming to promote climate fairness. In practice, it shifts the burden to the Global South while Europe continues overconsuming.

Looking at this list, a question arises: has climate policy been shaped more by a need to preserve economic growth, political stability, and business as usual than by a commitment to real transformation? Instead of confronting the root causes of the crisis—overconsumption, extractive economies, and systemic inequality—powerful actors have often chosen delay, distraction, and wishful thinking. Each decade has brought new technical fixes, market mechanisms, and voluntary pledges that signal action, while ensuring the foundations of modernity remain undisturbed.

Part of the challenge lies in the fallacy of climate-centricity: the belief that climate change is the primary problem to solve, rather than a symptom of a much deeper entanglement of crises. A narrow focus on carbon metrics has led to harmful trade-offs: biofuels that destroy forests, offsets that displace communities, techno-fixes that risk unintended consequences. When we treat carbon emissions from fossil fuels as the whole story, we lose sight of the wider collapse of ecosystems, the erosion of biodiversity, and the enduring legacies of past extraction.

Avoiding the next wave of big oopses means refusing the comfort of tweaks and illusions. Yes, AI-driven carbon markets, deep-sea mining, and geoengineering are being packaged as solutions, but real change will demand more than clever innovation. It will require questioning the civilizational logics of extraction, expansion, and disposability.

Thankfully, other ways of knowing and being have always existed. Many Indigenous and land-based communities have long resisted the dominant logic and pointed toward more relational, reciprocal ways of living. Their voices, too often marginalized, offer not “solutions” in the technocratic sense, but deeper possibilities for belonging and responsibility.

The question now is not whether better answers will appear, but whether more people are willing to see clearly, to listen deeply, and to stop falling for the same stories told in greener language.