Climate Targets Must Be Realistic and Demand the Impossible
A management theory from a half-century ago is how Biden and Xi can overcome the limits of their leadership.
Aim high and maybe you’ll hit something.
Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
What will come of the array of ambitious (and not-so-ambitious) targets announced by world leaders at President Joe Biden’s climate summit?
It’s tempting to think, “Not enough.” Talk is cheap; actions are expensive. About a third of all the greenhouse emissions from human activities in history have happened since 1997, when world leaders adopted the Kyoto Protocol with an ambition of limiting such pollution. In the words of activist Greta Thunberg to a U.S. congressional committee Thursday, “We’re not so naive that we believe that things will be solved by countries and companies making vague, distant insufficient targets.”