Jessica F. Green, "Existential Politics: Why Global Climate Institutions Are Failing and How to Fix Them" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Eleonora Matiacci
Guest: Professor Jessica F. Green, Department of Political Science & School of the Environment, University of Toronto
Episode: “Existential Politics: Why Global Climate Institutions Are Failing and How to Fix Them”
Date: December 2, 2025

In this episode, Professor Jessica Green discusses her 2025 book Existential Politics, which analyzes why three decades of global climate agreements have delivered disappointing results. Green offers a new framing: instead of “managing tons” of carbon, successful climate policy must address the distributional conflict over assets. She explains how entrenched interests block progress, critiques the dominant paradigms of climate governance, and suggests ways forward for policy and scholarship.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Core Argument: “Assets, Not Tons” [01:43, 08:02]

• Managing tons (measuring, reporting, trading emissions) has been the focus of climate policy for thirty years, but this narrow lens misses the fundamental political conflict.
• The real issue is who wins and who loses from climate transition: decarbonization revalues assets, creating powerful opposition.
• Quote:

  “The tagline, I think, for the book is assets, not tons… If the tons isn’t working, then you have to look at assets. How do you constrain the assets of fossil asset owners? How do you counter that power? You have to build up the material and political power of green asset owners.” (Jessica Green, 08:02)

2. Challenging Conventional Wisdom [02:20]

• Prevailing View: Climate change is treated as a collective action problem requiring international cooperation.
• Green’s Challenge: In practice, resistance and foot-dragging by those with vested interests (not free rider problems) explain slow progress.
• Quote:

  "This isn't about collective action. This is about winners and losers. And...losers know they're going to lose. And so they've been fighting to slow walk progress on climate change..." (Jessica Green, 02:20)

3. Historical Example of Winners vs. Losers: Global Climate Coalition [04:25]

• In the early 1990s, fossil fuel companies created the “Global Climate Coalition”—not to support action, but to undermine climate science and protect threatened assets.
• This is a textbook case of powerful sectors resisting change to preserve their interests.
• Quote:

  "If we are going to regulate emissions, fossil fuel companies are in big, big trouble... If you don't acknowledge that as the elephant in the room, then you're not going to make progress on decarbonization." (Jessica Green, 04:25)

4. Why Does This Distinction Matter? [06:09]

• Attempting friendly, technocratic cooperation fails if major interests are opposed.
• Diplomacy that ignores these structural conflicts is inadequate.
• Quote:

  “Diplomacy has done a disservice to our collective progress on decarbonization because it has failed to recognize these deeply entrenched interests.” (Jessica Green, 07:29)

• Memorable moment:

  "It's sort of like the analogy of bringing a knife to a gunfight..." (Jessica Green, 06:09)

5. Persistent Policy Failures: Offsets, Carbon Pricing, Net Zero [09:37, 11:25]

• Carbon offsets and pricing mechanisms often fail or are gamed, yet persist due to political interests.
• There’s a “definition of insanity” at play—knowing these tools are limited, yet repeating them.
• Carbon offset projects often wildly overstate emissions reductions and are cheap, undermining their effectiveness.
• Quote:

  “Offsets are equal parts art and science... Actors with a vested interest in preserving the value of their assets would massage the numbers in ways that favor them.” (Jessica Green, 11:25)

6. Research Approach & Intellectual Journey [15:58, 17:22]

• The book synthesizes years of work in political economy, international relations, and environmental governance.
• Writing "Existential Politics” meant bridging disciplines, making for a creative and challenging research process.
• Quote:

  “In general, I'm a lumper, not a splitter... That was helpful for me.” (Jessica Green, 17:22)

7. Obstacles and Pushback [17:46, 19:41]

• A main challenge was balancing the rhetorical clarity of “assets, not tons” with the real need to measure emissions.
• Received pushback from negotiators and economists who defend conventional mechanisms or emphasize the need for data/tracking tons.

8. Implications for Policymakers [21:48]

• If the book’s argument is taken seriously, climate policy shifts toward asset reform: target taxation, regulation, and green industrial policy rather than just emissions management.
• Tax policy—already advancing via OECD agreements—emerges as a crucial lever against fossil asset owners.
• Quote (on tax):

  “Extreme wealth is correlated to high carbon emissions... Taxing rich people, which includes corporations who indirectly make rich people, is important because it correlates to carbon inequality.” (Jessica Green, 22:56)

9. On International Tax Law and Green Policy [25:21]

• Learning international tax law was unexpectedly rewarding.
• Tax reform not only curbs carbon inequalities but also impacts environmental crime and state sovereignty.

10. Current & Future Work [26:38]

• Green is working on deep-sea mining, examining how the demand for minerals needed for decarbonization may drive risky new extractive industries. She notes “a lot of US exceptionalism” in this field and describes the work as both fascinating and a little depressing.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Assets, not tons.” (Jessica Green, 08:02)
  The pithy tagline capturing her core argument.
• “Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight… but if you’re going to go, go properly equipped.” (Jessica Green, 07:50)
• On the persistence of failed policies:

  "It’s like, you know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a new result." (Jessica Green, 09:37)

• On tax and climate:

  “It's just a good idea.” (Jessica Green, 25:09)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:43 | Book’s core idea: “managing tons” vs. assets, origins of Green’s reframing | | 04:25 | Notable example: Global Climate Coalition’s campaign against climate science | | 06:09 | Why the distinction between winners and losers matters | | 08:02 | “Assets, not tons,” and the consequences for policy | | 09:37 | Surprises and persistent policy failures; resistance to changing course | | 11:25 | Why offsets are persistently flawed and easily gamed | | 15:58 | Research process: Interdisciplinary synthesis, approach to evidence | | 17:46 | Challenge: Overstating the binary of “assets vs tons,” pushback from policy practitioners | | 21:48 | Practical policy prescriptions: focus tax and regulation on asset owners | | 22:56 | Taxation’s relationship to climate justice and inequality | | 25:21 | Most rewarding aspect: Deep dive into international tax law | | 26:38 | New research on deep-sea mining and its implications |

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Episode Flow Summary

• Intro and book setup by host Eleonora Matiacci.
• Professor Green reframes the problem: climate change is a battle over who wins and loses, not simply a technical collective action puzzle.
• Historical example of fossil fuel industry resistance illustrates her argument.
• Persistent focus on failing methods like offsets and carbon trading traced to vested interests.
• Green’s research and arguments faced pushback but also prompted new directions in policy thinking.
• Policy implications focus on asset revaluation—such as taxation and green industrial policy—rather than emissions metrics alone.
• Deep dive into international tax law revealed its climate significance.
• Looking ahead: Green’s research explores the environmental politics of deep-sea mining.

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For Listeners

This episode offers a provocative and well-evidenced rethink of climate politics. Instead of fixating on carbon accounting, Green urges academics and policymakers to confront the underlying power dynamics that structure climate inertia. Her “assets, not tons” framing, paired with her call to leverage tax and regulatory policy, marks a significant departure from thirty years of climate orthodoxy.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Hello. Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm your host, Eleonora Matiacci, an associate professor of political science at Amherst College. Today I'm speaking with Professor Jessica Green from the Department of Political Science in the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto. Professor Greene's new book, Existential Politics, was published in 2025 by Princeton University Press. It explains why three decades of climate agreements have failed to deliver. Professor Greene, welcome to the show.

[C]

Thank you for having me.

[B]

Let's start with the core idea of the book. You argue that governments have spent 30 years focusing on what you call managing taunts. You define managing tons as measuring, reporting, and trading emissions. But while they were doing this, they were also ignoring the real political dynamic that climate policy creates winners and losers by revaluing assets. So what sparked your interest in this framing? And what conventional wisdom about climate governance are you challenging?

[C]

Great question. So I was taught as a graduate student and even after that, that, you know, climate change is a collective action problem, and we need all states to work together to commit to reducing emissions. Otherwise, we'll have free riders and, you know, we won't. We won't get the job done. And this was, you know, the sort of the gospel from graduate school going forward. And I study, I've been studying Climate change for and working in the area and policy for 20 years. And while theoretically that argument made sense in practice, it wasn't working. Right. I mean, I watched as the Kyoto Protocol just never really got off the ground. And so I've always sort of had this, well, the theory isn't really matching up with the empirical reality. And then in 2021, I wrote a paper in international organization with two of my colleagues, Jeff Colgan and Tom Hale, in which we sort of floated some of these ideas and we're basically like, look, this isn't about collective action. This is about winners and losers. And the winners and losers, the losers know they're going to lose. And so they've been fighting to slow walk progress on climate change and that most of this is happening at the domestic level and so it's constraining agreement at the international level. So it was really just born out of this idea, was really just born out of what I saw and trying to make sense of what I saw versus what I was reading.

[B]

That makes a lot of sense. I'm glad you did that to such an original argument.

[C]

Oh, thank you.

[B]

Can you walk us through a specific example that illustrates this winners versus losers dynamic? So it could be a moment or a case where this dynamic becomes particularly visible.

[C]

Yeah, well, I mean, I guess I'll give a historical example just because it's a fun one. And that is in the sort of right around the creation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, a bunch of companies got together and they created this thing called the Global Climate Coalition, which sounds really good, except their purpose was to undermine the science on climate change. And the reason they were doing this was because they were all big fossil fuel companies and they saw the writing on the wall. If we are going to regulate emissions, fossil fuel companies are in big, big trouble. And of course there's a lot of research on this. Probably the most prominent scholar is Naomi Oreskes. But how, how the fossil fuel industry has, you know, denied, delayed, greenwashed because they stand to lose trillions of dollars in assets. And so, and it's not just oil and gas companies, there are other, other sectors that are emissions intensive, that have also really fought against regulation, both at the domestic and the international level. So it's a long standing problem. And it's like, you know, if you don't acknowledge that as the elephant in the room, then you're not going to make progress on decarbonization.

[B]

Which, which leads me to my next question, which was why does this all matter? So for our listeners who aren't deeply immersed in climate policy, why does your argument about this distinction between winners and losers matter?

[C]

Well, because states have. It's, it's sort of like the analogy of like bringing a knife to a gunfight, right? Like states have been saying, okay, well, we can just cooperate on, you know, managing tons on, you know, carbon accounting and carbon trading and offsets and net zero. We can just cooperate on this and then, you know, we'll make progress on, on the problem, like, we'll make progress on, on decarbonization. But that's not going to work if there are really powerful, wealthy vested interests that don't want it to happen. So the, the stakes are very high. I mean, obviously there's, I won't go into all of the science and all of the, the terrible things that we know about the, the arrival of the climate crisis and how that's affecting people around the world, but, you know, the. I think for people who aren't deeply immersed in this, the issue is, well, we can't make friends with people who have a vested interest in not making progress. So the first chapter of the book is called We Are not all in this Together. And while I recognize, and we can talk about this more like, I recognize that, you know, diplomacy tries to find solutions, right, Even in the face of conflicting interests, that diplomacy has done a disservice to our collective progress on decarbonization because it has failed to recognize these deeply entrenched interests.

[B]

So don't bring a knife to a gunfight.

[C]

I mean, don't go to a fight at all. But if you're going to go, go properly equipped.

[B]

So that leads me to the next question, which was if our listeners could take away just one core idea from your book, what would it be?

[C]

Yeah, so the tagline, I think, for the book is assets, not tons of and so tons. I describe in the book three chapters which look at carbon offsets, carbon pricing, and net zero. And these are all examples of managing tons. And I've studied all of these for probably a decade and just provide the laundry list. It was a very cathartic process because I provided the laundry list of all of the reasons why this wouldn't work or is not working. So that's the tons piece. And if the tons isn't working, then I say, okay, well, if you're really dealing with winners and losers, then you have to look at assets. You have to look at how do you constrain the assets of fossil asset owners? Right. How do you constrain their power, you hit them where it hurts the bottom line. And how do you counter that power? You have to build up the material and political power of green asset owners. And that requires money, that requires investment. And so there's a whole chapter on green industrial policy and how we think about that.

[B]

So it's a completely different strategy.

[C]

Yep, totally different strategy.

[B]

So assets, not tons. The great tagline of the book. Can you tell us something about your intellectual journey here? Were there any surprises? You told us about how you read about tons for about 10 years. It was a cathartic experience. Were there any surprising turns in your thinking as you developed this argument?

[C]

I mean, I guess to me, like when I, so I, I studied offsets in my dissertation and so that was, you know, 15 years ago, longer. And you know, even then as a, as a budding political scientist, I was like, there's no way this is going to work. It's already not working. And so I guess one of the, one of the surprising things to me is, and you know, since I started and even before, like, there's been mounting evidence by scholars, by journalists about, like, why this, this policy is really bad. And what's surprising to me is how we're still doing it. I mean, it's not surprising. I have an explanation for it, but it's also just sort of breaks my brain of like, we know this isn't. It's like, you know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a new result. And, you know, we've known since the very beginning that the results aren't great. Like we don't actually reduce as much emissions as, as, you know, project projects claim to. And so I guess that one is surprising. You know, the re. I guess everybody wants that, you know, you want people to see things the same way you do, share your views. And so it's been very surprising, I guess a lot of the pushback that I've gotten about carbon pricing in particular, that, like, you know, obviously this is a really good policy and yeah, I just don't think that's true.

[B]

So can you, you, you, you say you, you might have an explanation why we're doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Could you tease that explanation for us a little bit before I ask about the empirical journey?

[C]

So carbon offsets are basically a way for emitters, whether they're national governments or private firms, to pay someone else to reduce their carbon emissions and then get that credit. So they're turning the absence of emissions into A commodity and then selling that commodity, which is also a little bit hard to wrap one's brain around. And so there's a huge amount of measurement involved in that process. You know, what would the world. I mean, basically it's a hypothetical counterfactual. How many emissions would there have been had this project not been financed? And so there's a lot of measurement involved in that and a lot of justification for choices of, of, of numbers. And so these can be gained. Right. It's really like it's, it. I'm not going to say it's a judgment call because there are rigorous methodologies, but at the end of the day, this is equal parts art and science. And so it's not surprising that actors with a vested interest in preserving the value of their assets would massage the numbers in ways that favor them and basically reduce the costs for them of engaging in climate policy. So that's why we see, you know, huge overinflation of reductions. So many carbon. Of carbon. Carbon offsets. Projects that seek to avoid emissions overestimate those avoidances by a lot. And they sell very cheaply, like five bucks a ton. Most of them trade for under five bucks a ton. So it's like, how are we really going to decarbonize? I mean, I realize that that's not the, the central tool for decarbonization, but you do have to ask, how much of a dent can this make if it's so inexpensive?

[A]

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[B]

So your analysis in the book draws on political economy, IR and environmental governance. How did you approach gathering and analyzing evidence across these different domains? What did you the research process look like for you?

[C]

Well, I mean, this book was interesting to write because it was sort of an amalgam of a lot of the research that I've done over the last seven or eight years. So I have a whole bunch of articles, you know, I have a few that look at carbon pricing. I have a few that look at net zero. And so that part was just kind of synthesizing a lot of the thinking that I had done in a much more kind of using this framework of existential politics, which is a fun way to write. It's a very different way than, you know, sort of traditional disciplinary writing. And then the second half of the book, which looks at these solutions where I look at tax and, and trade and investment law, was really fun because I went back to, you know, I just sort of dove into the literature of these institutions that I knew very little about. I'm fortunate to like have colleagues who are very generous with their time and would talk to me and read my drafts and give me feedback. So it was a, it was a, it was a process of sort of toggling between a bunch of different sets of literatures and disciplines which actually found very enjoyable and creative.

[B]

Right. It must have been quite.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, in general, I'm a lumper, not a splitter. So, like that, that was helpful for me.

[B]

That sounds like a good time.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

In working on this book, what was the most challenging obstacle you faced and how did overcoming it strengthen your argument? I mean, I'm sure it didn't feel that hard compared to decarbonization, but still, what was one challenge that you had?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think the most challenging obstacle, and I don't. And I've already, like, maybe this is maybe jumping ahead a little bit, like I've already had pushback on it, is that, you know, I, I probably, for rhetorical purposes, overstated the binary between, between assets and tons. And I think because we need to measure, we, like, we need data, but I don't. We need data on tons, but I don't think tons should be the object of regulation. And so, you know, I gave a book talk and there was a negotiator from the unfccc and he was sort of like, I mean, what, you know, what am I supposed to do with this? Right? And he said, this is, you know, since the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, like since 1992, we have to, you know, we do national inventories and, you know, all these kinds of things. And, you know, it was completely valid point. And in the, at the end of the book, I sort of talk about, well, what is the UNFCCC good for? And I think it is, we do need, you know, a measure of how much we're putting into the atmosphere. And I think that I could have made that point. I mean, I could have made it sort of more clearly. But I did struggle with it at the beginning because it was like, well, we do need collective action, but not on emissions. And like, what does that actually look like? And so there was, I, you know, in kind of sharing drafts with people, I got a lot of pushback on that. And so that was the difficult thing because I, you know, when you have a neat tagline, it's like you want, it's like when you want the theory to line up with the empirics. And like, obviously the world is more complicated than that always.

[B]

But I have to say, in the final version, which is the one, the published one, which I read, I think it's, it does come off as a nuanced statement. So Journey at a happy ending, in my opinion. I was. The next question, of course, was going to be about the pushback and the critiques you've received. And, and, and sounds like this is, this is, this is part of it. This.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think this is one part of it. I think, you know, I've been engaged for many years and shall we say, a discussion with economists about the efficacy of carbon pricing. I'm sure, I mean, the book was just published, so I'm sure once it's out in about, you know, a little bit, there will be pushback on that. I wrote a paper in 2021 that, about the efficacy of carbon pricing that made economists pretty angry. So I, I anticipate getting some pushback on that. And then I, I don't think it's so much pushback, but there's a, you know, the la, the last empirical chapter is on kind of thinking about green industrial policy, which I wrote. You know, I finished the book in December 2024 before Trump took office and basically took a wrecking ball to the global trade regime. And so I've gotten some, I think not pushback, but questions on like, well, how do we even think about green industrial policy in an era where, like, trade relations are so cuckoo? And I don't have great answers for that right now. I mean, I think that's what everyone is trying to figure out. And I mean, I do stand by some of the discussions in that chapter because they're really about kind of principles for green industrial policy rather than the particulars. But, yeah, I mean, that's going to be a challenge going forward.

[B]

And so that leads me to my next question, which is if policymakers took your read the book and agreed with it, what would change?

[C]

Well, I mean, there are some prescriptions in there. I mean, I talk about tax policy and that policy process is actually well underway, that countries have largely agreed to a minimum corporate tax of 15% for companies with over 750 million euro in revenue. And, but of course, you know, that needs to be put into domestic law, which it has been in some cases, but, you know, across the board and enforced and all of those things. So while, you know, it's kind of in the works, I think that's one place. I mean, and I obviously, I think taxation can be expanded. We're seeing that conversation happen right now in France about the Zuckman tax on billionaires, millionaires and billionaires. So I think that's one to expand. And, you know, that's a really much bigger question about the role of populism and inequality. But I think all of those things have a direct bearing on climate and we need to think about them that way.

[B]

Could you expand on the connection between tax policy and climate?

[C]

Yeah, so I mean, there's a couple things here. One is we know that extreme wealth is correlated to high carbon emissions like insane. So the Oxfam does an annual report card called the Carbon Inequality gap and they just came out with one. And I think it's like the richest one. I think 1/10 of a percent of the world emits more than 50% of the poorest. Like it's, it's bananas. Yeah. So taxing rich people, which includes corporations who indirectly make rich people, is important because it, it correlates to carbon inequality. We also know that, you know, a lot of large multinationals are fossil asset owners and they're dodging their taxes, you know, and so to the extent that you, you can hit them on their bottom line, make sure that they pay their taxes, that helps to disembed their political and material power. It also helps states exercise the muscle of sovereignty which they will need to climate policy, both domestically and internationally. So I think, you know, it's, it requires a more expansive understanding of what constitutes climate policy. But this goes after fossil asset owners and it helps, you know, even if that money that is recouped through from, you know, companies that offshore, even if that money doesn't go to green initiatives, it comes out of the coffers of fossil asset owners. And you know, there's some, someone said to me, well, wouldn't it also be the case that it would, there would be more taxation of green asset owners? And I said, yes, there probably would be, but I think there are many fewer of them at that level of revenue. So. And finally we know that offshoring, so moving corporate profits abroad is also associated with laundering money around environmental crimes. So like illegal mining, illegal deforestation. So it's just, it's just a good idea.

[B]

Looking back on the research and writing process for your book, what was the most intellectually rewarding aspect of creating existential politics?

[C]

Weirdly, it was learning about international tax law.

[B]

I did not see this coming, which.

[C]

Was like, you know, I tend, like a lot of this book is kind of at 30,000ft or it's taking things that I know at the micro level and kind of moving them up. And this was the opposite process because I really had to get into the weeds of like how this works. And it's not something I knew anything about. And so it's really, you know, as a scholar, it's a pleasure to sort of get to spend time with an entirely new subject and learn about, like, the. The complexities of it. Like, I talked to a lot of people to make sure that I got it right, and I hope I got it right. But there were. There was a lot of, like, uncertainty and sort of gray areas and sort of difficulties in interpreting the law and the implementation of the law. So that was kind of. That was interesting to learn about.

[B]

And speaking of new areas, we've taken a lot of your time today and we usually conclude with one last question. What's on your plate right now? What are you working on?

[C]

Well, I am. Let's see. I'm working on a new project on deep sea mining, which has really been interesting, if a little bit depressing, because, you know, this is sort of one of the new frontiers of, I would say industrial policy is like, about the inputs. Right. Everybody's talking about rare earth elements and, you know, China's dominance and, you know, securing the inputs needed for decarbonization. And so this is really driving a new push for mining the seabed, which to me seems like a very bad idea. But there's a lot of US exceptionalism involved in this. And so it's. It's been interesting to. To learn more about that. So that's, that's the main project I'm working on right now. I'm also resting my brain a little bit from having written a book.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Yes. I know this is always such an unfair question, and yet I ask it every time. Thank you so much, Professor Green, for taking the time to talk with us today. My guest has been Professor Jessica Green from the Department of Political Science and the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto. Professor Green's new book, Existential Politics, was published in 2025 by Princeton University Press. I'm your host, Eleonora Matiacci. Until next.