Why the World Won’t Act: Fossil Fuels, Authoritarianism, and the Collapse of Climate Cooperation

Introduction
Despite increasingly dire warnings from climate scientists, the world remains locked in a cycle of delay and denial. Carbon emissions continue to rise, global temperatures inch closer to catastrophic thresholds, and the promised transformation toward a sustainable future has yet to materialize. The question is no longer what must be done—it is why it is not being done.

This article argues that coordinated climate action is being systematically obstructed by seven intersecting forces: fossil fuel dependency, geopolitical conflict, authoritarianism, corporate power, misinformation in education, media silence, and Cold War economic suppression. Together, they create a feedback loop that reinforces delay, undermines international cooperation, criminalizes dissent, and allows the most powerful actors to avoid accountability.

Fossil Fuels and War Economies
States with large oil and gas reserves, such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, benefit directly from high fossil fuel prices and the continued use of hydrocarbons. In times of war and crisis, the price of oil and gas tends to spike, inflating state revenues. This gives fossil-rich authoritarian regimes both the incentive and the means to resist the global transition to renewables.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine offers a stark example. The war disrupted energy markets and pushed European nations to find new fossil fuel sources, including liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals and increased coal use. Far from accelerating decarbonization, conflict has re-entrenched fossil dependencies and delayed green transitions. In such cases, war is not an impediment to fossil capitalism—it is an enabler.

Moreover, Russia’s foreign policy is structured around maintaining the geopolitical leverage of its fossil fuel exports. European dependence on Russian gas has long restrained meaningful diplomatic action, and climate progress undermines Russia’s global influence. Thus, climate inaction aligns perfectly with its strategic goals.

But this dynamic is not limited to authoritarian petrostates. The global system of competitive nation-states poses a fundamental obstacle to coordinated climate action. Every government, particularly in major powers, operates under a strategic logic that anticipates future conflict—military, economic, or territorial. To prepare, they increase defence spending. Military capacity requires economic growth. Economic growth, in turn, remains tightly bound to fossil fuel consumption.

This feedback loop, security anxiety → military buildup → economic expansion → fossil fuel dependence, ensures that geopolitical rivalry sustains the extractive economy. Climate action, which requires cooperation, restraint, and de-escalation, is structurally incompatible with a world of states locked in permanent competition. In this paradigm, decarbonization is not just delayed—it is treated as a threat.

The Authoritarian Turn
As the climate crisis worsens, the world is witnessing a rise in authoritarian governance. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) anticipated this trend in its "Rocky Road" scenario, which projects a fragmented, unequal, and volatile world with low international cooperation.

Authoritarian states are often more interested in preserving regime stability than addressing long-term planetary risks. They suppress climate activism, control media narratives, and protect industrial elites with stakes in extractive economies. In countries like Brazil, India, and Hungary, environmental regulations are being dismantled alongside civil liberties. Even in democratic nations, protests against fossil fuel projects are increasingly met with criminalization.

The rise of social media has accelerated political polarization and weakened democratic discourse. Algorithms reward outrage over dialogue, creating echo chambers that undermine collective consensus. In such a fragmented information landscape, populist leaders thrive while complex issues like climate change get distorted or dismissed.

Increasingly, those who protest inaction are branded as extremists. In the UK, climate activists from groups like Just Stop Oil have been imprisoned for acts of civil disobedience, raising concerns about the emergence of political prisoners in democracies. Their sentencing reveals a broader shift: when governments cannot defend their policies, they criminalize those who expose their failures.

The Breakdown of Global Cooperation
The UN climate summits (COP) have produced ambitious-sounding agreements, but these are not legally binding. When countries exceed their emissions targets, there are no consequences. This lack of enforceability is compounded by an erosion of international trust.

Economic rivalry, military buildup, and national self-interest prevent the kind of multilateralism required to limit warming to 1.5°C. States are investing more in defence than in decarbonization. The geopolitical logic of power—energy security, territorial control, and military deterrence—overrides the ecological imperative for cooperation. Climate change, in this context, is treated as someone else’s problem.

Media Silence and the Illusion of Progress
Despite the severity of the climate crisis, much of the mainstream media fails to reflect the scale or urgency of the problem. Fossil fuel interests sponsor media outlets and advertising, skewing coverage toward market-friendly narratives. News cycles focus on short-term events, not long-term existential risks.

Consolidation of media ownership further reduces diversity of perspective. A handful of corporate conglomerates shape the information landscape, often with ties to political and fossil fuel elites. As a result, stories about ecological collapse, climate refugees, or emissions overshoot are either under-reported or stripped of political analysis.

Corporate Power and Democratic Failure
In many states, the line between government and corporation has blurred. Fossil fuel giants not only influence policy but often write it, through lobbying, regulatory capture, and political donations. Governments no longer hold corporations accountable—they serve them.

This subversion of democracy ensures that climate-damaging industries remain protected from public scrutiny. Regulatory agencies are weakened, climate scientists marginalized, and policies crafted to protect profit rather than planet. Climate action becomes performative, not transformative.

Miseducation: The Myth of Capitalist Inevitability
Another overlooked barrier to climate action is the education system itself. Generations have been taught that capitalism emerged naturally and peacefully from the collapse of feudalism, replacing a brutal past with progress. But this is a myth. As Jason Hickel documents in Less is More, capitalism did not end serfdom—it crushed a revolutionary movement that had already done so.

From the 1300s to the 1500s, European peasants launched uprisings that dismantled feudal bondage, secured access to commons, and fostered a more equitable, self-sufficient society. These revolts were brutally suppressed. The enclosure movement dispossessed millions and forced them into wage labour under dire conditions, marking the rise of capitalism not as a democratic evolution but as an elite counter-revolution.

Yet most people today are unaware of this history. The narrative of capitalist inevitability serves to foreclose imagination. If there is no alternative, then climate justice becomes impossible. Unlearning this myth is essential to reimagining a future not dictated by accumulation, extraction, and private property.

Cold War Capitalism and the Elimination of Alternatives
The absence of alternative economic models today is not simply due to market efficiency or ideological preference. It is the result of systematic suppression. In the post-WWII era, the United States—through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and under the influence of Director Allen Dulles—conducted covert operations to remove or destabilize governments that pursued non-capitalist development paths.

The CIA's role in overthrowing Iran's Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, Guatemala's President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954, and its complicity in the assassination of Congo's Patrice Lumumba in 1961 are well-documented. These leaders aimed to nationalize resources, promote equitable development, or adopt neutralist foreign policies. In the eyes of U.S. strategists, this threatened the postwar order centred around fossil-fuelled capitalist growth.

Through coups, assassinations, and propaganda, the CIA ensured that any government attempting a post-growth, cooperative, or climate-compatible economic model would not survive. The suppression of these alternatives reinforced the dominance of extractive capitalism and eliminated the political space necessary for systemic climate action.

Conclusion: A System Designed to Fail
The failure to tackle global heating is not a policy oversight. It is a consequence of a system designed for something else entirely; for competition, accumulation, and control.

Fossil fuels remain central not just to economies, but to national power. War inflates energy markets and justifies defence budgets, which demand growth. Growth is sustained by extraction, and extraction drives collapse. Authoritarianism, corporate influence, and misinformation deepen the crisis, while media silence and suppressed histories ensure the public rarely sees the full picture.

Meanwhile, the international order, built on the logic of nation-states, fragments the very cooperation needed to solve planetary problems. States do not trust each other. They prepare for conflict. They grow to arm, and arm to grow. In such a system, climate action is not just neglected — it is obstructed.

To confront the climate and biodiversity crises, we must confront this system. That means dismantling fossil dependencies, demilitarizing economies, restoring public trust in knowledge, and rejecting the myth that capitalism is the endpoint of history.

A just and habitable future will not emerge from performative policy.

It will require a post-growth transformation grounded in democratic values, ecological realism, and historical truth.
We must learn what was buried, name what has been denied, and build what has been forbidden.

“We may well be the only intelligent civilization in the galaxy — and that intelligence may be self-limiting. Civilizations might get to a certain point and then destroy themselves.”
— Brian Cox, paraphrased from The Planets and interviews with the BBC and Big Think