Politics & Governance / Public Policy / Environmental & Climate Policy

The UN Climate Machine Is a Factory of Slowness: Why Emissions Rise as We Negotiate More

Climatiser le monde

Stefan C. Aykut

We've been told for decades that global climate summits are our best hope for saving the planet. But after a decade embedded inside the UN climate machinery, researcher Stefan C. Aykut from the University of Hamburg and the French School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences came back with a devastating conclusion: the system is not designed to solve the crisis—it's designed to slow it down. In his book *Climatiser le monde* (Climatizing the World), Aykut reveals the 'schism of reality' where diplomatic theater and economic reality operate on completely different planes. He exposes how the Paris Agreement, hailed as a historic success, is built on 'soft law'—vague, sweet, and legally toothless. Discover how the word 'energy' appears only once in the entire Paris text, how the US Senate voted 100-0 against binding emissions cuts in 1997, and why the concept of 'net zero' relies on magical technologies that don't exist yet. This is the uncomfortable truth behind the curtain of global climate governance.