To defeat the global Goliaths devastating our planet, we must raise an army of Davids | Peter Lewis

The Cop30 climate talks ended in Brazil with a collective shrug after the Goliaths of the fossil fuel industry once again flexed their muscles to show the world who is really in control.

As our Pacific island neighbors pleaded for survival, more than 1,600 industry lobbyists crashed the party, joining with the Saudis and Russians to ban the phase-out of fossil fuels.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres noted that the gap between action and science is not being bridged, a stark admission about the capacity of governments to demonstrate the intelligence, will or influence to tame the carbon beast.

According to this week’s Guardian Essential report, the depletion of fossil fuels at Cop30 is hardly a surprise to most voters.

Australian academic Luke Kemp, of Cambridge University’s sinister Center for the Study of Existential Risk, frames the rise and fall of civilization around the idea of ​​the “Goliath,” a hierarchy that dominates work and energy through coercion and violence.

While traditional empires, including Rome, projected their power from a geographic base, today’s global Goliath is a network of stateless corporations and algorithms, devastating the Earth as trade deals and treaties bend to their will.

Against this backdrop, Australia likely dodged a bullet by failing to wrest hosting rights for next year’s negotiations in Adelaide, with a separate survey question showing lukewarm support for the bid at best.

As the United States abandons climate action and scientists become increasingly optimistic that global warming can be reversed, a sense of sullen defeatism and helplessness surrounds Australia’s climate reductions.

Although voters remain largely supportive of climate action, the appetite for more ambition is waning, with many viewing Australia’s domestic emissions as marginal compared to the impact of big polluters.

They see what we can do as a drop in the bucket, a view reinforced by a global climate framework that limits a nation’s net contribution to what is consumed within its borders rather than the actual amount that companies extract and export to the rest of the world.

Indeed, if net carbon contribution were the norm, Australia would go from being a global minnow to a big fish, given that we are estimated to be among the top three exporters of fossil fuels and among the top 10 global emitters.

Bringing these facts to the forefront is not about making Australians feel bad about ourselves, but about giving us a chance to recognize our own influence on a global effort that too many of us believe is futile.

Even though we won’t host Cop31, Australia will still play an outsized role in next year’s debates, with Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen taking on the consolation role of lead negotiator. Taking the reins with the authority of a nation committed to its global impact would only strengthen its ability to drive global ambition and defend the interests of our neighbors.

An even bigger challenge for those of us seeking more decisive climate action may be the growing competition between the phalanx of existential risks – pandemic, nuclear war, sentient AI and unprecedented inequality.

Kemp maintains that these are not isolated challenges. They create a poly-crisis where each fuels the other; climate collapse drives displacement, AI consumes energy while fueling inequality, 10,000 nuclear warheads are stockpiled as temperatures rise.

“These threats are not inevitable,” he writes, “they are consciously created by powerful groups who profit handsomely from this enterprise. The risk of global catastrophe is the product of the global extraction system: the global Goliath.”

A final survey question illustrates how the climate crisis has been swallowed up by this whirlwind of interconnected disasters; not so much ignored, but now one of many things that can seem disastrous.

It’s only the possibility of a meteor strike, arguably the only force majeure on the list, that has people worried. When it comes to Goliath-driven disasters, we are on high alert.

Amid all this doom, Kemp’s study of fallen empires concludes that the Goliaths contain the seeds of their own demise, cursed by the very qualities that give them power; the unsustainability of their domination and the destruction of the resources they plunder.

Projecting the trajectory of existential risk beyond the lifetime of current horizons, say 100 years, one of two things must happen: the Goliaths self-terminate or we find a way to work together and kill the giant.

Kemp’s prognosis is that we recognize that governments have been captured by Goliaths and organize ourselves into a David’s army, redistributing power through open democracy and citizen juries.

Although it seems like a big step forward from our helpless moment, green shoots are appearing. Last week I published a paper in collaboration with excellent academics under the auspices of the Australian Resilience Democracy Network, examining efforts to use technology to give citizens a greater voice in decisions that affect our future.

Our research shows that there are nascent attempts to integrate citizens into decision-making by restructuring democracy, flattening hierarchies, and building more dynamic feedback loops that have real consequences.

Whether it’s the deployment of renewable energy, the diffusion of AI, the delivery of services or the future of the planet, we must take back control before we lose hope. Because when there is no more David, then Goliath has truly won.