Given the constant flow of bad news around climate change – smashed heat records, shrinking polar ice, rampant wildfires, apocalyptic floods – you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s no cause for hope. But a new book by the head of the World Resources Institute (WRI) argues passionately for a more positive view.
Dasgupta, president and CEO of the US-based WRI, is far from evangelical about the global mission of green transition. His assessment of the state of play is rooted in realism – and, like many advocates for a sustainable world, he is disappointed with the pace of change so far.
But, he insists, that is no reason to give up. The book explains elegantly – drawing on some 60 real-world stories of success and more than 100 interviews with experts, leaders and change-makers – not just what’s holding things back but, most importantly, how to overcome those obstacles.
In an interview with Climate Home News before the book’s publication this week, the softly-spoken former head of infrastructure at the World Bank pointed to leaps forward in technology – from solar and wind power to greener cement and satellites that can monitor rainforest loss remotely – as the underlying enabler of climate progress. But he emphasised that technology alone will not be enough.
“We need to use technology as a starting point to orchestrate the change,” he explained. “We need to get the outcome we want that is not only good for climate, but good for people and nature at the same time.”
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Focus on people – not carbon
A major failure of the climate movement so far, in Dasgupta’s view, is that it has focused too heavily on carbon – the damage it’s doing and how to reduce CO2 emissions – and not enough on people.
Unless voters understand that measures to tackle climate change will bring them benefits now rather than in a far distant future, they are unlikely to make green choices a priority, he argues – especially when those decisions come with an upfront cost such as replacing a gas boiler with a heat pump.
That’s why some governments, including in Europe, have run into trouble when trying to force low-carbon behaviour shifts. Dasgupta believes politicians have done a pretty bad job at telling citizens why it makes personal sense for them to switch to greener ways of living, working and doing business.
He noted that in 2024 – a historic year for elections, with about 70 countries holding polls – only one, the UK, saw strong campaigning on climate policies, with the centre-left Labour Party winning partly on a green ticket.
India-born Dasgupta, a trained architect who has many years’ experience of working on ways to make cities more sustainable, argues that climate policy experts need to offer politicians more help to demonstrate why it’s in the public interest to get behind climate action.
“I think for too long, the transition has been painted as about the sacrifices we need to do; don’t drive cars, take buses and [buy] heat pumps – but not the outcome that is there. That is clean air for our kids, abundant, affordable energy, food that doesn’t destroy nature, clean water,” he said.
Ani Dasgupta, president and CEO of the World Resources Institute and author of “The New Global Possible – Rebuilding Optimism in the Age of Climate Crisis” (Photo: Beverlié Lord)
Ani Dasgupta, president and CEO of the World Resources Institute and author of “The New Global Possible – Rebuilding Optimism in the Age of Climate Crisis” (Photo: Beverlié Lord)
Hydrocarbons “everywhere”
Yet the question still begs itself: why – if the advantages seem obvious – has it been so hard to make these changes at the scale and pace required? The answer, according to Dasgupta, is that their proponents are running up against a model rooted in 200 years of prosperity fuelled by coal, oil and gas.
As a result, hydrocarbons “are everywhere in the economy”, even in many daily essentials like shampoo – and the incumbents who got rich from extracting and selling fossil fuels are fighting to preserve the status quo.
“We have to find a path for them to change. They’re not just going to go away. They’re very economically powerful, politically connected,” Dasgupta said.
Renewed business and political support for the prevailing high-carbon economic model has led to a pushback against climate action in some parts of the West, not least in the United States where the administration of climate change-sceptic Donald Trump wants to “drill, baby drill” and is pulling the country out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Dasgupta doesn’t find this too surprising.
“I think this backlash was inevitable because when we signed the Paris Agreement, we thought we were signing a climate agreement. We didn’t realise we were signing onto a vast economic transition that we’re in the beginning of,” he said.
COP: “Imperfect but necessary”
The book does an efficient job at defending the UN climate process that yielded the Paris pact and its emblematic annual COP summits, which have come under attack in recent years for falling short of promises, getting bogged down in arcane arguments and turning into a travelling climate circus.
Dasgupta points to how – patchy as its implementation may be – action spurred by the Paris Agreement has brought down global warming predictions from around 4 degrees Celsius this century to 2.6C – and if all pledges made so far were to become a reality, even to 1.7C, within the promised range.
At the same time, he argues for making COPs more effective by changing decision-making from the current consensus-based model to one that that “gives every country a voice but not a veto”.
Cop21 president Laurent Fabius holds up the text of the Paris Agreement. (Photo: IISD/ENB/ Kiara Worth)
Cop21 president Laurent Fabius holds up the text of the Paris Agreement. (Photo: IISD/ENB/ Kiara Worth)
In addition, to give the Paris process more teeth, he recommends greater transparency on individual countries’ progress, which would help civil society and citizens hold governments to account, along with the ability for the five-year stocktake to offer “remedies and rigorous regimes for improvement”.
In the end, making the Paris Agreement – and the national climate plans (NDCs) that underpin it – work as intended will require “a systemwide economic transition” that can only be achieved by uniting all government ministries, businesses and financial institutions behind that mission, the book notes.
“COP is an imperfect but necessary instrument for mobilising global climate action, but the harsh reality is that our success currently depends on voluntary contributions to be implemented beyond it,” Dasgupta writes.
Win-win-win?
Making this happen means convincing the world outside of COPs it’s an endeavour worth signing up for. The sixth chapter of the book is dedicated to how a loose consortium of researchers, top-level officials and organisation such as WRI and the World Economic Forum embarked on a monumental mission to do that by shaping a positive narrative around the economics of a low-carbon transition.
One piece of number-crunching in particular captured imaginations in the climate community and beyond: if done right, investing in climate action could result in $26 trillion of economic benefits by 2030 compared with business as usual, the New Climate Economy (NCE) research programme calculated.
Has hard data like this worked to win hearts and minds? It depends on who you ask. According to the book, in a statement released ahead of COP27 in 2022, NCE commissioners Sharan Burrow, Nicolas Stern and Paul Polman described this figure and the work supporting it as “a breakthrough”, showing “once and for all that ambitious climate action is a win-win-win for the climate, people, and the economy”.
Sadly, that victory may not have been as decisive as they had hoped, as evidenced in today’s culture wars over the costs of net zero in the UK, the conspicuous absence of climate and nature from election campaigns, and the dash by many fossil-fuel and financial behemoths to row back on their emissions-cutting pledges.
Despite recent setbacks, Dasgupta puts his hope in two ways forward: a push to translate global climate goals into national-level transitions in sectors like energy and food; and a combination of government regulation and voluntary business action to keep the private sector moving in the right direction.
“I don’t think we have the luxury to be disappointed,” he said. “I think we know what [has] to be done, what needs to happen. We just have to get to work.”
CANBERRA, Tuesday 21 April 2026 — Greenpeace Australia Pacific has slammed gas corporation war profiteering and environmental damage in a scathing Senate hearing today as part of the Select Committee on the Taxation of Gas Resources, urging fair taxation of gas corporations and the transition to secure, homegrown renewable energy to protect Australian households and the economy from future energy shocks.
Speaking at the hearing, Greenpeace said the US and Israel’s illegal war on Iran has laid bare the fundamental flaws of an energy system built on fossil fuel extraction, geopolitical power plays and corporate greed, and will be a defining moment for how the world thinks about energy security.
Greenpeace’s submission and full opening remarks can be found here.
Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“This is not an energy crisis, it’s a fossil fuel crisis. The crisis we’re all facing lays bare the dangers of fossil fuel dependence, for our energy security, our communities, and for global peace and stability.
“Gas corporations like Woodside, Santos, Shell and Chevron — the same companies whose CEOs refused to front this Inquiry — are making obscene war profits, using the illegal war on Iran to price gouge, profiteer and push for more gas we don’t need — while people and our environment pay the price.
“Australians are getting smashed by soaring bills and the impacts of climate disasters — gas corporations should be paying their fair share to help this country, instead of sending billions offshore, tax-free.
“But we’re at a turning point — while gas corporations cynically push to open up more of our oceans and land to drilling for fossil fuels, our allies like the UK are doubling down on renewables in response to the fossil fuel crisis. Our trading partners in Asia are making the same reassessment of fossil fuels.
“Which is why the hearing today is crucial: an effective and well-designed tax on the gas industry’s obscene war time profits is a chance to channel funds to people and communities, fast-track the rollout of clean, secure homegrown wind and solar energy, while holding polluters accountable.
“Our dependence on fossil fuels leave us overexposed to the whims of tyrants like Trump — it’s in Australia’s national interest to end the fossil fuel chokehold for good and usher in the era of clean energy security.”
Woodside’s Browse to NWS gas project is under assessment by the WA and Federal Governments right now. This is a project that involved drilling up to 50 gas wells around Scott Reef off the coast of WA. Gas would be extracted directly underneath Scott Reef and Sandy Islet and pumped through a 900-kilometre subsea pipeline to the NWS gas processing facility.
Woodside’s Browse gas project’s impact on Scott Reef’s marine habitats?
Scott Reef is one of Australia’s most ecologically significant marine environments, where green turtles breed, pygmy blue whales feed, and an array of at-risk species, including sharks, dolphins, whale sharks, rays, sawfish and sea snakes thrive. It is home to many threatened species, including some found nowhere else on Earth or in genetically isolated groups, magnifying its importance from a conservation perspective.
This delicate reef’s ecosystem faces multiple threats if Woodside’s Proposed Project goes ahead, including seismic blasting, gas flaring, noise pollution, artificial lighting, pipe laying and fast-moving vessels. The reef also faces the risk of a gas well blowout, which could have catastrophic and irreversible consequences for the region’s reefs and marine parks.
To secure their approvals, Woodside had to develop a plan for how they would manage the significant risks to threatened green turtles and endangered pygmy blue whales if the project proceeds. We’ve had two independent scientists provide a technical assessment of Woodsides management plan for whales and turtles and their findings are gobsmacking.
Their assessment found that Woodsides management plans for these species misrepresents or does not assess the risks the Browse project poses to Scott Reef’s pygmy blue whales and green turtles. They’ve also surmised that if the project goes ahead the impacts contradict the Australian government’s own recovery plan for turtles and Conservation Management Plan (CMP) for Blue Whales.
The State and Federal Governments now have the opportunity to define their legacies on nature protection and save Scott Reef from Woodside’s dirty gas.
Technical Assessment of Woodside’s Browse Pygmy Blue Whale Management Plan
Prepared for Greenpeace Australia Pacific by Dr Ben Fitzpatrick of Oceanwise Australia with Dr Olaf Meynecke of Griffith University.
Scott Reef is a vital feeding, foraging and resting habitat for pygmy blue whales.
Pygmy blue whales feed, forage and rest in the Scott Reef region every year. Scott Reef is recognised as a Biologically Important Area for the pygmy blue whale and is an important stop-over on their annual migration.
Woodside’s Browse gas project could delay or prevent the population recovery of the endangered pygmy blue whales that rely on Scott Reef, heightening their extinction risk.
Woodside’s management plan claims of “no credible threat of significant impacts” are not supported by scientific evidence.
The management plan relies on outdated whale population information.
Woodside has claimed it is unclear whether Scott Reef is a foraging habitat for pygmy blue whales, despite the presence of pygmy blue whales and significant concentrations of krill being documented in the area.
The PBWMP ignores the impacts of industrial noise on whale-to-whale communication. This is especially concerning as mother-calf pairs migrate through the Scott Reef Biologically Important Area shortly after calves are born. Mother-calf pairs rely on continuous, uninterrupted communications to maintain their connection.
Woodside’s Browse gas project could delay or prevent the population recovery of the endangered pygmy blue whales that rely on Scott Reef, heightening their extinction risk.
Technical Assessment of Woodside’s Browse Turtle Management Plan
Prepared for Greenpeace Australia Pacific by Dr Ben Fitzpatrick of Oceanwise Australia.
Scott Reef is a vital nesting ground for unique green turtles.
The green turtles that nest at Scott Reef’s low-lying Sandy Islet sand cay and nearby Browse Island are genetically unique and are classified as ‘Extremely Vulnerable’ in Australia’s Recovery Plan for Marine Turtles.
Woodside’s Browse gas project could make Scott Reef’s unique green turtles extinct.
The Browse project would operate within 20 kilometres of nesting habitat that’s critical to the survival of Scott Reef’s genetically unique and vulnerable green turtle population.
Woodside’s Browse Turtle Management Plan (TMP) misrepresents the risks the Browse project poses to Scott Reef’s green turtles.
Claims in Woodside’s TMP about Scott Reef’s green turtle population size, nesting success and hatchling numbers are not backed by scientific evidence.
The TMP proposes gathering updated data after the Browse project is approved.
Woodside’s TMP proposes adding sand sourced elsewhere to Sandy Islet to counter subsidence and erosion, but fails to properly assess the associated risks.
To save Scott Reef and protect our oceans and animals, the State and Federal Governments must reject Browse.
To secure their approvals, Woodside had to develop a plan for how they would manage the significant risks to threatened green turtles if the project proceeds. We’ve had two independent scientists provide a technical assessment of Woodside’s management plan for whales and turtles and their findings are gobsmacking.
Woodside’s Browse gas project could make Scott Reef’s unique green turtles extinct.
Woodside’s Browse gas project could delay or prevent the population recovery of the endangered pygmy blue whales that rely on Scott Reef, heightening their extinction risk.
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