Climate leadership demands thinking beyond today

On January 7, President Donald Trump withdrew the US from 66 international organisations, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This made the US the first nation stepping back from the foundational frameworks of global climate science.

The implications are consequential. The IPCC depends on international scientific cooperation. US federal agencies—Nasa, NOAA and others—have been essential to building the global datasets governments use for climate assessments. Withdrawing means individual scientists may still contribute, but the US will no longer help guide the scientific consensus that shapes policy worldwide.

The year 2024 was the hottest on record, while sea levels rose 5.9 mm last year alone, with the rate doubling from 2.1 mm per year in 1993 to 4.5 mm per year today. Without immediate action, the UN Environment Programme projects 2.3 to 2.8 degrees Celsius of warming this century. The IPCC’s latest assessment warns of sea levels potentially rising two metres by 2100 and five metres by 2150 under high-emission scenarios.

But the US withdrawal reveals something deeper than a policy failure: humanity’s fundamental leadership crisis. Climate processes unfold across centuries. Our decision-making operates in quarters and election cycles. This mismatch between the timeframes of our challenges and the horizons of our thinking is driving us towards catastrophe.

Over the years, while training thousands of young leaders across the world, I have learnt that it is not their passion that sets them apart, though it’s abundant—it is their temporal thinking. When a 23-year-old from Khulna designs a climate adaptation programme, she is planning for her grandchildren’s world, not the next quarterly report. When youth delegates from small island nations advocate at COP negotiations, they are fighting for outcomes decades beyond their own lifetimes. They think in generations while politicians think in election cycles. This points towards what I call thousand-year leadership: a framework that matches decision-making timeframes to the actual timeframes of climate processes.

Withdrawing from the IPCC strips the US’s ability to shape assessments governments worldwide depend on. As former climate envoy John Kerry noted, this is a “gift to China” and “a get out of jail free card” for polluters. But it’s more than lost influence; it fragments global scientific cooperation precisely when coherence matters most.

The leadership we need is already taking shape. At COP27, youth delegates secured the establishment of a loss and damage fund. At COP30, young negotiators from Africa and Latin America have demanded transparent accountability, climate education in school curricula, and protection for climate-induced displacement. Their priorities span generations because they will inherit the consequences.

Thousand-year leadership requires three shifts. First, recognise that climate leadership emerges from mobilising people across boundaries, not from holding office. Second, institutionalise long-term thinking through governance structures and economic incentives that make extended temporal horizons emotionally resonant. Third, accept that effective climate action requires thinking across centuries while acting with the urgency the next decade demands.

America’s withdrawal is not America First—it’s America Alone. Our interconnected world needs leaders who can work across boundaries, think globally, and plan for horizons beyond their lifetimes. Politicians with short-sighted vision won’t change the world. They will drive us towards destruction, not security.

The young leaders inheriting this crisis need partners, not politicians walking away from the tables where solutions are built. They deserve decision-makers whose temporal horizons match climate’s actual timeframes. They deserve leaders who recognise that legacy is not built in monuments but in the futures we make possible. The solutions exist, and young people worldwide demonstrate the capacities we all need. What we lack is political courage to think beyond the next election and moral imagination to care about futures we will never see. 

The US can rejoin these frameworks. The Senate’s 1992 ratification provides a pathway. But the deeper question is whether we are willing to transform how we think about time itself. The climate crisis is ultimately a crisis of temporal imagination: our inability to grasp that today’s decisions shape human civilisation for centuries.

The science is clear. The impact is visible. Denial should no longer be an option.

Ejaj Ahmad is founder of the Global Youth Leadership Center and Bangladesh Youth Leadership Center.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

Follow The Daily Star Opinion on Facebook for the latest opinions, commentaries, and analyses by experts and professionals. To contribute your article or letter to The Daily Star Opinion, see our guidelines for submission.