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29. Why do political elites fail on climate policy?
If politics keeps treating climate as an afterthought, then perhaps disruption — not consensus — will be the way forward.
Maria Luísa Moreira
May 07, 2025
Welcome to The Diplomat’s Cabinet!
What happens when our political systems are not prepared to respond to the crises that matter most?
Ironically, the conversation I had with Dr. António Valentim of the LSE should have been published last week, when the blackout in Portugal and Spain occurred. If you missed the breaking news, the Iberian Peninsula suffered a widespread interruption in power supply for nearly 12 hours.
This week, as headlines fade, we ask: Why are political elites failing on climate policy? In the latest episode of the podcast, one thing became painfully clear: we're not just ill-prepared for the climate crisis… we might be politically incapable of it.
Also in this edition: a brief career reflection and a new list of resources, jobs and opportunities.
If you enjoy this issue, please consider forwarding, subscribing, listening, getting involved, giving feedback (much appreciated). And don't forget that I'm always looking for a good story to tell.
See you in a fortnight! – Luísa
In this edition
The Cabinet asks: Why do political elites fail on climate policy?
As seen in Rio Grande do Sul, Valencia and other places, extreme weather no longer knocks quietly. It barges in, floods cities, cracks roads, steals lives and batters infrastructure, but it also tears open deeper, less visible fractures: those within our political systems.
In this week’s episode of The Diplomat’s Cabinet Podcast, we sat down with Dr. António Valentim, a political scientist and Assistant Professor at the LSE, to explore what climate shocks truly reveal about political fragility. The conversation quickly confirmed what we’ve all suspected and feared: we are not just facing an environmental crisis — we’re facing a political one.
“There's very little incentive for political elites to talk about [extreme weather events] as climate events,” Dr. Valentim explained.
Even when climate clearly exacerbates disasters, parties prefer to frame them as isolated emergencies — “as either an emergency that everyone needs to act on… or as policy failures” pinned on political opponents.
Does political ideology matter? In general terms, would a right-wing party behave differently from a left-wing party? Not necessarily. “The only thing we do find is that green parties talk more about environmental issues in the week right after the events. But they return to baseline after that first week.” So... even the little sense of political urgency has an expiration date?
These silences also have consequences. “A lot of the recent climate movements… started from a very clear and explicit frustration at the lack of action from policymakers,” said Valentim. But while bottom-up pressure helped move the needle post-2018, we’re now seeing a backlash. Radical right parties, he added, “have been very effective in politicising and polarising” the climate action narrative — successfully tapping into fears about “perceived threats to the way of life of Western European countries.”
“Climate change is a relatively slow-moving crisis that is — and will be — speeding up. But compared to political cycles, it’s more of a long-term event wherein it's really hard to create incentives for people to address them by creating long-term policies.”
Meanwhile, public anxiety grows. And so I asked: Is there a risk of further radicalisation in response to political inaction? Are we normalising the climate crisis while ignoring its societal implications?
Perhaps most revealing was Valentim’s take on governance under polycrisis: the now-ubiquitous term for cascading ecological, economic, and social shocks. The climate crisis makes it bluntly obvious “how political institutions and the incentives we've created… are not made for long-term policymaking.” When voters are in survival mode — facing inflation, war, housing insecurity — climate understandably slips down the list. So while it's also understandable that political parties prefer to talk about something else, that’s exactly when leadership is most needed.
This episode has left me with more questions than answers, and perhaps that's the point. My only conclusion: climate collapse isn't just about emissions, it's about power, incentives and the failure of short-term policies to tackle long-term challenges.
Previous podcast episode: When is it time to rethink your career in global affairs?
What happens when the job market doesn't let you in — or no longer makes sense to stay in? In this episode of The Diplomat's Cabinet, we're joined by Sofiia Shevchuk — Ukrainian founder of the consultancy VONA and the NGO The Tide — for a candid conversation about leaving the traditional international relations career path and carving out something new.
The Career Diplomat’s whiteboard
It took me years to discover Parkinson's Law, also known as the reason why it sometimes takes us minutes to do things and sometimes weeks. It's that balance we all struggle with: if we give ourselves three years, it will take us three years to do something. But if we give ourselves three weeks? It might still take the entire three-week period, so the idea is to overcome Parkinson's Law and increase our productivity levels.
TL;DR Parkinson's Law implies that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. So if I'm given three weeks to edit an episode of a podcast, I'll procrastinate and inevitably do it at the last minute, or I'll manage to drag it out over that period. For me, it's been a career changer to implement new strategies, such as:
Giving myself shorter deadlines (instead of giving myself 3 weeks to edit a podcast episode, I now give myself 1 week). This means less workload spread out over time, which means less stress and more breathing space (simple as that).
Timeboxing, to force myself to concentrate and eliminate excuses (i.e. I now write this newsletter every Tuesday after lunch).
Delegate, delegate, delegate because I'm becoming smarter at sharing tasks (after all, I'm a finite resource myself... who knew).
The toolkit for Diplomats at heart
From May 2025 – please note that you have to subscribe (for free!) to The Diplomat's Cabinet Newsletter to access the resources, events and opportunities section below :)