The New Cold War and the Geopolitics of Climate Change: Competing Powers in a Warming World

Abstract

The paper questions the influence of strategic conflicts between the leading powers of the world on climatic policy in the world, namely how rivalry should deter, or promote successful climate action. With the help of quantitative statistical techniques, the study incorporates 2000-2025 panel information on 40 leading economies. It analyses the relationship between geopolitical tensions indexes, climes financing with regulation compliance of emission quotes employing time-series regression and cross-correlations analysis. Initial statistical findings indicate that geopolitical rivalry intensity and international cooperation measures have an inverse correlation of significant value ( r = - 0.68 , p < 0.01). Competition between the U.S and China is linked to 25 percent reduction in the joint clean-energy investments whereas increased West Russia tensions are linked to postponements in multilateral climate accords. On the other hand, there is only restricted collaboration in the regions in congruent blocs in pursuit of technology or economic strength. The evidence proposes that the New Cold War dynamics are the weaker of collective climate governance, where strategic location is more important than sustainability. The paper proposes climate diplomacy that is non-political and multilateral systems well able to withstand great-power competition to maintain the global emission mitigation target.