Transitioning From Drifting Goals to Soaring Ones

The COP (Conference of Parties) is now convening for the 30th time to discuss how the world can work together to avoid the worst of the anthropogenic emissions that are trapping heat in our atmosphere and causing our climate to change in dangerous ways.   

We have known what is causing this problem – and what to do about it – for decades. And yet the problem is only growing at a concerningly rapid rate.  How and why is this possible?  How can it be that our best and brightest have been convening for three decades to make progress on the most real and most existential problem humans have ever faced, yet all we have managed to do is to make it worse? 

I think there are two things going on here. The first is our inability to understand the exponential behaviour of systems when feedback loops and tipping points kick in.  We are all behaving as though the climate will warm and change in a linear way, when in fact, it is not just that the planet is getting warmer each year, it is that the rate at which it is warming is accelerating.  In fact, as we can see from the graph below, 2024 marked a record surge of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.  

This is being exacerbated by our underestimation of the risk of tipping points. For example, The Amazon and Atlantic circulation tipping points – the point where they cease to be acting as carbon sinks and tip over into becoming carbon sources – may come faster than we expect. 

 The second thing at play here is another systems thinking concept: the “Drifting Goals” Archetype. This is where a performance gap is closed not by improving performance, but by lowering the goal. This leads to a slow, imperceptible decline in standards over time, often compared to the “boiled frog” story where a frog becomes accustomed to a rising temperature until it’s too late. This is a dangerous pattern in which pressure to meet short-term goals causes long-term performance to deteriorate as standards are lowered to avoid the tension of the gap.

 This excerpt from an article in the Guardian perfectly captures this archetype in action: 

This year’s Cop comes at a key point in the cycle of the 2015 Paris agreement, which fleshes out the “how” of the UNFCCC by requiring every country to come up with a national plan on greenhouse gas emissions. Called nationally determined contributions (NDCs), these plans must be revised every five years. 

Two cycles of NDCs – the first at Paris, the second compiled in 2021 at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow (which was delayed from 2020 by the Covid pandemic) – have now passed. In the first, nations put forward targets, mostly pegged to 2025, which would have allowed temperatures to rise by more than 3C above preindustrial levels, far beyond the 1.5C that was the more stringent of the two targets in the Paris treaty. 

By Cop26, countries were doing slightly better – their NDCs would have caused temperature rises of roughly 2.8C. Using the “ratchet” mechanism in the Paris agreement, which allows for the tightening of NDCs, countries were encouraged to come back to future Cops with more stringent plans. However, only a handful have ever done so outside the five-year cycle. 

This year’s crop of NDCs were supposed to be the ones to align with 1.5C, because scientists have warned repeatedly that emissions need to drop rapidly in the 2020s to stay within the crucial limit. 

The deadline for NDCs, according to the Paris provisions, should have been February. But few countries made it, and the UN made it known that the organisers would be happy if the plans were delivered before Cop30 instead. 

By the start of Cop30, most of the major countries had submitted their NDCs. But the picture was still grim. According to the UN, the assessed plans would cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 10% by 2035 – nowhere near the 60% cuts needed by that date, to have a reasonable chance of staying within 1.5C. These NDCs would result in temperature rises of about 2.5C, if all the targets within them are fulfilled, or 2.8C if only those targets that have clear policy measures attached to them are counted. 

Repeated Summits such as these without delivery are problematic. For decades, COPs have produced declarations, targets, and frameworks. But: 

• Submitting more targets or promises without actual downward trends in emissions allows for complacency under the guise of “we’re doing something.” 
• As the science intensifies, the gap between ambition (what we say we will do) and implementation (what actually happens) widens. For example, even if all updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs) were implemented fully, the world is still projected to warm by ~2.3 – 2.5 °C by end of century.
• The “talk” mode risks reinforcing inertia rather than catalyzing transformational change. When countries know they will meet again next year, there is less urgency to translate talk into irreversible action now. 
• There is also the danger of “paper commitments” overshadowing real structural reform — e.g., fossil-fuel expansion continues even as renewable goals are stated. 
• The credibility of the COP process suffers if each summit ends with new pledges but no clear signal of rapid transition. At COP 30, many voices are already emphasizing the need for action rather than more commitments.

 In short, the world cannot afford another summit where the rhetoric is strong, but the outcomes are minimal. For as Professor Johan Rockström reminds us, holding on to 1.5°C is not just a goal or target. It is a limit; a non-negotiable planetary boundary. COP 30 arrives at an historic juncture. The data are unambiguous: greenhouse-gas concentrations and global temperatures are at record highs, the natural buffers are weakening, and delay is tantamount to gamble with planetary stability. The world no longer needs another summit of promises on future goals. It needs a summit of delivery. 


This means moving from “we will try” to “we are doing”. It means equipping the international system with real tools of accountability, financing, and implementation. It demands stepping off the treadmill of yearly announcements and sprinting into a time of transformation. If COP 30 can deliver that shift—from talk to action—it may mark the point where climate diplomacy stops being about negotiations and becomes about change. If it fails, then we may one day look back and ask: when did the window close? The answer is that it’s closing now. 

Fortunately, “Drifting Goals” doesn’t always have to lead to declining levels of performance. This archetype can also be reversed into a case where goals and standards continually improve, or spiral upwards. In this scenario, every time we meet a standard and close a performance gap, we raise our goal even higher. The gap between desired and actual performance opens once again, and we move into action to bring performance into line with the new goal. This version of “Drifting Goals” underlies quality-improvement and is how I understand “successive approximation.” It can sometimes drive work group, academic, and family dynamics in which good performance is recognized in such a way that it stimulates even higher performance levels—what we might call “Soaring” Goals. 

So, rather than continue to spiral downward, mired in rhetoric – let’s harness the power of the reinforcing feedback loop by starting down a real path, taking real action to move toward the post-carbon caring society and see what glorious exponential change we can create together. Who’s with me?