When Systems Stand Still: Why Climate Action Moves So Slowly and How to Change It
If we want to change the direction climate change is taking, we need to talk about systems. How they work, why they resist change, and where the leverage points are that can bend them in a different direction.
We live in a strange moment. The evidence that climate change is real is overwhelming. Virtually every peer reviewed study agrees that humans are the main cause of global warming. And yet, emissions are rising, fossil fuel infrastructure is still being built, and every COP ends with a mixture of progress and frustration. So what’s going on? If we know so much, why do we change so little? To answer that, we need to talk about systems: how they work, why they resist change, and where the leverage points are that can bend them in a new direction.
Systems: more than the sum of their parts
To understand why change is so difficult, we need to look at the systems our societies are organised around. A system is not just a pile of things. It’s how those things are connected. A city is not only roads, houses, and buses; it’s zoning rules, tax policies, habits, and stories about what a “good life” is. At the everyday level, these connections show up as habits: repeated ways of moving, consuming, planning, and talking that feel natural simply because we’ve done them for so long. These habits reduce the mental effort of daily life and create a sense of stability. The downside is that they keep us running the same code even when circumstances change.
Systems have a few key features:
- Feedback loops. Reinforcing (“success breeds success”) – like car-centric planning leading to more roads, which leads to more cars, which makes public transport less attractive. Balancing (“the system pushes back”) – like public resistance when fuel prices rise too fast.
- Path dependence Once you’ve invested billions into highways, gas networks, or coal mines, changing direction is hard. You’re locked into a path by sunk costs, contracts, skills, and the habits built around them.
- Inertia and delay. The IPCC has highlighted the “pervasiveness of inertia” in interacting climate, ecological, and socioeconomic systems: even when we decide to change, physical infrastructure, institutions, and behaviours often respond slowly.
These features explain why climate action is not just a matter of “more political will” or “better facts”. We’re trying to turn a container ship, not a kayak.
Why climate systems resist change: economics and ethics tangled together
Climate systems resist change because economics and ethics are tightly intertwined. Modern economies are structurally locked into fossil fuels through their infrastructure. At the same time, climate policy lands in societies already shaped by inequality and historical injustice, where questions of who pays and who benefits are decisive. When climate action is perceived as unfair or threatening to livelihoods, resistance becomes understandable, even among those who accept the science. Ultimately, climate policy is not just a technical challenge but a social and ethical one, and its success depends on whether it can be designed in ways that are both effective and perceived as just.
From Paris to the pavement: COPs and local reality
At the global level, the UNFCCC process and the COPs have made important progress. The Paris Agreement committed nearly all nations to limit warming “well below 2°C” and pursue 1.5°C, with regularly updated Nationally Determined Contributions. Recent COPs have also highlighted the vital role of cities and regions, including dedicated Local Climate Action Summits. Yet a familiar pattern persists: high-level pledges at COPs are followed by the hard work of aligning national laws, sectoral plans, regional budgets, and municipal zoning with those commitments. The bridge from Paris to the pavement runs through building codes, transport planning, land-use decisions, district heating, and public procurement.
This is where municipal practice takes place, and where inertia is strongest. Local administrations are often understaffed, constrained by complex regulations, and caught between national mandates, local politics, and everyday citizen concerns. Cities are increasingly recognised as engines of implementation, often moving faster than national governments, but they remain embedded in wider systems of finance, law, and culture that can either enable or impede their efforts.
What comes next:
Part 2 asks where change is actually possible. Drawing on systems thinking and real-world practice, it explores leverage points, places where relatively small interventions can trigger larger transformations, and why some strategies unlock momentum while others lead to delay.
About the author
Stefan E. Slembrouck is a doctoral researcher at TU Berlin working on the ethics of the smart city and leads the work package on communication, dissemination, and exploitation in the KNOWING project.
References
Abson, David J. et al. (2017): “Leverage points for sustainability transformation.” Ambio, 46(1), 30–39. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-016-0800-y
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Janis, Irving L. (1982): Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes (2nd ed.). Houghton Mifflin.
Kahneman, Daniel (2011): Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Meadows, Donella H. (1999): “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System.” Sustainability Institute.
Meadows, Donella H. (2008): Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Chelsea Green Publishing.
Raworth, Kate (2017): Doughnut Economics. Chelsea Green Publishing
Streeck, Wolfgang (2014): Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. Verso.
About KNOWING
KNOWING is a Horizon Europe project that develops tools, models and participatory formats to support climate-transformation. By combining scientific analysis with local knowledge and stakeholder input, the project supports regions and sectors to understand climate risks, assess options, and design effective, inclusive pathways for change.