The muted outcome of the Belem climate summit in November underlines a deeper global malaise. There is little reason to expect stronger coordination on climate action — or on any other global public good — in a world increasingly driven by transactional politics, fragmented power, and the absence of shared moral or ideological anchors. What we are witnessing is not merely a failure of diplomacy, but the erosion of the frameworks that once enabled collective action.
The End of Grand Ideologies and Coordinated Action
For much of the post–Second World War era, global politics was shaped by competing ideologies — liberal capitalism versus centralised communism. That ideological contest, for all its dangers, imposed discipline and coherence on State behaviour. When the Soviet Union collapsed, thinkers such as declared the triumph of liberal democracy. Instead, what followed was ideological drift.
Today, there is no recognisable moral or political framework capable of inducing agreement on difficult questions such as who should bear the costs of climate mitigation or a “just transition”. Countries act pragmatically, often opportunistically, navigating uncertainty from first principles rather than shared norms. This drift is particularly damaging when the challenges ahead — climate change, artificial intelligence, and technological disruption — demand coordinated responses.
Why the Global Commons Are Losing Protection
As geopolitical contestation intensifies, global commons such as the climate, oceans, and even cyberspace suffer. Transactional diplomacy favours short-term national gains over long-term planetary stability. Without a unifying ethical force, States struggle to justify sacrifices today for benefits that accrue globally and in the future.
This trend augurs poorly for climate action. Even incremental progress now depends more on domestic calculations than on collective responsibility. The Belem summit’s lacklustre outcomes were therefore less an aberration than a symptom.
Technology and the Shrinking of Human Agency
Even if humanity manages to blunt the worst impacts of climate change, another transformation is underway. The combined advance of artificial intelligence, robotics, and neural sciences threatens to reduce the relevance of traditional centres of human agency — villages, cities, States, and even nation-states.
Borders may increasingly resemble historical artefacts rather than meaningful markers of control. Territorial conquest could become obsolete if influence is exercised through cognitive and informational dominance — what might be called “neural conquest” — shaping beliefs, choices, and governance from afar.
The Efficiency Explosion
The first major consequence of this technological trilogy is unprecedented efficiency. Global data centre capacity has expanded from about 21 GW in 2005 to over 114 GW in 2025. At the same time, transistor density has increased roughly one hundred-fold, dramatically boosting compute power while lowering energy use and heat loss.
This acceleration underpins AI’s rapid diffusion across sectors. Productivity gains are real and compounding — but they raise questions about how the benefits are distributed and who remains economically relevant.
Robots and the Arithmetic of Replacement
There are already around eight million industrial and service robots worldwide, with China alone accounting for roughly two million. This is still small relative to the global human workforce of about 3.5 billion. But robots are growing at high single-digit rates annually, even as human population growth slows.
History offers a sobering analogy. Steam engines were marketed in “horsepower” because they replaced horses. If robots continue to grow at roughly eight per cent per year for several decades, their numbers could eventually exceed today’s global workforce. At that point, the marginal utility of human labour becomes an uncomfortable question.
Life Extension and the Erosion of Equity
A third, more unsettling consequence lies in selective life extension. Advances in medicine and bioengineering could make “retirement” redundant for a privileged few deemed indispensable or wealthy enough to access longevity technologies. Social media already markets age-reversal practices as lifestyle choices.
Combined with robotics, extended useful life weakens incentives for population growth and intensifies inequality. Humanity may continue to be governed by humans, but likely by a rarified subset. In such a world, the deeply held belief in the inviolability and equal worth of human life may quietly erode.
Law, Morality and Transactional Justice
International law offers limited reassurance. Unlike genocide or war crimes, “crimes against humanity” lack a comprehensive UN treaty regime. Enforcement is often selective and political. When South Africa approached the International Court of Justice over alleged genocide in Gaza, the U.S. response — threatening to sideline South Africa’s future G-20 role — illustrated how transactional geopolitics can override moral consistency.
This raises a troubling question: how resilient are constitutional and international commitments to dignity and equality when large segments of humanity risk becoming economically “surplus”?
The Jobs Question: Work Without Workers?
It has become fashionable to claim that AI will eliminate jobs but not work. Consultancies such as argue that new roles will replace old ones. But this framing sidesteps the human problem. Job holders are local; new jobs may not be. Skill transitions are uneven, and large-scale migration is politically constrained.
Policy responses may need to become more interventionist: removing tax advantages for capital, subsidising human employment, or even regulating the pace of human–machine substitution. These ideas revive debates about State control and human-centric development long thought settled.
India’s Demographic Window
India occupies a distinctive position in this transition. Its total fertility rate is already below replacement level, with population expected to peak around 2060. While fertility remains high in parts of northern India, targeted gender empowerment and skill development could moderate demographic pressures.
This demographic trajectory may give India time to adapt to automation without facing immediate labour redundancy — provided it invests wisely in human capabilities.
What to Note for Prelims?
- Global climate action is weakening due to transactional geopolitics.
- AI, robotics and neural sciences are reshaping productivity and labour.
- Robot adoption is growing faster than human population growth.
- India’s population is projected to peak around 2060.
What to Note for Mains?
- Discuss the erosion of global coordination in addressing climate change.
- Analyse how technological efficiency challenges concepts of human dignity.
- Examine the limits of market-led solutions to AI-driven job displacement.
- Evaluate whether stronger State intervention is inevitable in the age of automation.
Between Alarm and Adaptation
Technological anxiety, however, should be tempered with perspective. Dinosaurs dominated the planet for over 250 million years; humans have been here for barely 200,000. The current upheaval is profound, but not terminal. Humanity still has time to reorder institutions, ethics and incentives — if it chooses to confront surplus power with foresight rather than drift.
