The WTO must double down on climate talks

It must work on fixing its dispute resolution device, but mustn't lose time on working out a deal that ensures fair trade and climate action aren't at odds. It's time to talk carbon markets

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In an eerie echo of the protectionist 1930s, globalization has been in retreat this decade amid a fast deepening geopolitical divide. This explains feeble expectations of anything multilateral. So too of the 13th ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) being held in Abu Dhabi. Ever since we lost a flawed but powerful promoter of free trade in the US, which has left the WTO's dispute-resolving device in limbo since 2019, the cause has dawdled in the doldrums. The real irony of today's global 'polycrisis,' however, hangs invisibly in the stale air around us. Trade talks are caught woefully out of step with the planet's climate crisis. While market theory makes a cogent case against price distortions to secure our economic well-being both within an economy and across borders asking us to squeeze the most out of scarce resources by letting unrigged forces of demand and supply allocate them-it confronts two hard-tocrack nuts: distrust of one another, a classic old rigidity, and the real cost of carbon, adjusted for a global net-zero goal. The WTO must ad