A single hand rises in the United Nations Security Council. That was on 18 September 2025. With that gesture, a call for a ceasefire is silenced. That image is now seared into our collective consciousness.  A lifeline for millions, is vetoed by a single hand. We watch and we despair over the system overriding  humanity’s conscience. We see this act of geopolitical paralysis. It is a failure of humanity, a triumph of self-absorption over our planetary survival.

But this is merely a rehearsal for a far greater, more silent tragedy. We are all—every one of us—participating in a slower, more devastating veto. Not in a glittering chamber in New York, but in the boardrooms, legislative halls, and daily choices of our nations. We are collectively vetoing a sustainable future. The climate crisis is not just an environmental issue; it is the ultimate failure of our global conscience, a silent genocide of potentially fair and equal principles cherished in the octogenarian charter of United Nations.

The origin of UN veto power was planted in  1945 San Francisco Conference where the five permanent members  of the Security Council—United States, United Kingdom, China, France and Russia (as the successor to the Soviet Union) —insisted on its inclusion as a condition for joining the new organization to protect their national interests and prevent being forced to act against them. This power, codified in Article 27 of the UN Charter. While every aspect of  our life on the Earth has changed over the last 80 years, Article  27 remained a stubborn pillar of concentration of power in the hands of a few.

A Cascade of Daily Vetoes

The UN veto is a privilege of power almost mimicking dictatorship. Now, apply that logic to the atmosphere - a sky above us that makes life on our planet liveable.

For over a century, a small group of industrialized nations burned fossil fuels to build their wealth. They consumed the planet’s shared atmospheric space—our most vital commons—and left the bill for the rest of the world. This was not just development; it was a generational centuries old veto. They vetoed their emissions to compromise the stability of the future.

Today, as developing nations seek their path out of poverty, they are told to stop. The nations that built their empires on coal, oil and gas now veto the development aspirations of others, often without providing the promised financial aid for a net-zero transition to phase out fossil fuel.

We are not facing one veto in a chamber. We are enacting a cascade of daily vetoes, against climate, against equity, against just transition. Every delayed climate policy, every broken funding promise, every diluted international agreement is a veto  against the survival of island nations, against the African and Asian farmers facing drought, against our children. We have moved from a world where a few nations hold a veto to one where all nations, united in inaction, wield it.

A Race To The Bottom

This brings us to the agonizing truth we face on the UN’s 80th anniversary. The UN machine is screeching and powerless. The primary forum for climate action, the UNFCCC, operates on a consensus model that gives every country a de facto veto. The result? A race to the bottom where urgent, ambitious action is held hostage by the least ambitious, the most invested in the status quo.

The Paris Agreement was a diplomatic miracle, but it is built on promises, not penalties. There is no mechanism to enforce pledges, no consequence for failure. It is a system designed for conversation, not for combat. And we are at war with the consequences of our own inaction.

Yet, for all its flaws, the UN remains our only mirror. It is the only institution that reflects the entirety of humanity back at itself. The G20 is an exclusive club; private industry lacks the mandate; bilateral deals are band-aids. The UN, impotent as it may seem, is still the only stage where a global solution can be staged. The problem is not the stage; it is the play we refuse to perform.

Ceasefire in War on Nature

The war in Gaza demands a ceasefire. So does our war on nature. It demands Net Zero. IPCC has written the resolution for this ‘ceasefire’. This is not a metaphor. We are extracting, polluting, and emitting our way to collective suicide by adding fossil fuel on the spreading wildfire.

The theme for the 80th UN General Assembly is “Better Together.” This is the naked, undeniable truth. There are no lifeboats for the rich on a dead planet. We will solve this together, or we will sink together.

End the Tyranny of Unanimity:  

It is time to learn from the Security Council’s failure and change the game. A qualified majority must be able to adopt binding measures for those who agree to them, breaking the petrostate stranglehold. The way the terrorists, drug-traffickers and illegal immigrants need to be ousted , so also the tyrants benefitting from fossil fuel, profiteers from dirty energy and those delay the justice by denying the finances to developing nations for mitigation, adaptation and skilling for Net Zero.

Pay the Debt

The historical emitters—the US, UK, EU—must finally honor their financial commitments. The earlier $100 billion now 1.3 trillion is not aid; it is reparations for their past climate veto. This is not charity; it is the bare minimum of justice.

Name the Threat: The time is for change of perception. Calling climate change an "environmental issue" is as naïve  as calling genocide as "conflict against terrorism". Climate Crisis is the single greatest threat to global security ever faced. It is the root of geopolitical wars, poverty, migration, trade imbalances and instability. It should be the only ‘permanent issue’ that should be defined while shaping the Security Council agenda rather than the permanent members of the Council .

The raised hand of a diplomat is a visible symbol of failure. But the invisible, collective veto that we all are  casting  through apathy and inaction is far more deadly.

This 80th UNGA is not a celebration. It is an intervention. The question is no longer whether the UN is perfect. It is not. Neither has it been successful in the last 80 years; it is not. The question is whether it is the only game in the town. It is. We will now  demand that our leaders use this flawed, essential tool to finally reform and call a ceasefire on the war against the ecosystem on which we live. We just cannot raise our hands to veto our children’s future and safety of the planet.

That  veto must end. The only thing that should be rising is our courage, not the seas, not the warming.

(The author is a noted environmentalist, former Director of UNEP, Coordinating Lead Author, IPCC 2007 (Nobel Peace Prize laureate), IIT Alumnus, and Founder, Green TERRE Foundation, Pune, India. Views are personal. He can be reached at shende.rajendra@gmail.com.)