In this essay, I argue that the alleged failure of the Copenhagen climate summit in December 2009, rather than labelling it as the collapse of climate politics, should be embraced as an essential political fact. Admittedly, Copenhagen was a failure, albeit of a populist consensual policy practice that invokes an apocalyptic doomsday scenario to make everybody toe the neo-liberal line. In my view, consensus-driven UN policy is running into its own limits as was clearly illustrated at the climate summit in Cancun (December 2010) where the blame was pinned on Bolivia for its fierce resistance against a weak agreement. The time has come to revive the climate and, by extension, the environment as a matter of genuine political concern, open to struggle and contestation, in this way constituting an essential component of social change.