Ulrich Beck’s cosmopolitan sociology affords a much-needed rethinking of the transnational politics of climate change, not least in pointing to an emerging inter-urban geography of world cities as a potential new source of community, change and solidarity. This short essay, written in honour of Beck’s forward-looking agenda for a post-Euro-centric social science, outlines the contours of such an urban-cosmopolitan ‘realpolitik’ of climate risks, as this is presently unfolding across East Asian world cities. Much more than a theory-building endeavour, the essay suggests, Beck’s sociology provides a standing invitation for further transnational dialogue and collaborative empirical work, in East Asia and beyond, on what are, arguably, the defining challenges for the 21st century world of global risks.