When considering the climate crisis, it often goes without saying that one must consider how it came to be. Largely, it is agreed upon through the scientific consensus that climate change attributes the rapidly increasing temperature of the earth to the human use of greenhouse gasses (GHG), that if the use of GHGs continues, the warming will accelerate to the point of catastrophe, and lastly, that it is a problem that needs to be addressed (RealClimate, 2009).
Now, on the topic of addressing the climate crisis, society is then hobbled by political machinations which exacerbate the problem, while governments self-congratulate themselves for addressing the problem at all with insufficient non-solutions, such as carbon-offsets (Abelvik-Lawson, 2023). The conversation then becomes a question of what it will take to achieve an effective response to climate change, while also considering the political aspect to which the world is currently beholden.
Can the climate crisis be addressed through a neoliberal framework? That which resembles the system currently in place?
Will it be resolved through geoengineering and manipulating the earth to trick it into cooling down?
Can the climate crisis be tackled through the social democratic Green New Deal? Slowly reducing society’s reliance on fossil fuels while ensuring the change over to renewable energy benefits everyone.
Or, is the only solution to scrap it all and focus on degrowth?
The answer, frankly, lies in the very physical nature of the earth; that is, the finite amount of space it provides. The political framework which holds the best promise, however, is not a single of these on its own, but a combination; specifically, degrowth in combination with the Green New Deal. The goal is to not only reach a balanced plateau in the earth’s temperature, but also that the needs of all people inhabiting the earth are met, and that the framework can be maintained to ensure a steady climate for future generations.
Firstly, to decide upon a political framework to reliably address the climate crisis, one must look toward the framework present which contributed to it. While it may be easiest to lay the blame at neoliberalism’s feet, it would only be a scapegoat for the true mastermind to hide behind, which would be the Global Racial Empire (Táíwò, 2022).
This is because the concept of neoliberalism as an ideology has only existed since 1938, created by two Austrian exiles, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek, and which only became internationally implemented in the 1970s (Monbiot, 2016); this, however, does not mean that it does not bear a portion of the responsibility. Calling back to Táíwò’s Global Racial Empire, the system today–that being late-stage capitalism, a product of neoliberalism–was only ever possible due to the extreme wealth generated during the years of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, a period in which European powers vied to connect the globe by creating a world economic order (Táíwò, 2022, p. 21). Táíwò, in his book, explains how that world economic order remains in place today through capitalism by quoting Karl Marx: “[…] Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton, you have no modern industry. It is slavery that gave the colonies their value; it is the colonies that created world trade, and it is world trade that is the pre-condition of large-scale industry. Thus slavery is an economic category of the greatest importance.” (Marx, 1847, ch. 2, p. 1).
That said, neoliberalism, which prioritizes “the market” over the needs of the people, turning them into consumers subject to the whims of capitalism–upholding the Global Racial Empire–is not the best promise in the battle against climate change.
In fact, between the four political frameworks, neoliberalism is the least likely to have any impact in rectifying the climate crisis by the grace of being a significant contributor to the reason it has gotten as bad as it has.
Further, due to neoliberalism’s playbook of deregulation, privatization, tax deductions for the rich, and the destruction of trade unions, it relies heavily upon economic growth, and planned obsolescence of goods to keep the wealthy, wealthy, and the poor, poorer (Monbiot, 2016); this means that there is no benefit for them to change anything, even for the environment…because they then have the contingency plan (ie., colonizing Mars) once they’ve finally made the earth completely inhabitable (SpaceX, 2022).
Much like neoliberalism, it is unlikely that the answer lies within the political framework of geoengineering.
Geoengineering is, as defined by The Conservation Foundation, a deliberate large-scale manipulation of the environmental process, to counteract the effects of climate change (Stawarz, 2021). The reason it is not the answer, as David Keith touches upon in his book, A Case for Climate Engineering, is that it is not a solution at all, but a “temporary and illusory fix” that discourages necessary social reforms (Keith, 2013).
In that sense, it is a Star Wars-themed bandaid holding a gaping wound closed instead of stitches; it may barely do the trick before one seeks medical attention, but it definitely should not be the final solution.
When the Anthropocene is the reason for such drastic changes in the earth’s temperature, what could the future possibly look like if we kept slapping a bandaid over the issue–that being the capitalistic dependence on the use of fossil fuels–rather than attempting to change the course and mitigate the damage?
How much of the earth would be completely uninhabitable in fifty years?
In a hundred years?
More insidiously, the biggest criticism against geoengineering is not so much that it won’t work, or that it is a temporary fix, it is that it will most certainly become an avenue which corporations exploit as vindication for their actions, and as a means of maintaining the status quo (Keith, 2013).
Further, there is much to be said on the scientific idealization of geoengineering; considering the wide variety of geoengineering designs, once society allows even the most innocuous projects to pass, such as planting trees, or making rooftops a lighter colour (Stawarz, 2021), it then leaves the door open for more ambitious scientists with god-complexes, suggesting that they be allowed to spray aerosol into the atmosphere (Hamilton, 2014).
That said, if a political framework cannot be used to both the benefit of the environment, as well as all people–current and future–then it is not the answer we seek.
Now, the two political frameworks I’ve mentioned, if combined, would have the most promise in addressing the climate crisis–the Green New Deal (GND), and degrowth.
Degrowth, in the abstract, is the suggestion of taking a step back to consider the bigger picture; where will constant growth take us?
The image that Richard Swift paints within the episode “Degrowth Paradigm” on the CBC Radio Podcast provides a bit of a bleak outlook of degrowth activism, oddly enough, giving a bit of a Manson Family aesthetic of communal living by dropping oneself entirely out of the consumerism rat-race (Swift, 2013). Meanwhile, the Green New Deal is an ambitious framework aimed at lessening the dependence on fossil fuels until the complete switch to renewable energy can be made completely, all the while, bringing focus to marginalized and disenfranchised communities and identities (Gunn-Wright & Hockett, 2019).
The issue in this combination, however, is that one is firmly against growth, and the other is growth-positive. What if, then, we combined the two? A Green New Deal without Growth? Because while Swift interviews guests within the podcast episode who have interesting perspectives, much of it is reliant on simple anarchy, with no modern medicine, and a necessity of being fairly financially well-off before making the switch (Swift, 2013), while the Green New Deal focuses on maintaining the level of innovation we currently know, allowing ‘comforts’ which are a necessity for those with disabilities, but with an insistence on bolstering the welfare state, as well as social nets.
Mastini et al., (2021) wrote an article on this very topic, stating that the main issues which cause friction between the two, as stated above, are their perspectives on growth; GND views growth as a means of stimulating the economy, as well as helping invest in the switch to clean, renewable energy, while degrowth argues the slower the growth, the easier the switch will be (Mastini et al., 2021). A chart within that article dictates how either would balance off each other, where GND could potentially focus on resources for green investments for when there is growth and socializing the energy sector, while degrowth maintains the preparation of managing without growth but changing from work-sharing to building policies that secure employment without growth (Mastini et al., 2021).
Both of these frameworks are the arch-nemesis of the previous two frameworks, neoliberalism and geoengineering, as they both combat the necessity of rich people controlling the narrative and giving the power back to the people; a likely reason that neither has been successfully implemented in totality.
To conclude, the decision to choose two of the political frameworks was based on the significant leap from the current system to the degrowth paradigm, whereas GND seemed somewhere in the middle of the two. All the same, the intent is clear.
Drastic change is the only option at this point, and that is to eventually disconnect society from the consumerist mindset which drives economic growth through systems like Growth Domestic Product (GDP), the cuckoo in the economic nest which has convinced the world that profit should come before humans living a rich and full life, on a stable planet (Raworth, 2017).
With the rapidly increasing temperature of the earth, and acknowledging the weaker aspects of each framework–that being growth and inclusivity–the combination of the two holds more promise than either fighting individually against neoliberalism-capitalism caused climate catastrophe.
References
1. Abelvik-Lawson, H. (2023, April 4). The biggest problem with carbon offsetting is that it doesn’t really work. Greenpeace UK. https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/the-biggest-problem-with-carbon-offsetting-is-that-it-doesnt-really-work/
2. Gunn-Wright, R., & Hockett, R. (2019). THE GREEN NEW DEAL. In New Consensus. New Consensus.
3. Hamilton, C. (2014). Geoengineering and the politics of science. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. https://doi.org/10.1177/0096340214531173
4. Keith, D. (2013). A Case for Climate Engineering. MIT Press.
5. Marx, K. (1847). The Poverty of Philosophy.
6. Mastini, R., Kallis, G., & Hickel, J. (2021). A Green New Deal without growth? Ecological Economics, 179, 106832. Chart link: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-Green-New-Deal-without-growth-Mastini-Kallis/cb843e6483707035a85c2a2a4ca633a707632771
7. Monbiot, G. (2016, April 15). Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems. The Guardian.
8. Raworth, K. (2017). Why it’s time for Doughnut Economics. IPPR Progressive Review, 24(3), 216–222. https://doi.org/10.1111/newe.12058
9. RealClimate. (2009, December 26). RealClimate: Just what is this Consensus anyway? RealClimate | Climate Science From Climate Scientists. . . https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/just-what-is-this-consensus-anyway/
10. SpaceX. (2022). SpaceX. https://www.spacex.com/mission/
11. Stawarz, S. (2021, September 22). Conservation & Geoengineering: Preservation Or Enhancement? – The Conservation Foundation. The Conservation Foundation. https://www.theconservationfoundation.org/conservation-geoengineering-preservation-or-enhancement/
12. Swift, R. (2013, December 13). The Degrowth Paradigm. CBC Radio. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-degrowth-paradigm-1.2914099
13. Táíwò, O. O. (2022b). Reconsidering Reparations. Oxford University Press.
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