Climate Change Comes of Age
Humanity finds itself at a critical crossroads . Based on the mainstream scientific consensus, humanity is faced with multiple existential threats. It is reaching critical planetary limits in domains such as global freshwater use and ocean acidification, rate of biodiversity loss, land-system change, stratospheric ozone depletion, and growth across all indices of starving resources (Zimmerer 2014: 268). The tip of the iceberg is climate change, meaning not just an uninterrupted upward trend of the average global temperature, but also—and not least importantly—interference with climatic conditions and cycles, which multiply and intensify extreme climatic phenomena. Contemporary available scientific data show that in 2014 the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere had surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) (Chesney et al. 2016: 5). Mainstream scientific estimations regard 450 ppm as the benchmark threshold. Beyond that, the increase of the global temperature is expected to surpass the 2 degrees Celsius with unbearable consequences on the climate and the human condition (King 2011; Falkner 2016: 1109).
Framing the issue macroscopically, humanity survived due to conducive conditions throughout the Holocene, the geological period dated to 11,000 years ago. We entered the most recent phase, Anthropocene, 250 years ago. Anthropocene is characterized by the reversal of a symbiotic relationship between humans and the ecosystem following the Industrial Revolution, and the end of the slow and peaceful utilization of the latter’s resources for the former’s survival and welfare. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1990, 1995, 2001, 2007, 2013) has issued five assessment reports, in which significant probability has given way to certainty regarding the anthropogenic nature of climate change.
At inception, climate change was viewed principally as a technical issue assigned to specialized institutions and framed in equally scientific terms. These initial formulations unraveled as the scope of threat presented by climate change came into focus. Given ‘biophysical framings of climate impacts and ecosystems vulnerability, it is now recognized that vulnerability to climate change properly extends to the socioeconomic and political conditions that affect how communities cope with the impacts of climate-related hazards’ (Mason 2011: 164).
As the initial speculation waned—along with overt denial and skepticism—the understanding of climate change graduated to widespread acquiescence of the bold fact that the climate has entered a phase of transformation that works to the detriment of human existence. There are three main reasons why this has happened in the course of the last two decades. Firstly, science itself has generated compelling evidence on the validity of the initial hypothesis. Accordingly, the burden of proof has moved to the opposite camp, which has failed to wage a persuasive campaign. Secondly, and related to the above, ecological transformations are producing powerful visible effects of climate change impact, now and into the future. Thirdly, there has been a significant—albeit far from universal—shift in entrepreneurial mood and concomitant growing acceptance of economic convergence with climate change. There is ample space for innovation and plenty corporate opportunities in ‘green capitalism’, which more and more economic actors are eager to seize upon, especially given tense competition in saturated economic sectors that drives the need for diversification of business portfolios. This economic convergence has facilitated a more favorable understanding of the challenge and enabled responses to it (Beck and Van Loon 2011: 117–21).
The main culprit behind climate change has been the extensive use of fossil fuels . Climate change mitigation has hence been ‘cast largely as one of changing the energy systems of contemporary society away from fossil fuel-based systems towards low- or no-carbon systems’ (Steffen 2011: 31). Given energy’s centrality in the modern world, reversing climate change emerges as a fundamentally political project; it not only requires a large-scale transition in the global political economy, but also encompasses notions of social justice and issues of international governance . At the same time, it presents formidable challenges not only to traditional ideas of national sovereignty and market organization , but also to established trade patterns and policies in the context of globalization. As a bottom-line, climate change presents a challenge to humanity’s capacity to organize efficient and equitable collective action, and to tackle inequalities resulting from climate change (Miliband 2011a: 193).
Although ‘pressure for more comprehensive climate policy becomes critical for the future of energy globally’ (Dubash and Florini 2011: 10), the discourse on and responses to climate change mitigation have been ‘subject to international geopolitical scheming’ (Goldthau 2013a: 2). Additionally , climate change policy and actions have been impacted by the uneven distribution of capabilities at the international level and the diverse economic development status of respective stakeholders. Treating climate change as a public policy issue emanating from ‘market failure and ensuing externalities that call for public interventions’ (Goldthau 2013a: 2)—to the contrary—has hardly caught on. In this context, the global governance of energy has been confined to long-term planning, identification of trends in the energy markets and buffering of price shocks, rather than focused on providing energy security as a public good and preventing further climate change as a public bad (Goldthau 2013a: 2–3).
Overall, responses to climate change—practical efforts to bring emissions down to sustainable levels—have been greatly conditioned by mainstream understandings of and workings within the global political economy, the global political system, and domestic political contours. After exploring these interactions in the next three sections, this introductory chapter moves on to expose the prevailing inconsistencies plaguing responses to climate change. The analysis then broaches the implicit trilemma between climate change mitigation, energy security and growth that drives the politics of climate change mitigation. Against this backdrop, the book sets out an alternative model of energy transition that breaks from the growth imperative tied to the traditional prisms of energy security , geopolitics and development .
The Market Orthodoxy and Its Discontents
A great cleavage in energy and climate policy is the division of labor between the state and the market. Market proponents see in climate change another problem—as all others—that can be solved via market mechanisms. Others blame the advent of climate change on the unfettered nature of global markets, and call for the state to recapture the competences it has yielded and organize economic activity in a climate-friendly and sustainable way (Giddens 2011).
Scholarly literature has focused lately on the ensuring-enabling state (Giddens 2011: 71–2). States can simply not afford to place all their faith in the invisible hand of the market. The magnitude of the problem of climate change calls for the state to marshal its vast resources and ensure market players can make profits if they play along with the new rules governments have engineered. From this perspective, states are entrusted to take pivotal decisions that will direct the key solutions to climate-related problems. This does not boil down to picking winners, but to picking games (Liu and Hanauer 2016). States emerge as editors of choices and determine the kind and range of measures to mitigate climate change.
Interestingly, this approach calls for state intervention so that specific direction is given to market players to follow suit and enforce state initiatives. Proponents prioritize the strategic role of the state to adjust incentives and regulations so that the market can be geared to yield climate-friendly results. While they consider the market unable to initiate the grand transition itself—it is essential to note—they refrain from market capitulation for the sake of state-run programs. Kuzemko et al. (2015: 17–18) have summarized governments’ failures in the energy sector as consisting of bureaucratic expansionism and ‘crowding out’ effects that in practice create moral hazard, distortions of the price mechanism and ‘white elephants’ due to information failures. Arguments deriving from a critique of market performance, thus, fall short of recommending proposals for the introduction of heavily interventionist policies that would obscure market mechanisms. To the contrary, carbon markets , insurance companies, recycling enterpris...