Unabated, the global climate system continues to breakdown, signaling an ominous social, political, and economic present and future for human societies. Sustainable energy technologies to replace fossil fuel -based systems largely responsible for climate change are now making possible perpetual and environmentally sustainable forms of power production from wind, water and sunlight, especially as their costs decline. But we still feel incapable of evading or controlling the forces and powers that would address our unquenching thirst for fossil-fueled development and facilitate a rapid, large-scale transition to planetary sustainability. Our political, economic, social, and cultural systems are strongly embedded within the fossil fuel regime, and, thus, a complex web entwines the abstractions of modern life with the materiality of our technological systems and infrastructures.
We are now in an era where the consequences of our neoliberal , fossil fuel -based, capitalist choices manifest not only in extreme modifications in weather events costing lives and livelihoods mostly in poorer communities in developing countries (where people with the least contribution to climate change also live) but also in electoral democracies gone miserably awry; territorial borders functioning as gates to hell; jobless neighborhoods turning violent; informal and poor urban settlements rising in densities; and intellectualism, science, and higher education subjected to persistent attacks.
Our present world seems to be leading us into a corrosive, dystopic future world of inequality , hatred, neocolonialism, racism, misogyny, paranoia, authoritarianism, and unsustainability. Genuine transformative change now seems beyond the capacity of our present technological, political, and economic systems. We can no longer rely upon capitalism âs self-correction mechanisms. With crisesânatural, physical, social, economic, and politicalâgathering steam, politics and economies wilt. This ongoing paralysis urgently requires a new vision of the future âa new ideology , hegemony , and intellectual leadership âspurred by a large-scale public clamor for transformative and emancipatory change that could be delivered through simultaneous climate actions. This book offers one way forward to achieve this vision .
For many countries, especially in high emission countries of Australia and the United States, power structures at the national level remain in a state of political gridlock on climate change response, resulting in ineffective policymaking and action (Wishart 2019; Washington 2018; Dunlap and McCright 2011; Van Rensburg and Head 2017). Despite the widely hailed Paris Agreement on climate change , myopia in government response to the climate challenge in these countriesâand beyondâis evidenced by the low ambition in the Nationally Determined Contributions that make up the Agreement; commitments which, even when collectively met, will not ensure a future that is climate-safe for everyone.
Australia and the United States continue to use and support coal . The United States has, under a climate denying President, hosted side events in the last two meetings of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change touting coal . Other high emission countries are also at fault. In China âwhere coal plant construction stopped in some provinces (not because of climate considerations but due to overcapacities), coal continues to account for about two-thirds of electricity generation, and additional plants have been permitted. China also exports its coal combustion technologies through its Belt Road Initiative. Japan , Indonesia , and Turkey continue to proceed with their coal plant construction plans (Climate Action Tracker 2018). Beyond coal-addicted governments, mainstream media , still an inarguably key source of information for many people, are also being remiss in reporting the current state of climate and the necessary climate actions (Miliauskas and Anderson 2016; Bacon and Nash 2012; cf. Yacoumis 2017).
Fossil fuels continue to be taken out of the ground and transported to points of consumption , where they are burned to fill societiesâ seemingly insatiable demand for energy. The neoliberal capitalist orientation of many countries in the worldâwhere climate actions are primarily seen as countering âdevelopmentâ objectivesâlends a hand to climate action gridlock. Interestingly, even those in the fossil fuel regime had acknowledged, as early as 1982 in an Exxon-supported symposium on climate change at Columbia University, the flaws of free markets when it came to climate change (Rich 2018).
On the first weekend of October 2018 in Incheon, South Korea, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2018), an institution tasked by governments to advance the science of climate change , released a special report confirming a sobering picture that has long been painted by climate scientists of the potentially disastrous impacts of allowing global mean surface temperature to rise by an additional 1.5 °C compared with pre-industrial levels. The report details more extreme weather events , sea level rise, and ocean acidification affecting crops, wildlife, water availability, and human health. But the report remains a relatively conservative assessment of the consequences of climate change as it leaves out key details as to the damaging impacts to specific populations, who will be displaced first and forced to migrate hence increasing chances of conflicts . The report also failed to discuss the fat tails of climate change impacts, the tipping point s in the climate system, which, when manifest, could lead to irreversibility and acceleration of change. The cost of doing the necessary climate actions, such as through pricing carbon , is also limitedly discussed.
The 1.5 °C report, nonetheless, points out to the absolute necessity of doing effective and sufficient climate actions now. These ambitious actions require urgency...