Just Released! Order “Waking Up to Climate Change” by George Ropes, and receive 25% Discount. Learn More

HOME          CATEGORIES          OUR TAKE

OUR TAKE: Climate Crisis Means States & Capitalism Must Change by Senior ClimateYou Editor George Ropes

Simon Tisdall, columnist and assistant editor for The Guardian, has written a wide-ranging, thought-provoking analysis of who may dominate the future. Only thing lacking is any consideration of the possible impacts of the climate crisis on the overarching political and economic  structures taken as a given since at least medieval times: the nation state and capitalism. When an existential crisis is truly global, sovereignty may have to bend. Likewise, capitalism may have to accept some constraints on its profit-making freedom of action. Brazil should not be allowed to burn down the Amazon rainforest. Canada should not be permitted to develop the tar sands of Alberta. Russia (and Exxon) should never exploit its huge North Sea oil reserves (removal of the sanctions against which were the unspoken quid for Russia’s electoral help to Donald Trump). Australia shouldn’t be able to give permission to the Adjani mines to dig up and export billions of tons of coal to China. Indonesia and Nigeria have oil deposits they are aching to develop, and even Saudi Arabia’s Aramco wants to expand its already world-leading oil production capabilities.

Quite simply, the climate crisis is real, it is existential, it is global, and it is imminent. To analyze future big power politics without giving due consideration to its probable effects is to ignore the 900-pound gorilla in the room. If we don’t start curbing the emissions from burning fossil fuels now, by mid-century, just 30 years from now, global temperatures will rise by 3-5°C (5.4 –  9°F), sea levels will have risen enough to cause  flooding every full moon in coastal cities around the globe, resulting in major migrations to higher land both within and across national borders, displacement and failure  of many businesses, and sharp falls in coastal real estate values. Extreme weather events will become more frequent and more extreme. Heat waves will be hotter and last longer. The poor, the elderly, the infirm, and infants will be most affected. Some will die. Droughts will be deeper and last longer. Food yields will fall, prices will rise, trade in staples will be restricted, many people will be hungry and some will starve. People will protest these conditions, government responses will be deemed inadequate, and some governments will fall. Societies will break down. Civilization could crumble.

Before that happens, however, there will be at least one, but probably several attempts to forge new institutional structures to modify,  supplement, or replace the ones developed at Bretton Woods after World War II, to forestall a complete collapse from happening. Just as nation states succeeded feudal fiefdoms in the early Middle Ages, a shift to a new form of social and political organization is indicated. It is not inevitable, but if humankind fails to achieve at least a nascent form of supranational, all life-oriented, equitable, and sustainable modus vivendi, then our grand multi-millennial experiment will fail, and we’ll go the way of the dinosaurs.

 

Comment on this article

ClimateYou moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (New York time) and can only accept comments written in English.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


The reCAPTCHA verification period has expired. Please reload the page.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE


More Posts Like This

OUR TAKE

Art Inspired by Climate Change Data

Last week about 20 students stood next to small, blank canvases placed on tables. They were about to pour paint of various colors onto the canvases as part of a unique approach to understanding climate change. The students were in their weekly Natural Disasters class taught by Professor

ART & CLIMATE SCIENCE

When Art & Science Collide

What happens when artistic creative energies are inspired by raw, scientific data? Experimenting with this very idea in 2020, at the height of the COVID pandemic, the Climate Impacts Groups at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies started the “Science & Art Initiative,” seeking to challenge scientists

CLIMATEYOU

My Take on Climate Change

Imagine it’s Christmas time and there’s no snow outside. In fact, it’s late December and the weather has mostly been warm for a long while since Halloween. The temperature for the most part has been remaining in the 30’s and sometimes early 40’s. Outside, it still looks like