by Chris Horner
The world we live in is changing, and our politics must change with it. We are in what has been called the ‘anthropocene’: the period in which human activity is threatening the ecosystem on which we all depend. Catastrophic climate change threatens our very survival. Yet our political class seems unable to take the necessary steps to avert it. Add to that the familiar and pressing problems of massive inequality, exploitation, systemic racism and job insecurity due to automation and the relocation of production to cheaper labour markets, and we have a truly global and multidimensional set of problems. It is one that our political masters seem unable to properly confront. Yet confront them they, and we, must. Such is the scale of the problem, the political order needs wholesale change, rather than the small, incremental reforms we have been taught are all that are practicable or desirable. And change, whether we like it or not is coming anyway: between authoritaria
The Politics of the Anthropocene in a World After Neoliberalism bostonreview.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bostonreview.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Verso Books, 2018
Climate Leviathan is a jarring, dissatisfying read. Its best arguments are left undeveloped. What should have been tangential points are expanded upon in bland, circuitous detail. Its central proposition is not supported by strong evidence. It promises a new political theory, but its conclusions are vague, hesitant and almost painfully schematic.
The core argument of authors Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright is that a liberal capitalist supra-national world state or “sovereignty” is a likely way that the capitalist system will adapt to runaway climate change and other ecological breakdowns. They call this outcome the Climate Leviathan.
Mann and Wainwright write about the Climate Leviathan as a warning. It poses a future “new imperial hegemony” where a single state or handful of powerful states attain global hegemony and “seize command, declare an emergency, and bring order to the Earth, all in the name of saving life.”