---------------
This is a long, obtuse, and disturbing article, advocating for what would be a ruthless dictatorship never before seen on the planet.
We would question the imperative the author asserts. What is the basis for the author's prescriptions? Is it moral? Political? Philosophical? He assigns value to some things, while impeaching others. But he never explains why we should agree with these valuations or why they are desirable or a justifiable trade-off.
For the author, climate change is The Problem To Be Solved At All Costs. The ends justify the means. Any means. In fact, the author implicitly or explicitly justifies the curtailing of human and political rights, the possibility of executing the weak, elderly, or sick, the rationing of food and other resources, and forced labor.
The road to utopia is a bumpy one.
----------------
Only a massive, democratically-elected administrative apparatus can stop climate change.
At its best, Earth was once likened to a spaceship that sails through the heavens with a crew working together for the common good. Thanks to climate change, this metaphor no longer works. (It never did work. There is no such thing as "working for the common good.")
Our planet is now more like a lifeboat that’s sprung a major leak. (The author seems to have a problem with metaphors. A lifeboat is a rescue craft from a larger vessel. What would be that larger vessel?)
People onboard are beginning to panic and the clock is ticking.
It is, however, the perfect environment to test out the best way to deal with life-and-death situations.
For such a test, imagine not one but two lifeboats of survivors bobbing in an endless, empty sea. Both contain the same number of people and a limited amount of food. Based on some educated guesses by one knowledgeable crewmember, the boats are at least five days from land, if everyone rows together and they don’t veer off course. (Again the author has difficulty with metaphors. We are not in a state of guaranteed peril. The author presumes this based on having engorged himself on a hearty helping of leftist scare tactics.
Even if climate change is a pressing problem, the planet will still remain quite habitable, albeit in different locations. Life will go on, which means that some, if not all, passengers in the life boats will survive.)
In the first boat, the survivors debate the problem: Should they stay in place and conserve their energy or strike off in search of land? They divide into three committees to address the different aspects of the problem and present their findings, making sure everyone has input. They debate for hours, growing weaker and weaker until they no longer have the energy to do anything and the issue decides itself.
In the second boat, one person takes control, (A tyrant.)
believing he alone has the skill and knowledge to steer the lifeboat toward land. (This is the textbook example of the smug, superior attitude of a typical leftist.)
Not everyone agrees, but dissenters are silenced. (Yes, another leftist tactic. they're always right, and those who disagree are not only wrong, but evil. That is in essence the big problem with vesting people with so much power, because there is no guarantee they will wield it appropriately, or hand back the power once the crisis is over.)
The others agree that there’s no time for more discussion. (Agree or be thrown overboard. It really doesn't matter if people agree with the leftist tyrant, now does it?)
The new leader imposes rules on who rows and who eats. (He's so smart. He probably cares more than anyone else, too. Except when dissent rears its ugly head. That's when the genocide begins.)
When someone falls deathly ill, he orders the incapacitated man thrown overboard. (Such compassion! The leftist tyrant gets to decide who is too ill. Here's to hoping everybody dies, so the mission can be a success.)
The second lifeboat is moving at a good pace—but is it going in the right direction? (Hey, don't question the leftist tyrant. You might end up face down in the water.)
On Lifeboat Earth, time and resources are similarly limited. According to most climate scientists, the window of opportunity to prevent irrevocable climate change is about a dozen years. Opinion is divided, however, on how to address this problem with the urgency it requires.
The international community has tried, in a roughly democratic fashion, to avoid the apocalypse. In 2015, the countries of the world came together in Paris and negotiated a non-binding (A key word. The worst polluters are not complying.)
climate accord that was a victory for compromise but a failure for shrinking the planet’s actual carbon footprint. In a number of countries around the world, democratic elections subsequently brought climate-change deniers like Donald Trump to power, further compromising that accord. (MAGA, baby. Thank goodness we now have someone that might be able to save us from the tyrant of leftist big government.)
In this way, the planet risks following the first lifeboat scenario: talking ourselves to death.
The second lifeboat option—think of it as eco-authoritarianism (How about eco-tyranny?)
—seems to better fit the temper of the times. (Now we wonder if the author is delusional.)
The current climate emergency coincides with a profound disillusionment with the liberal world order. Authoritarianism has become significantly more popular these days, even in otherwise democratic societies like India, Brazil, and the United States. (Um, no. Big government authoritarianism has been developing since the days of Marx and Stalin, and useful idiots have been pushing incrementally for world-wide central control ever since.
The political Right has been fighting it with mixed results, for decades. Overall, the Left has had more success, thus we now have a huge, oppressive government.)
Droves of voters have abandoned mainstream parties across the planet, disillusioned by the way they’ve supported a version of economic globalization that has wildly enriched the already rich, challenged the middle class, and left the poor at the bottom of the barrel. (Hmm. Those are the very problems "liberal society" set out to solve. Yet the author calls for even more...)
Those voters have increasingly turned to right-wing populists who disparage “globalists” and promise swift action on a range of issues from immigration to crime. (That is, more and more people are realizing that leftist solutions are anything but.)
At its best, Earth was once likened to a spaceship that sails through the heavens with a crew working together for the common good. Thanks to climate change, this metaphor no longer works. (It never did work. There is no such thing as "working for the common good.")
Our planet is now more like a lifeboat that’s sprung a major leak. (The author seems to have a problem with metaphors. A lifeboat is a rescue craft from a larger vessel. What would be that larger vessel?)
People onboard are beginning to panic and the clock is ticking.
It is, however, the perfect environment to test out the best way to deal with life-and-death situations.
For such a test, imagine not one but two lifeboats of survivors bobbing in an endless, empty sea. Both contain the same number of people and a limited amount of food. Based on some educated guesses by one knowledgeable crewmember, the boats are at least five days from land, if everyone rows together and they don’t veer off course. (Again the author has difficulty with metaphors. We are not in a state of guaranteed peril. The author presumes this based on having engorged himself on a hearty helping of leftist scare tactics.
Even if climate change is a pressing problem, the planet will still remain quite habitable, albeit in different locations. Life will go on, which means that some, if not all, passengers in the life boats will survive.)
In the first boat, the survivors debate the problem: Should they stay in place and conserve their energy or strike off in search of land? They divide into three committees to address the different aspects of the problem and present their findings, making sure everyone has input. They debate for hours, growing weaker and weaker until they no longer have the energy to do anything and the issue decides itself.
In the second boat, one person takes control, (A tyrant.)
believing he alone has the skill and knowledge to steer the lifeboat toward land. (This is the textbook example of the smug, superior attitude of a typical leftist.)
Not everyone agrees, but dissenters are silenced. (Yes, another leftist tactic. they're always right, and those who disagree are not only wrong, but evil. That is in essence the big problem with vesting people with so much power, because there is no guarantee they will wield it appropriately, or hand back the power once the crisis is over.)
The others agree that there’s no time for more discussion. (Agree or be thrown overboard. It really doesn't matter if people agree with the leftist tyrant, now does it?)
The new leader imposes rules on who rows and who eats. (He's so smart. He probably cares more than anyone else, too. Except when dissent rears its ugly head. That's when the genocide begins.)
When someone falls deathly ill, he orders the incapacitated man thrown overboard. (Such compassion! The leftist tyrant gets to decide who is too ill. Here's to hoping everybody dies, so the mission can be a success.)
The second lifeboat is moving at a good pace—but is it going in the right direction? (Hey, don't question the leftist tyrant. You might end up face down in the water.)
On Lifeboat Earth, time and resources are similarly limited. According to most climate scientists, the window of opportunity to prevent irrevocable climate change is about a dozen years. Opinion is divided, however, on how to address this problem with the urgency it requires.
The international community has tried, in a roughly democratic fashion, to avoid the apocalypse. In 2015, the countries of the world came together in Paris and negotiated a non-binding (A key word. The worst polluters are not complying.)
climate accord that was a victory for compromise but a failure for shrinking the planet’s actual carbon footprint. In a number of countries around the world, democratic elections subsequently brought climate-change deniers like Donald Trump to power, further compromising that accord. (MAGA, baby. Thank goodness we now have someone that might be able to save us from the tyrant of leftist big government.)
In this way, the planet risks following the first lifeboat scenario: talking ourselves to death.
The second lifeboat option—think of it as eco-authoritarianism (How about eco-tyranny?)
—seems to better fit the temper of the times. (Now we wonder if the author is delusional.)
The current climate emergency coincides with a profound disillusionment with the liberal world order. Authoritarianism has become significantly more popular these days, even in otherwise democratic societies like India, Brazil, and the United States. (Um, no. Big government authoritarianism has been developing since the days of Marx and Stalin, and useful idiots have been pushing incrementally for world-wide central control ever since.
The political Right has been fighting it with mixed results, for decades. Overall, the Left has had more success, thus we now have a huge, oppressive government.)
Droves of voters have abandoned mainstream parties across the planet, disillusioned by the way they’ve supported a version of economic globalization that has wildly enriched the already rich, challenged the middle class, and left the poor at the bottom of the barrel. (Hmm. Those are the very problems "liberal society" set out to solve. Yet the author calls for even more...)
Those voters have increasingly turned to right-wing populists who disparage “globalists” and promise swift action on a range of issues from immigration to crime. (That is, more and more people are realizing that leftist solutions are anything but.)
Such authoritarians couldn’t, of course, be less “eco.” Most of them deny that climate change is even a problem and some, like Donald Trump, are working with the giant energy companies to heat the planet faster. They’ve commandeered the lifeboats, only to steer them ever further from possible rescue. (The author presumes, without evidence, that his own brand of authoritarians will do better.)
Feckless democrats or reckless authoritarians: Lifeboat Earth doesn’t stand much of a chance with such options. (Isn't it interesting the author's arguments come to bear against him? An authoritarian government cannot be controlled. Leftist vest all hope in the power of government to do wonderful things, thinking they will always be in control. When they lose an election the beast they created will turn and devour them.)
It’s no wonder that China has emerged as a last hope for those frustrated by the torpor of the international community and the delusions of the axis of denial. Hasn’t that country, after all, redirected enormous streams of funding into sustainable energy? (So have we.)
Wasn’t that state’s coercive one-child policy a critical way to address overpopulation and, by extension, the consumption of resources? (At the cost of millions of lives. And who knows which of those aborted babies might have become the scientist who solved the problem of climate change.)
Hasn’t China stepped ever more firmly into the international leadership void created by Trump’s nationalist retreat? (If by that the author means that China is bent on global domination and subjugation, then yes.)
As in the second lifeboat scenario, however, China may not be heading in the right direction. (Whew. He had our hopes all built up only to dash them.)
So there we are: 12 years, leaky lifeboats, and no safe haven in sight.
Feckless democrats or reckless authoritarians: Lifeboat Earth doesn’t stand much of a chance with such options. (Isn't it interesting the author's arguments come to bear against him? An authoritarian government cannot be controlled. Leftist vest all hope in the power of government to do wonderful things, thinking they will always be in control. When they lose an election the beast they created will turn and devour them.)
It’s no wonder that China has emerged as a last hope for those frustrated by the torpor of the international community and the delusions of the axis of denial. Hasn’t that country, after all, redirected enormous streams of funding into sustainable energy? (So have we.)
Wasn’t that state’s coercive one-child policy a critical way to address overpopulation and, by extension, the consumption of resources? (At the cost of millions of lives. And who knows which of those aborted babies might have become the scientist who solved the problem of climate change.)
Hasn’t China stepped ever more firmly into the international leadership void created by Trump’s nationalist retreat? (If by that the author means that China is bent on global domination and subjugation, then yes.)
As in the second lifeboat scenario, however, China may not be heading in the right direction. (Whew. He had our hopes all built up only to dash them.)
So there we are: 12 years, leaky lifeboats, and no safe haven in sight.
THE ONGOING TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS
In the early 1970s, after the world’s first Earth Day, the lifeboat problem seemed to be on everyone’s mind. (No, actually not. The propaganda onslaught had not yet begun.)
When an oil crisis hit in 1973, energy suddenly no longer seemed like an inexhaustible resource. (The oil crisis was a political problem, not a supply problem.)
Overpopulation was threatening to outstrip food production. (Where?)
Pollution darkened the skies over major cities and industrial effluents befouled the waters. Environmentalists were having a field day exposing the ruthless exploitation of resources at the heart of both the capitalist and the communist systems. (Exploitation is not a feature of capitalism, it violates capitalism.)
Almost half a century ago, some visionary thinkers were already worrying about climate change. In An Inquiry into the Human Prospect in 1973, political scientist Robert Heilbroner delineated the various environmental challenges facing the world, including “global thermal pollution,” before concluding that only a combination of military discipline and religious faith could transform the social order. (Actually, one of the two is sufficient. Jack boots trump religion.)
Fellow political scientist William Ophuls, writing in 1973, posed the problem even more starkly as “Leviathan or oblivion.” Either humanity would opt for a “government with major coercive powers” (Coercive: the act of convincing someone through threats, force or without regard to what they want to do. The author's approving tone is astonishing.)
to preserve the environment or it might as well give up. Several years later, he applied his argument to international relations as well, writing, “The already strong rationale for a world government with enough coercive power over fractious nation states to achieve what reasonable men would regard as the planetary common interest has become overwhelming.” (We beg to differ. Coercive power may be a leftist wet dream, but sane people recognize that having a huge, powerful government never ends well.)
No such world government, of course, ensued. (We may have dodged a bullet there.)
(...)
According to enthusiasts for laissez-faire capitalism, the invisible hand of the market should solve the problem, with the field being sold to the highest bidder. Fans of Soviet-style communism argued that nationalizing the property would ultimately protect it. (The author referred to pasture as a "commons." Who owns a "commons?" He mentions selling it to the highest bidder. Who sold it? As we can begin to see, the scenario is not manifestation of capitalism at all.)
As it turned out, neither capitalism nor communism had much of a track record when it came to protecting that commons. (The author never explains the "commons," or why it's related in any way to the issue at hand.)
The invisible hand proved not to have a green thumb (This is a mystifying claim. There was no "invisible hand" in operation in this scenario.)
and neither did the all-too-visible hand of state planning. (Yet the author will persist in this as being the solution, albeit on a global scale.)
Still, in the 1970s, it was commonplace to assume that the two systems would sooner or later converge at some social democratic point on the far horizon. (Who assumed this? Certainly not those on opposite sides of the fence. In fact, the two things are diametrically opposed. This supposed convergence isn't possible.)
On the environment, in other words, two wrongs would somehow make a right. (Only one is wrong.)
In their 1974 book Ark II, Dennis Pirages and Paul Ehrlich proposed adding a “planning branch” to the US government that could address systemic problems like the environmental crisis by developing not only five-year plans, as in the Soviet Union, but 10-year or even 50-year plans as well.
Instead, Americans—and the rest of the world—ran screaming in the opposite direction. (And rightly so.)
The debate in the 1970s about the possible use of state power to deal with pressing environmental concerns gave way in the 1980s and 1990s to the mania of US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for an unfettered capitalism (There is no such thing as "unfettered capitalism." Capitalism requires government to prosecute criminals and enforce contracts.)
in which state planning would be a no-no (outside the Pentagon). (No one has suggested there be no planning.)
Meanwhile, increased yields from industrial agriculture, modest environmental reforms by the major powers, and the technological advances that made globalization possible all seemed to diminish the urgency of the environmental crisis (except among environmentalists). (Environmentalists never abandon the fervor of their religion.)
Long lines at gas stations were a thing of the past and the air above most cities became clearer, while the world community dodged the bullet of ozone depletion through a rare instance of global cooperation. Spaceship Earth seemed to be motoring along quite well enough, thank you very much.
But there was one niggling detail that even eco-optimists could no longer ignore. Global temperatures were continuing to rise in a dramatic fashion, a problem impermeable to modest policy adjustments, free-market solutions, or even, it seemed, global agreements. Talking about climate change didn’t make climate change go away. (Obviously we did more than talk, since there were tangible results.)
And so Leviathan has returned.
“Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being,” scientist James Lovelock said in 2010. (No, we do not agree!)
“I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war.” A slew of books in recent years have addressed the question of whether democracy can handle climate change. In Climate Leviathan, political theorists Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright suspected that William Ophuls was prophetic, that a powerful hegemon would “seize command, declare an emergency, and bring order to Earth, all in the name of saving life.” (That ought to turn out well.)
In The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith identified the possible solution as a Singaporean one: rule by an enlightened class of technocratic mandarins. (Oh yes, that will turn out well. And you probably can guess who the "enlightened" ones would be.)
Not everyone, however, was so quick to give up on democracy. Libertarians, liberals, and radicals all rejected the eco-authoritarian option. (And rightly so.)
Libertarians worried about limitations on individual rights. (An innocuous word, "limitations." Using language to manipulate people is a time-honored tyranny.)
Liberals pointed out that only democracies can hold their leaders accountable for the direction they take, while “real existing authoritarianism” generally can’t. Radicals like environmentalist Naomi Klein urged not less but more democracy as climate activists, through pipeline blockades and fracking protests, challenged the nexus of transnational corporations and corrupt governments.
As in the 1970s, however, the international community has continued to prove far too weak to enforce anything, (There is no such thing as "the international community.")
while the effects of climate change in the form of extreme weather, stunning heat waves, increasing inundations, and expanding wildfire seasons make themselves ever more evident. (Weather is not climate.)
Meanwhile, the United States, particularly under Donald Trump, is utterly uninterested in leading the way on reducing carbon emissions. So, there’s really only one viable candidate for a Climate Leviathan today.
CHINA AND CLIMATE CHANGE
(...)
China is actually not Leviathan enough. Although the Party centralized authority in Xi Jinping’s hands, those infrastructure projects come from a variety of sources in China, including different government agencies, provinces competing with each other, and the business sector. It’s hard enough for the Chinese state, even with a new and more powerful Ministry of Ecology and Environment and a cadre of environmental police officers, to impose stringent standards within the country. More to the point, China has shown little interest or capacity when it comes to imposing them outside its borders.
MUTUAL COERCION (I force you and you force me. How does that make sense?)
China is not actually auditioning for the job of eco-authoritarian Climate Leviathan—not yet, at least—while the rest of the authoritarians coming to the fore, like Donald Trump (Not an authoritarian.)
or Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, all seem fiercely focused on boosting carbon emissions, not limiting them. Meanwhile, it doesn’t look like patient negotiations at UN conferences are likely to come up with the necessary solutions, much less implement them, before the window of opportunity closes. No wonder Nathaniel Rich and others lament that humanity must now contemplate not just mitigation and adaptation in the face of the global warming crisis but outright failure.
On the horizon, however, is one potentially quite different kind of Climate Leviathan: the Green New Deal, or GND. As of now, it remains more a slogan than a worked-out plan, (A typical approach for "we have to pass it to see what's in it" leftists.)
but it’s gaining currency within a Democratic Party competing for power in 2020 and interest in it is growing internationally as well. It might only be a couple of elections—in a few key countries—away from political viability.
To achieve the GND’s global goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, the United States would have to lead the way with its own eco-version of a Belt and Road initiative, a massive infrastructure development project that would involve high-speed rail, the energy retrofitting of buildings, and huge investments in renewable energy (as well as the creation of staggering numbers of jobs). And it would have to do all this without compensating polluting industries with export contracts, as China has done.
Think of it as a potential future Apollo 11–style green moonshot: a focused mobilization of investment, construction, and administrative resolve to achieve what has hitherto been considered impossible. (The Apollo 11 Mission cost 355 Million dollars in 1969 (which equates to 1.75 billion in todays terms. The Green New Deal could cost up to $13 trillion over the next 10 years. There's just no comparison here.)
That last element—administrative resolve—could prove the most challenging. The present crew of global right-wing populists are not just climate-change skeptics. Most are also committed to what Steve Bannon, Trump’s erstwhile guru, has called the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” In other words, they want to reduce the power of government in favor of the power of corporations (and the rich). (Not true. A false binary choice.)
They want to remove the government’s capacity to administer large-scale projects domestically and negotiate international accords that impinge on the sovereignty of the nation-state. (That's a good thing.)
Ultimately, they want to eliminate what Garrett Hardin identified as the only way to avoid the tragedy of the commons: “mutual coercion mutually agreed upon.” (That's a good thing.)
To push through a Green New Deal in the United States, for instance, a distinctly non-Republican Congress would have to coerce a range of powerful interests (coal companies, oil and gas corporations, auto manufacturers, the Pentagon, and so on) to fall into line. And for any global pact that implements something similar, an international authority like the UN would have to coerce recalcitrant or non-compliant countries to do the same. (Boy, do these leftist love coercion.)
Something as transformative as the Green New Deal—a democratically achieved Climate Leviathan—will not come about because the Democratic Party or Xi Jinping or the UN secretary general suddenly realizes that radical change is necessary, nor simply through ordinary parliamentary and congressional procedure. Major change of this sort could only come from a far more basic form of democracy: people in the streets engaged in actions like school strikes and coal mine blockades. (Rise up, proletariat, and put down the evil bourgeois!)
This is the kind of pressure that progressive legislators could then use to push through a mutually agreed-upon Green New Deal capable of building a powerful administrative force that might convince or coerce everyone into preserving the global commons. (Citizens, subjugate thyselves!)
Coercion: It’s not exactly a sexy campaign slogan. (Yeah, and millions of deaths, re-education camps, and poverty like the world has never seen aren't exactly sexy, either.)
But if democracies don’t embrace moonshots like the Green New Deal (Correction, "If democracies don't agree to give up democracy, we'll make them.")
—along with the administrative apparatus to force powerful interests to comply—then the increasing political and economic chaos of climate change will usher in yet more authoritarian regimes that offer an entirely different coercive agenda. (The author finally swerves into the truth. Without liberty, we get tyrants. Whether they're tyrants from the Left or tyrants from the Right, they're tyrants. The author's "solution" only leads to tyranny.
The Green New Deal isn’t just an important policy initiative. It may be the last democratic (Democratic??? Where?)
method of guiding Lifeboat Earth to a safe harbor.
In the early 1970s, after the world’s first Earth Day, the lifeboat problem seemed to be on everyone’s mind. (No, actually not. The propaganda onslaught had not yet begun.)
When an oil crisis hit in 1973, energy suddenly no longer seemed like an inexhaustible resource. (The oil crisis was a political problem, not a supply problem.)
Overpopulation was threatening to outstrip food production. (Where?)
Pollution darkened the skies over major cities and industrial effluents befouled the waters. Environmentalists were having a field day exposing the ruthless exploitation of resources at the heart of both the capitalist and the communist systems. (Exploitation is not a feature of capitalism, it violates capitalism.)
Almost half a century ago, some visionary thinkers were already worrying about climate change. In An Inquiry into the Human Prospect in 1973, political scientist Robert Heilbroner delineated the various environmental challenges facing the world, including “global thermal pollution,” before concluding that only a combination of military discipline and religious faith could transform the social order. (Actually, one of the two is sufficient. Jack boots trump religion.)
Fellow political scientist William Ophuls, writing in 1973, posed the problem even more starkly as “Leviathan or oblivion.” Either humanity would opt for a “government with major coercive powers” (Coercive: the act of convincing someone through threats, force or without regard to what they want to do. The author's approving tone is astonishing.)
to preserve the environment or it might as well give up. Several years later, he applied his argument to international relations as well, writing, “The already strong rationale for a world government with enough coercive power over fractious nation states to achieve what reasonable men would regard as the planetary common interest has become overwhelming.” (We beg to differ. Coercive power may be a leftist wet dream, but sane people recognize that having a huge, powerful government never ends well.)
No such world government, of course, ensued. (We may have dodged a bullet there.)
(...)
According to enthusiasts for laissez-faire capitalism, the invisible hand of the market should solve the problem, with the field being sold to the highest bidder. Fans of Soviet-style communism argued that nationalizing the property would ultimately protect it. (The author referred to pasture as a "commons." Who owns a "commons?" He mentions selling it to the highest bidder. Who sold it? As we can begin to see, the scenario is not manifestation of capitalism at all.)
As it turned out, neither capitalism nor communism had much of a track record when it came to protecting that commons. (The author never explains the "commons," or why it's related in any way to the issue at hand.)
The invisible hand proved not to have a green thumb (This is a mystifying claim. There was no "invisible hand" in operation in this scenario.)
and neither did the all-too-visible hand of state planning. (Yet the author will persist in this as being the solution, albeit on a global scale.)
Still, in the 1970s, it was commonplace to assume that the two systems would sooner or later converge at some social democratic point on the far horizon. (Who assumed this? Certainly not those on opposite sides of the fence. In fact, the two things are diametrically opposed. This supposed convergence isn't possible.)
On the environment, in other words, two wrongs would somehow make a right. (Only one is wrong.)
In their 1974 book Ark II, Dennis Pirages and Paul Ehrlich proposed adding a “planning branch” to the US government that could address systemic problems like the environmental crisis by developing not only five-year plans, as in the Soviet Union, but 10-year or even 50-year plans as well.
Instead, Americans—and the rest of the world—ran screaming in the opposite direction. (And rightly so.)
The debate in the 1970s about the possible use of state power to deal with pressing environmental concerns gave way in the 1980s and 1990s to the mania of US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for an unfettered capitalism (There is no such thing as "unfettered capitalism." Capitalism requires government to prosecute criminals and enforce contracts.)
in which state planning would be a no-no (outside the Pentagon). (No one has suggested there be no planning.)
Meanwhile, increased yields from industrial agriculture, modest environmental reforms by the major powers, and the technological advances that made globalization possible all seemed to diminish the urgency of the environmental crisis (except among environmentalists). (Environmentalists never abandon the fervor of their religion.)
Long lines at gas stations were a thing of the past and the air above most cities became clearer, while the world community dodged the bullet of ozone depletion through a rare instance of global cooperation. Spaceship Earth seemed to be motoring along quite well enough, thank you very much.
But there was one niggling detail that even eco-optimists could no longer ignore. Global temperatures were continuing to rise in a dramatic fashion, a problem impermeable to modest policy adjustments, free-market solutions, or even, it seemed, global agreements. Talking about climate change didn’t make climate change go away. (Obviously we did more than talk, since there were tangible results.)
And so Leviathan has returned.
“Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being,” scientist James Lovelock said in 2010. (No, we do not agree!)
“I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war.” A slew of books in recent years have addressed the question of whether democracy can handle climate change. In Climate Leviathan, political theorists Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright suspected that William Ophuls was prophetic, that a powerful hegemon would “seize command, declare an emergency, and bring order to Earth, all in the name of saving life.” (That ought to turn out well.)
In The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith identified the possible solution as a Singaporean one: rule by an enlightened class of technocratic mandarins. (Oh yes, that will turn out well. And you probably can guess who the "enlightened" ones would be.)
Not everyone, however, was so quick to give up on democracy. Libertarians, liberals, and radicals all rejected the eco-authoritarian option. (And rightly so.)
Libertarians worried about limitations on individual rights. (An innocuous word, "limitations." Using language to manipulate people is a time-honored tyranny.)
Liberals pointed out that only democracies can hold their leaders accountable for the direction they take, while “real existing authoritarianism” generally can’t. Radicals like environmentalist Naomi Klein urged not less but more democracy as climate activists, through pipeline blockades and fracking protests, challenged the nexus of transnational corporations and corrupt governments.
As in the 1970s, however, the international community has continued to prove far too weak to enforce anything, (There is no such thing as "the international community.")
while the effects of climate change in the form of extreme weather, stunning heat waves, increasing inundations, and expanding wildfire seasons make themselves ever more evident. (Weather is not climate.)
Meanwhile, the United States, particularly under Donald Trump, is utterly uninterested in leading the way on reducing carbon emissions. So, there’s really only one viable candidate for a Climate Leviathan today.
CHINA AND CLIMATE CHANGE
(...)
China is actually not Leviathan enough. Although the Party centralized authority in Xi Jinping’s hands, those infrastructure projects come from a variety of sources in China, including different government agencies, provinces competing with each other, and the business sector. It’s hard enough for the Chinese state, even with a new and more powerful Ministry of Ecology and Environment and a cadre of environmental police officers, to impose stringent standards within the country. More to the point, China has shown little interest or capacity when it comes to imposing them outside its borders.
MUTUAL COERCION (I force you and you force me. How does that make sense?)
China is not actually auditioning for the job of eco-authoritarian Climate Leviathan—not yet, at least—while the rest of the authoritarians coming to the fore, like Donald Trump (Not an authoritarian.)
or Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, all seem fiercely focused on boosting carbon emissions, not limiting them. Meanwhile, it doesn’t look like patient negotiations at UN conferences are likely to come up with the necessary solutions, much less implement them, before the window of opportunity closes. No wonder Nathaniel Rich and others lament that humanity must now contemplate not just mitigation and adaptation in the face of the global warming crisis but outright failure.
On the horizon, however, is one potentially quite different kind of Climate Leviathan: the Green New Deal, or GND. As of now, it remains more a slogan than a worked-out plan, (A typical approach for "we have to pass it to see what's in it" leftists.)
but it’s gaining currency within a Democratic Party competing for power in 2020 and interest in it is growing internationally as well. It might only be a couple of elections—in a few key countries—away from political viability.
To achieve the GND’s global goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, the United States would have to lead the way with its own eco-version of a Belt and Road initiative, a massive infrastructure development project that would involve high-speed rail, the energy retrofitting of buildings, and huge investments in renewable energy (as well as the creation of staggering numbers of jobs). And it would have to do all this without compensating polluting industries with export contracts, as China has done.
Think of it as a potential future Apollo 11–style green moonshot: a focused mobilization of investment, construction, and administrative resolve to achieve what has hitherto been considered impossible. (The Apollo 11 Mission cost 355 Million dollars in 1969 (which equates to 1.75 billion in todays terms. The Green New Deal could cost up to $13 trillion over the next 10 years. There's just no comparison here.)
That last element—administrative resolve—could prove the most challenging. The present crew of global right-wing populists are not just climate-change skeptics. Most are also committed to what Steve Bannon, Trump’s erstwhile guru, has called the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” In other words, they want to reduce the power of government in favor of the power of corporations (and the rich). (Not true. A false binary choice.)
They want to remove the government’s capacity to administer large-scale projects domestically and negotiate international accords that impinge on the sovereignty of the nation-state. (That's a good thing.)
Ultimately, they want to eliminate what Garrett Hardin identified as the only way to avoid the tragedy of the commons: “mutual coercion mutually agreed upon.” (That's a good thing.)
To push through a Green New Deal in the United States, for instance, a distinctly non-Republican Congress would have to coerce a range of powerful interests (coal companies, oil and gas corporations, auto manufacturers, the Pentagon, and so on) to fall into line. And for any global pact that implements something similar, an international authority like the UN would have to coerce recalcitrant or non-compliant countries to do the same. (Boy, do these leftist love coercion.)
Something as transformative as the Green New Deal—a democratically achieved Climate Leviathan—will not come about because the Democratic Party or Xi Jinping or the UN secretary general suddenly realizes that radical change is necessary, nor simply through ordinary parliamentary and congressional procedure. Major change of this sort could only come from a far more basic form of democracy: people in the streets engaged in actions like school strikes and coal mine blockades. (Rise up, proletariat, and put down the evil bourgeois!)
This is the kind of pressure that progressive legislators could then use to push through a mutually agreed-upon Green New Deal capable of building a powerful administrative force that might convince or coerce everyone into preserving the global commons. (Citizens, subjugate thyselves!)
Coercion: It’s not exactly a sexy campaign slogan. (Yeah, and millions of deaths, re-education camps, and poverty like the world has never seen aren't exactly sexy, either.)
But if democracies don’t embrace moonshots like the Green New Deal (Correction, "If democracies don't agree to give up democracy, we'll make them.")
—along with the administrative apparatus to force powerful interests to comply—then the increasing political and economic chaos of climate change will usher in yet more authoritarian regimes that offer an entirely different coercive agenda. (The author finally swerves into the truth. Without liberty, we get tyrants. Whether they're tyrants from the Left or tyrants from the Right, they're tyrants. The author's "solution" only leads to tyranny.
The Green New Deal isn’t just an important policy initiative. It may be the last democratic (Democratic??? Where?)
method of guiding Lifeboat Earth to a safe harbor.
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