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Abstract
In the face of climate change, along what path might we attempt transformation that could create a just and livable planet? Recently we proposed a framework for anticipating the possible political–economic forms that might emerge as the world's climate changes. Our framework outlines four possible paths; two of those paths are defined by what is called “Leviathan,” the emergence of a form of planetary sovereignty. In this article we elaborate by examining the adaptive character of emergent planetary sovereignty. To grasp this, we need a theory that can see through our ostensibly “postpolitical” moment to grasp not the disintegration but the adaptation of the political. What does it mean to say the political adapts? Reduced to its essence, it is to say that if the character of political life prevents a radical response to crisis, then it is the political that must change. A materialist attempt to elaborate on this question must begin by reflecting on the manifest inequalities of power in the current mode of global political-economic regulation. After doing so, we conclude by arguing for a return to the concept of natural history.
面对气候变迁，我们能够依循什麽样的道路，达到可以创造公平且宜居的地球之转变？晚近我们提出期待可能的政治—经济形式之框架，这些形式或许会随着世界气候的变迁而出现。我们的框架概述四条可能的路径；其中两条路径以所谓的“利维坦（Leviathan）”定义之——一种地球主权形式的浮现。我们于本文中，透过检视浮现中的地球主权的调适特徵来阐述之。为了进行理解，我们需要能够透视我们显着的“后政治”时刻的理论，以领会政治的调适，而非政治的分解。政治调适意味着什麽？以简化的本质而言，政治调适意味着，如果政治生活的特徵阻碍了对危机的激进回应，那麽此种政治便必须改变。阐述此一问题的物质主义尝试，必须始于反思在当前的全球政治—经济规范模式中，显着的权力不均。此后，我们在结论中主张回归自然历史的概念。
Frente a la realidad del cambio climático, ¿de qué manera podríamos intentar la transformación que pudiese crear un planeta justo y habitable? Hace poco propusimos un marco que anticipara las formas político-económicas que podrán aparecer a medida que cambie el clima del mundo. Nuestro marco de predicción esboza cuatro posibilidades; dos de éstas se definen como “Leviatanes,” la emergencia de una forma de soberanía planetaria. En el artículo nos extendemos un poco examinando el carácter adaptativo de la emergente soberanía planetaria. Para captar esto, necesitamos una teoría que pueda ver a través de nuestro momento ostensiblemente “pospolítico” que opte no por la desintegración de lo político sino por su adaptación. ¿Qué se quiere decir con que lo político se adapte? Concentrándonos en lo esencial, se quiere decir que si el carácter de la vida política previene una respuesta radical a la crisis, entonces lo político es lo que debe cambiar. Un intento materialista de elaborar alrededor de esta cuestión debe empezar reflexionando sobre las manifiestas desigualdades de poder en el modo actual de la regulación global político-económica. Después de hecho lo anterior, concluimos abogando por un regreso al concepto de historia natural.
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Notes
1 The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development founded the IEA in 1974 (at U.S. behest) to coordinate wealthy countries’ response to dependence on Middle Eastern oil.
2 Hence the new geography of energy demands increasing amounts of energy in the process of extraction relative to the energy of that extracted. During the last century, the global average fell from 1:100 to 1:30 and as low as 1:5 in some unconventional operations. In other words, whereas an average extraction project once produced one hundred times the amount of energy invested, it now produces only thirty times, and often less (Bridge and LeBillon Citation2013, 9).
3 The data supporting this realization—familiar to many geographers—include the following: In 2011 global CO2 emissions reached a record high of 31.6 gigatons (Gt), a 1.0 Gt (3.2 percent) increase over 2010 (IEA 2012). The world is on track to emit ∼58 Gt in 2020, the year the Durban agreement commitments are supposed to begin, ∼14 Gt more than can be emitted if we are to limit warming to 2°C (United Nations Environment Program 2012). From 2004 to 2013, atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations measured at Mauna Loa increased 2.14 percent, the fastest decadal increase yet (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Citation2013). The rate of increase continues to accelerate. Between February 2012 and February 2013, Mauna Loa recorded a 3.26 ppm rise in CO2, registering 400 ppm for the first time in May 2013, relative to preindustrial levels of approximately 280 ppm (Zickfeld et al. Citation2009; Vidal Citation2013). Moreover, there has been no green energy boom: “[t]he drive to clean up the world's energy system has stalled,” and “the average unit of energy produced today is basically as dirty as it was 20 years ago” (IEA 2013). Finally, there is no substantive progress in international climate change negotiations, to say nothing of actual carbon mitigation. In the ruins of Kyoto, the UNFCCC lacks a coherent roadmap. The July 2013 U.S.–China agreements are narrow in scope and nonbinding.
4 Braun (Citation2014, 50) argues we treat capitalism and sovereignty as functions of a binary “‘on/off’ switch” (his term).
5 We endorse McCarthy's (2013) critique of Swyngedouw (Citation2010) and his argument that “there are … very substantial, significant, and ongoing struggles around the politics and politicization of climate change that are directly at odds with some of the ‘post-political’ dynamics that Swyngedouw sees” (McCarthy Citation2013, 23).
6 Žižek's translation (“better to take the risk and engage in fidelity to a Truth-Event, even if it ends in catastrophe, than to vegetate in the eventless utilitarian-hedonist survival of what Nietzsche called the ‘last men’”) is improbably loose (Žižek 2010, xv). Désêtre is a Lacanian word game, a derivative of misreading désire as “not going” (ir is a participle of “to go” in French); hence désêtre is “not being” or “disbeing.”
7 See, for example, Lawson and Elwood's (2014) excellent work on “relational poverty.”
8 By our reading, Poulantzas places the word social in “‘social’ relations” in scare quotes to emphasize that they are also natural relations. This passage, with its emphasis on the natural history of the formation of the political in capitalist society, lends support to Bob Jessop's assertion that “were he alive today, Poulantzas would be a political ecologist” (personal communication 2013). We urgently need a study that draws on Poulantzas's thought to study climate change and the capitalist state.
9 For example, “Existing and emerging economic instruments can foster adaptation by providing incentives for anticipating and reducing impacts (medium confidence). Instruments include public–private finance partnerships, loans, payments for environmental services, improved resource pricing, charges and subsidies, norms and regulations, and risk sharing and transfer mechanisms” (IPCC 2014, 24).
10 Mitchell's analysis of the natural history of capitalist democracy shares important similarities with our project, and we have learned much from his work. Unfortunately, as Labban (2013) notes, “Mitchell eliminates capitalism altogether from the natural history of carbon democracy and replaces social relations between persons with the relations of things to persons such that, to borrow from Marx (1864), the ‘definite social connections appear as social characteristics belonging naturally to things.’”
11 For a broad view of the scientific discussion of geoengineering, see the contributions to a special issue of the journal Climate Change, Vol. 77, No. 3–4 (2006).
12 See Karatani (Citation2008, 571). As Labban (Citation2012) shows, Karatani's Kantian “associationism” provides the basis for our conception of “climate X,” a kind of ideal path. Labban insightfully points out that in failing to articulate a properly materialist alternative, climate X remains an essentially theological concept (in reply, see Wainwright and Mann Citation2012).