The ‘glass ceiling’ of the environmental state and the social denial of mortality

ABSTRACT

Despite the development of the environmental state, climate change is accelerating. The concept of the ‘glass ceiling’ – denoting an unexplained barrier, impeding the state from using its powers effectively to mitigate threats that it acknowledges should be addressed – has been put forward to account for this. Here, a structural account of this phenomenon is advanced, which suggests that environmental policies are generally outcompeted among government priorities wherever they threaten the capitalist growth imperative. In addition, social/cultural factors, based on the psychology of denial, provide a necessary contribution to our understanding. A three-fold denialism is at work: of climate change itself, the measures required to tackle it (where these contradict a modern faith in material progress), and the potential incapacity of the state to protect society (discouraging close attention to the effectiveness of its climate policies).

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental state
• climate change
• green political theory
• denial
• Terror Management Theory
• sociology of immortality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Jonas (1996) makes a similar point regarding the impact of awareness of the potential for nuclear holocaust on the ability of people to believe in a vicarious immortality of name or influence.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, via the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP).