Liberalism and the Challenge of Climate Change

Liberalism and the Challenge of Climate Change PDF Author: Christopher Shaw
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0429872763
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
In this book Christopher Shaw analyses how liberalism has shaped our understanding of climate change and how liberalism is legitimated in the face of a crisis for which liberalism has no answers. The language and symbolism we use to make sense of climate change arose in the post-World War II liberal institutions of the West. This language and symbolism, in neutralising the philosophical and ideological challenge climate change poses to the legitimacy of free market liberalism, has also closed off the possibility of imagining a different kind of future for humanity. The book is structured around a repurposing of the ‘guardrail’ concept, commonly used in climate science narratives to communicate the boundary between safe and dangerous climate change. Five discursive ‘guardrails’ are identified, which define a boundary between safe and dangerous ideas about how to respond to climate change. The theoretical treatment of these issues is complemented with data from interviews with opinion-formers, decision-makers and campaigners, exploring what models of human nature and political possibilities guide their approach to the politics of climate change governance. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, liberal politics, environmental communication and environmental politics and philosophy, in general.

Climate Change and Liberal Priorities

Climate Change and Liberal Priorities PDF Author: Gideon Calder
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317991435
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Can, and should, liberalism make itself hospitable to a politics which does justice to climate change? To what extent are the values, methods, and assumptions of liberalism adaptable to the challenges raised? Liberal thinking – broadly construed – may dominate the Academy and the political landscape. Are the environmental priorities that are thrown into relief by climate change a threat to it, or are they an opportunity for it to show its worth? This book explores fresh arguments by leading scholars, both of whom are sceptical of liberalism’s capacity to meet these challenges, and sympathetic to the project of developing liberal values so as to create a liberal approach that can deliver climate change justice. The chapters appeal to new insights and considerations reveal the complexity of the issues at stake in the real world of climate change politics. They make the political theory of climate change justice available to decision-makers whose practice will determine whether we achieve it. This book was previously published as a special issue of Critical Review of International Social and Political Economy.

The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy

The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy PDF Author: David Shearman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313345058
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
This provocative book presents compelling evidence that the fundamental problem behind environmental destruction—and climate change in particular—is the operation of liberal democracy. Climate change threatens the future of civilization, but humanity is impotent in effecting solutions. Even in those nations with a commitment to reduce greenhouse emissions, they continue to rise. This failure mirrors those in many other spheres that deplete the fish of the sea, erode fertile land, destroy native forests, pollute rivers and streams, and utilize the world's natural resources beyond their replacement rate. In this provocative book, Shearman and Smith present evidence that the fundamental problem causing environmental destruction—and climate change in particular—is the operation of liberal democracy. Its flaws and contradictions bestow upon government—and its institutions, laws, and the markets and corporations that provide its sustenance—an inability to make decisions that could provide a sustainable society. Having argued that democracy has failed humanity, the authors go even further and demonstrate that this failure can easily lead to authoritarianism without our even noticing. Even more provocatively, they assert that there is merit in preparing for this eventuality if we want to survive climate change. They are not suggesting that existing authoritarian regimes are more successful in mitigating greenhouse emissions, for to be successful economically they have adopted the market system with alacrity. Nevertheless, the authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power. There are in existence highly successful authoritarian structures—for example, in medicine and in corporate empires—that are capable of implementing urgent decisions impossible under liberal democracy. Society is verging on a philosophical choice between liberty or life. But there is a third way between democracy and authoritarianism that the authors leave for the final chapter. Having brought the reader to the realization that in order to halt or even slow the disastrous process of climate change we must choose between liberal democracy and a form of authoritarian government by experts, the authors offer up a radical reform of democracy that would entail the painful choice of curtailing our worldwide reliance on growth economies, along with various legal and fiscal reforms. Unpalatable as this choice may be, they argue for the adoption of this fundamental reform of democracy over the journey to authoritarianism.

Analysis of Climate Change Cooperation. The Viewpoint of Classical Liberalism and the Kantian Triangle

Analysis of Climate Change Cooperation. The Viewpoint of Classical Liberalism and the Kantian Triangle PDF Author:
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3346178609
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 31

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Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject Politics - General and Theories of International Politics, grade: 2,0, University of Applied Sciences Regensburg, language: English, abstract: Climate change is increasingly becoming a global challenge. This makes cross-border efforts and cooperation of nation states fundamental when searching for constructive and sustainable solutions. It shows relevancy for evaluating and analyzing the interdependencies and interactions between the actors involved. Hence, this paper aims to study the effect of climate change on international relations by examining its impact on the development of international organizations. In order to explain the connection between climate change and international organizations, the political theory of classical liberalism has been used. A special tool applied was the Kantian triangle, which is based on Immanuel Kant’s liberal approaches to stability in global systems against the backdrop of classical liberalism. The triangle describes the pacifying effect of an interaction between democracy, economic interdependence and international organizations, which facilitates perpetual peace. Focusing on the factor of international organizations, a brief overview on institutions established and agreements made in order to halt climate change and reduce its implications will then be given at the end of the paper.

From Free to Fair Markets

From Free to Fair Markets PDF Author: Richard Holden
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197625975
Category : Competition, Unfair
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
'From Free to Fair Markets' proposes a new vision of liberalism coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. An accessible articulation of a new economic path for liberal societies, this book addresses problems of economic disadvantage, stagnation, inequality, and climate change, and simultaneously emphasizes the importance of markets in ensuring the efficiency and sustainability of policy solutions. With concrete policies and practical steps, Rosalind Dixon and Richard Holden's proposal for future of liberalism offers a new way to think about economic policy that is fair and capable of responding to the challenges of a post-COVID world.

Sustaining Liberal Democracy

Sustaining Liberal Democracy PDF Author: M. Wissenburg
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403900795
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Assuming that liberalism, liberal democracy and the free market are here to stay, this book asks how sustainability can be interpreted in ways that respect liberal democratic values and institutions. Among the problems addressed are the compatibility of liberal proceduralism with substansive 'green' ideals, the existence and potential of eco-friendly principles and ideas in classical liberal political theory, the role of rights and duties and of democracy and deliberation, and the 'greening' potential of modern environmental-focused practices in liberal democracies.

The Green Book

The Green Book PDF Author: Duncan Brack
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1849545618
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
Leading Liberal Democrats and policy experts re-examine their political approach and propose a radical new direction for the party, setting the agenda for the next election and beyond. The Green Book cogently argues that a low-carbon economy and environmental investments are the best way to escape from sluggish growth, create new jobs and share prosperity. It is a clarion call for Liberal Democrats to treat the environmental crisis as a core challenge of economic policy, not a discrete problem. Policies that protect and enhance the natural world - on which our economy and society ultimately depend for our health, well-being and prosperity - should be the driving force behind the party's programme. Furthermore, green policies can provide a vital, clear and popular distinction between Liberal Democrats and Conservatives at the next election. The Green Book offers a challenge to current Liberal Democrat thinking - and stimulating reading to anyone who cares about the environment and the future of the British economy.

Natural Catastrophe

Natural Catastrophe PDF Author: Brian Elliott
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474410502
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Brian Elliott persuasively argues that climate change is not a natural phenomenon but a political phenomenon: a symptom of neoliberal governance. This helps us to understand how, across wealthy liberal democracies, environmental concern has increasingly been framed as a consumer responsibility issue rather than as a matter of structural social-political transformation. Thinking of a world truly beyond climate change requires us to reimagine the state beyond its current neoliberal configuration. Elliott argues that, in order to achieve this, environmental politics in the west needs to renew the Marxist challenge to the global market's benign production of social utility and construct a new non-apocalyptic politics of nature.

Green Liberalism

Green Liberalism PDF Author: Marcel Wissenburg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134228295
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
This is an agenda-setting exploration of the relationship between green politics and liberal ideology. Ecological problems provide unique challenges for liberal democracies.; This challenge is examined by the author who aims to fill the gap between short-term ecological modernization and the politically infeasible longer term utopian approaches.

Green Leviathan or the Poetics of Political Liberty

Green Leviathan or the Poetics of Political Liberty PDF Author: Mark Coeckelbergh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000394085
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
This book discusses the problem of freedom and the limits of liberalism considering the challenges of governing climate change and artificial intelligence (AI). It mobilizes resources from political philosophy to make an original argument about the future of technology and the environment. Can artificial intelligence save the planet? And does that mean we will have to give up our political freedom? Stretching the meaning of freedom but steering away from authoritarian options, this book proposes that, next to using other principles such as justice and equality and taking collective action and cooperating at a global level, we adopt a positive and relational conception of freedom that creates better conditions for human and non-human flourishing. In contrast to easy libertarianism and arrogant techno-solutionism, this offers a less symptomatic treatment of the global crises we face and gives technologies such as AI a role in the gathering of a new, more inclusive political collective and the ongoing participative making of new common worlds. Written in a clear and accessible style, Green Leviathan or the Poetics of Political Liberty will appeal to researchers and students working in political philosophy, environmental philosophy, and the philosophy of technology.