Contingency Planning for Severe Climate Change

Abstract

What if we fail to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and so face its more severe impacts? I argue that asking this question reveals a new obligation of climate justice: contingency planning for severe climate change. Surprisingly, such plans are already being drafted. But the politics behind them is neoliberal and militarist. I identify the epistemology of futurity motivating contingency planning—possibilism—and argue that we can and should dissociate it from, and redeploy it against, neoliberal militarism.