Earth Power in the New Geopolitics

Abstract

The best way to think about the climate emergency is to imagine humanity has just arrived at a new planet somewhere in a distant galaxy. After all, as scientists tell us, our planet Earth will soon look like a new planet, with conditions radically changed from the ‘climate niche’ of the past 10,000 years, during which human civilization developed. Once settled on the new planet, our task is to terraform it, to build a new natural environment fit for human life and human flourishing. My general approach to the politics of climate change thus differs from the most common view among environmentalists. I do not believe we can speak of climate change as a product of the Anthropocene, the human-built world. Our inability to control the consequences of climate change shows this is still at heart a natural process, one triggered by human beings or, more specifically, by our limited ability to control natural processes and therefore by our incapacity to control the unintended consequences of our actions and choices. The solution to the climate emergency is not to exit the Anthropocene but, intriguingly, to enter it for the first time. The world building is a task significantly full of existential meaning and urgency.