Rating: 8
Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future
Geoff Mann & Joel Wainwright | 2018
If you’re looking for a political roadmap of our options moving forward and what world politics might look like under a changed climate, Climate Leviathan is an ideal starting point. In two hundred pages the authors outline four potential social formations (Climate Leviathan, Climate Behemoth, Climate Mao, and Climate X) that humanity can embrace. Mann and Wainwright do an outstanding job at explaining how each of these might arise, what their existence would entail for humanity, and what they believe should be done about it. This book makes a compelling argument for our need to adopt a regime of planetary sovereignty based on political ideologies, economic theory, and social justice.
“The political problems we face cannot be fixed by simply delivering science to the masses. If good climate data and models were all that were needed to address climate change, we would have seen a political response in the 1980s. Our challenge is closer to a crisis of imagination and ideology; people do not change their conception of the world just because they are presented with new data.”
“The priority must be to organize for a rapid reduction of carbon emissions by collective boycott and strike. Is this utopianism? Possibly, but not necessarily. This is Climate X, and whatever form it takes, it has the extraordinary merit attached to that which is absolutely necessary. We must create something new. More of the same is not an option.”