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Great Powers, Climate Change, and
Global Environmental Responsibilities

Robert Falkner
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Great Powers, Climate Change, and Global
Environmental Responsibilities
Great Powers, Climate
Change, and Global
Environmental
Responsibilities
Edited by
ROBE RT FA L K NE R
BAR RY BU Z A N
1
3
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Acknowledgements
This book has its origins in a workshop on ‘Great Power Responsibility and
Global Environmental Protection’ that we convened in June 2018. Hosted by the
Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), the two-day workshop
brought together 12 scholars to discuss how existing and emerging global powers
have defined their responsibilities towards the global environment. We are grate-
ful to all presenters and discussants that participated in the workshop, including
Steven Bernstein, Nicholas Chan, Carlotta Clivio, Heidi Wang-Kaeding, and Lucie
Quian Xia.
The initial workshop would not have been possible without the generous
funding provided by the LSE’s Department of International Relations and the
Grantham Research Institute. We are also grateful for the organizational sup-
port offered by the Grantham Research Institute, and especially Ginny Pavey, Zoe
Williamson, and Stuart Rodgers.
A selection of the workshop papers was presented at the 2019 Annual Conven-
tion of the International Studies Association (ISA) in Toronto. The ISA panel on
great power responsibility and global environmental protection provoked many
helpful reactions and suggestions from the participants and audience members,
and we are particularly grateful to the discussant, Andrew Hurrell, for his insightful
comments on the conference papers.
When we first proposed the idea for this book to Oxford University Press
(OUP), Dominic Byatt, the commissioning editor for politics and international
relations at OUP, gave it an enthusiastic reception. We are grateful for his
unwavering support and patience throughout the book’s gestation. Our thanks
also go to the other members of OUP’s editorial team for successfully steering the
manuscript through the production process. We are particularly grateful to OUP’s
two anonymous reviewers, whose perceptive comments and suggestions greatly
helped us to sharpen the focus of the book and improve the final product.
Finally, we thank Colin Vanelli and Achille Negrier, two undergraduate stu-
dents in the Department of International Relations at LSE, for providing research
assistance and helping us compile the index for the book.
Robert Falkner and Barry Buzan
London, September 2021
Contents
List of Tables and Figures ix

List of Abbreviations x
List of Contributors xiii
PART I . IN T RODU C TION

1. Introduction 3
2. Great Powers and Environmental Responsibilities: A
Conceptual Framework 14
Barry Buzan and Robert Falkner
PA RT II . E NVI RON M E N TAL POW ER S

3. Great Expectations: The United States and the Global
Environment 51
Robyn Eckersley
4. China as a ‘Partial’ Environmental Great Power 71
Pichamon Yeophantong and Evelyn Goh
5. The European Union: A Green Great Power? 95
Katja Biedenkopf, Claire Dupont, and Diarmuid Torney
6. Brazil: A Boundary Case of Environmental Power 116
Kathryn Hochstetler
7. Politics of Responsibility: India in Global Climate
Governance 139
Miriam Prys-Hansen
8. Great Power Ambitions and National Interest in Russia’s
Climate Change Policy 164
Alina Averchenkova
viii contents
PA RT I II . INTE R NAT IONA L I N STI TU T ION S AND

I SSU E - A R E AS
9. Great Power Responsibility for Climate Security in the
United Nations Security Council 189
Shirley V. Scott
10. Great Power Responsibility and International Climate
Leadership 208
Sanna Kopra
11. Environmental Great Powers and Multilateral
Environmental Agreements 227
Susan Park
12. World on Fire: Coal Politics and Great Power Responsibility 249
Stacy D. VanDeveer and Tim Boersma
PA RT IV. C ONC LU SION S

13. Great Powers, Climate Change, and Global Responsibilities:
A Concluding Assessment 279
Index 290
List of Tables and Figures
Tables
5.1. Global GHG emissions of the top six emitters 101

6.1. Review: Claimed causes of the drop in deforestation in Brazil after 2005 122
8.1. Key periods in Russia’s international and domestic climate change policy 169
8.2. Summary of climate change targets committed to internationally by Russia 170
11.1. Environmental great powers in select multilateral environmental
agreements 234
12.1. Coal trends and responsibility in Australia, India, Indonesia, and Russia 269
Figures
5.1. EU 27 member states’ total GHG emissions, 1990–2018, measured as

percentage compared to base year of 1990 102
6.1. Brazilian greenhouse gas emissions (t CO2 eq) by sector, 1990–2019 121
6.2. Wind and solar power in Brazil, 2002–2019 (built and contracted grid-scale
supply) 124
6.3. Number of technical cooperation projects and activities 132
8.1. Greenhouse gas emissions in Russia, Mt CO2 eq 167
8.2. Global greenhouse gas emissions, Mt CO2 eq 168
11.1. Multilateral environmental agreements, 1850–2016 231
11.2. Great powers’ adoption of multilateral environmental agreements 232
List of Abbreviations
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations

BASIC Brazil, South Africa, India, and China
BNDES Brazilian Development Bank
BRI Belt and Road Initiative
BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa
CBD Convention on Biological Diversity
CBDR common but differentiated responsibilities
CBDR-RC common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities
CCUS carbon-capture utilization and storage
CDM Clean Development Mechanism
CEQ Council for Environmental Quality
CFC chlorofluorocarbon
CITES Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
CLRTAP Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution
COP Conference of the Parties
DoD Department of Defense
DoE Department of Energy
DRM disaster risk management
ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States
EITI Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
EPA Environmental Protection Agency
ES English School of International Relations
ETS emissions trading system
EU European Union
FERC federal regulatory agency
GCF Green Climate Fund
GEP global environmental politics
GDP gross domestic product
GHG greenhouse gas
GIP Green Investment Principles for the Belt and Road
GIS global international society
GM genetically modified
GMO genetically modified organism
GPM great power management
GW gigawatt
HCFC hydrochlorofluorocarbon
HFC hydrofluorocarbon
IAF International Arrangement on Forests
list of abbreviations xi
IBSA India, Brazil, South Africa

ICJ International Court of Justice
IEA International Energy Agency
IGO intergovernmental organization
INDC intended nationally determined contribution
IO international organization
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IR International Relations
IRENA International Renewable Energy Agency
ISFR India State of Forest Report
IWC International Whaling Commission
LDC least developed country
LMC Lancang-Mekong Cooperation
LULUCF land-use and land-use change and forests
MEA multilateral environmental agreement
MENA Middle East and North Africa
MEP Ministry of Environmental Protection
MOFCOM Ministry of Commerce
MOP Meeting of the Parties
MSF Médecins Sans Frontières
MtCO2 e mega tonnes of CO2 equivalent
MW megawatt
NAPCC National Action Plan on Climate Change
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NDC nationally determined contribution
NGO non-governmental organization
NTS non-traditional security
OCI Oil Change International
ODS ozone-depleting substances
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OPEC Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
OSCE Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
P5 five permanent members (UN Security Council)
PAC Program for Growth Acceleration
POPs persistent organic pollutants
POWER Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitaliza-
tion
PPCDAM Plan to Prevent and Control Amazon Deforestation
PV photovoltaic
REACH Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals
REDD+ Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
SAARC South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
SDGs sustainable development goals
SOE state-owned enterprise
SPS sanitary and phytosanitary measures
xii list of abbreviations
SSCAF South-South Cooperation Assistance Fund

UK United Kingdom
UN United Nations
UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
UNCLOS United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNEP United Nations Environmental Programme
UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
UNGA United Nations General Assembly
UNSC United Nations Security Council
US United States
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
WMO World Meteorological Organization
WTO World Trade Organization
List of Contributors
Alina Averchenkova is a Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute

on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political
Science, UK, where she leads the Governance and Legislation research theme. Her current
work focuses on the analysis of the implementation of the Paris Agreement, in particular
on national climate governance and climate change legislation, as well as on international
climate finance. She also advises policy makers and parliaments on the design and imple-
mentation of climate change laws and policies. She has published widely on the subject,
including co-editing Trends in Climate Change Legislation (2017).
Katja Biedenkopf is an Associate Professor of Sustainability Politics and the team leader
of the Sustainable Futures research group at the University of Leuven, Belgium. She has
published on European Union external environmental governance and global environ-
mental politics in various journals, including the Journal of European Public Policy, Global
Environmental Politics, and International Studies Quarterly.
Tim Boersma is a Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. In
his full-time capacity he works at the Dutch bank ABN AMRO, where he leads the Sustain-
ability & Strategy Advisory in North America. Previously, Boersma was a Senior Research
Scholar and Natural Gas Program Director at Columbia University, a Fellow and Acting
Director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution, and
worked in the Dutch electricity sector. He has (co-)authored three books, and has published
in Energy Economics, Energy Policy, Foreign Affairs, and other leading journals.
Barry Buzan is Professor Emeritus at the London School of Economics and Political Sci-
ence, UK, and a Senior Fellow at LSE IDEAS. Previously, he was Montague Burton Professor
of International Relations at the LSE, and in 1998 he was elected a fellow of the British
Academy. His books relevant to the English School include: From International to World
Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation (2004); Contesting
International Society in East Asia (2014, co-edited with Yongjin Zhang); An Introduction
to the English School of International Relations: The Societal Approach (2014); The Global
Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations (2015, with
George Lawson); and Global International Society: A New Framework for Analysis (2018,
with Laust Schouenborg).
Claire Dupont is an Assistant Professor of European Governance at the Department of
Public Governance and Management at Ghent University, Belgium. Her research focuses
on the policy, politics, and governance of sustainability transitions, with a particular em-
phasis on climate governance in the European Union. She has published in journals such
as West European Politics, Journal of European Integration, and Politics and Governance.
xiv list of contributors
Robyn Eckersley is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor in the Discipline of Political

Science, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, and a Fellow of
the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. She has published widely in the fields of
environmental political theory, the state and the environment, ecology and democracy,
international relations, and global environmental governance, with a special focus on cli-
mate change. Her books include Environmentalism and Political Theory (1992), The Green
State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty (2004), Special Responsibilities: Global Prob-
lems and American Power (2012, with Mlada Bukovansky, Ian Clark, Chris Reus-Smit, and
Richard Price), Globalization and the Environment (2013, with Peter Christoff), and The
Oxford Handbook of International Political Theory (2018, co-edited with Chris Brown).
Robert Falkner is Associate Professor of International Relations and Research Director of

the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London
School of Economics and Political Science, UK. He has published widely on global envi-
ronmental politics and international political economy, including Environmentalism and
Global International Society (2021), Business Power and Conflict in International Environ-
mental Politics (2008), and The Handbook of Global Climate and Environment Policy (edited,
2013). He is currently working on a book (with Barry Buzan) that explores the fluctuating
fortunes of the market norm in global international society.
Evelyn Goh is the Shedden Professor of Strategic Policy Studies at the Australian National
University, where she is also Research Director at the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre.
She has published widely on US–China relations and diplomatic history, regional security
order in East Asia, Southeast Asian strategies towards great powers, and environmental
security. Her recent books include the edited volume Rising China’s Influence in Develop-
ing Asia (2016) and Re-thinking Sino-Japanese Alienation: History Problems and Historical
Opportunities (2020, with Barry Buzan).
Kathryn Hochstetler is Professor of International Development and Head of Department

at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. She has published widely
on the role of Brazil and other emerging powers in environmental politics, both in national
policy and international negotiations. Her most recent book is Political Economies of Energy
Transition: Wind and Solar Power in Brazil and South Africa (2021).
Sanna Kopra is an Academy of Finland postdoctoral research fellow in the Arctic Centre
at University of Lapland and a visiting scholar in the Aleksanteri Institute at the University
of Helsinki, Finland. She is the author of China and Great Power Responsibility for Climate
Change (2019) and co-editor of Chinese Policy and Presence in the Arctic (2020, with Timo
Koivurova).
Susan Park is Professor of Global Governance in the Department of Government and

International Relations at the University of Sydney. She focuses on how international or-
ganizations and global governance can become greener and more accountable. Her most
recent books are: Environmental Recourse at the Multilateral Development Banks (2020),
Global Environmental Governance and the Accountability Trap (2019, edited with Teresa
Kramarz), and International Organisations: Theories and Explanations (2018).
list of contributors xv
Miriam Prys-Hansen is a Lead Research Fellow and Head of Research Programme 4:

Global Orders and Foreign Policy at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies
(GIGA). Previously, she was the Academic Director of the Doctoral Programme at GIGA.
She has published on global and regional environmental politics, and emerging powers and
the BRICS, as well as regionalism and regional institutions. Her regional expertise is in
South Asia. Her publications have appeared in journals including International Studies Re-
view, Journal of International Relations and Development, and International Relations of the
Asia-Pacific.
Shirley V. Scott is Professor of International Law and International Relations and Head of
the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at UNSW Canberra. She has published widely
in leading journals of international law and international relations on the role of interna-
tional law in realpolitik and global governance. One specific line of research since 2007 has
been that of the scope for the UN Security Council to play a constructive role in the global
response to climate change. She is President of the Asian Society of International Law and
a Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. She is co-editor of International
Law in the Era of Climate Change (2012, with Rosemary Rayfuse) and Climate Change and
the United Nations Security Council (2018, with Charlotte Ku).
Diarmuid Torney is an Associate Professor in the School of Law and Government at Dublin
City University. His research focuses on comparative and global politics of climate change,
environment, and energy. He is author of European Climate Leadership in Question: Policies
toward China and India (2015) and co-editor of European Union External Environmental
Policy: Rules, Regulation and Governance Beyond Borders (2018) and Ireland and the Climate
Crisis (2020). He is the chair of Future Earth Ireland, the national committee convened by
the Royal Irish Academy of Future Earth, a 10-year global research initiative to develop
knowledge for responding effectively to the risks and opportunities of global environment
change.
Stacy D. VanDeveer is Professor of Global Governance and Human Security and Chair of
the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security and Global Governance in the
John C. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of
Massachusetts Boston. His research interests include European Union environmental and
energy politics, global environmental policymaking and institutions, comparative envi-
ronmental politics, connections between environmental and security issues, the roles of
expertise in policymaking, and the global politics of resources and consumption. In addi-
tion to authoring and co-authoring over 100 articles, book chapters, working papers, and
reports, he has co-edited or co-authored 10 books, including Routledge Handbook of the Re-
source Nexus (2018); The European Union and the Environment (2015); Waste, Want or War?
(2015); Transnational Climate Change Governance (2014); and Comparative Environmental
Politics (2012).
Pichamon Yeophantong is an Australian Research Council Fellow and Senior Lecturer
in International Relations and Development at the University of New South Wales
(Canberra)—Australian Defence Force Academy. Her research interests lie at the intersec-
tion of Chinese foreign policy, environmental politics, and sustainable development in the
Asia-Pacific.
PART I
INTRODUCTION
1
Introduction
Climate change is one of the most pressing global challenges of the twenty-first
century. To avert catastrophic global warming, international society needs to take
urgent, and internationally coordinated, action. Although virtually all nations are
united in their desire to tackle the man-made causes of global warming, they have
yet to reverse the long-term trend of rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The
Covid-19 pandemic provided temporary relief in that it led to a drop in global
emissions by up to 7% in 2020 (UNEP, 2020), but the post-pandemic economic
recovery seems likely to return the world to a path of rising emissions again.
As yet, states’ climate policy intentions and emission pledges have proved to be
inadequate.
Climate change is a truly global problem, requiring all nations to undertake mit-
igation and adaptation measures. At the same time, the responsibility for causing
the problem is unequally distributed, as is the capacity to respond to the climate
threat in an effective manner. Two-thirds of current global emissions originate
from just 10 major economies, and by and large it is the same countries that
also have the economic and technological clout to develop and finance the re-
quired global solutions. Climate change and international power inequality are
thus closely entwined. Indeed, if the major emitters were to act decisively and in
a coordinated manner, the chances of averting a climate catastrophe would be
much improved. By the same token, even if only some of them fail or refuse to
act responsibly, the world faces a bleak future.
The International Relations (IR) literature on global environmental politics
(GEP) has tended to acknowledge, implicitly at least, the important role that a
few select major powers play, either as international leaders that set an example
for others and shape international environmental agendas, or as veto players that
block progress in multilateral environmental negotiations (Kelemen and Vogel,
2010; Liefferink and Wurzel, 2017; Eckersley, 2020). GEP scholarship has also
highlighted the inherent inequalities that structure the environmental policy area,
both within societies and between them, and especially with regard to unequal lev-
els of economic development and consumption levels (Roberts and Parks, 2007;
Robert Falkner and Barry Buzan, Introduction. In: Great Powers, Climate Change, and Global Environmental
Responsibilities. Edited by Robert Falkner and Barry Buzan, Oxford University Press.
© Oxford University Press (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198866022.003.0001
4 falkner and buzan
Ciplet, Roberts, and Khan, 2015). However, questions of power asymmetry in

international environmental politics, the nature of states’ environmental power,
what counts as a great power in the environmental field, and whether great envi-
ronmental power comes with special responsibilities have not attracted the kind
of systematic attention in GEP that they deserve.
This book seeks to fill that gap. By connecting the IR literature on great powers
and great power responsibility with GEP scholarship, it develops a new analytical
perspective on international power inequality and the role of environmental great
powers in GEP, with a special focus on international climate politics. The contri-
butions to this volume develop and apply a conceptual framework for the study of
environmental great powers and their special international responsibilities. They
examine how individual great powers have responded to the global climate chal-
lenge and whether they have accepted a special responsibility for stabilizing the
global climate. And they place emerging discourses on great power responsibility
in the context of wider debates about international environmental leadership and
climate change securitization.
Great Powers and the Global Climate Challenge
The urgency of the climate change problem is now well understood. Man-made
global warming, which is caused by GHG emissions from the burning of fossil fu-
els (coal, oil, gas) and land use changes (e.g. deforestation), has already led to a 1°C
increase of average global temperatures since pre-industrial times. If current net
emission trends continue unabated, the world is likely to face a global warming
trend of between 3°C and 5°C by the end of the twenty-first century. The eco-
logical consequences of such runaway global warming would be catastrophic. If
left unchecked, climate change is expected to result in the melting of glaciers and
rising sea levels, more extreme weather patterns, heat waves and wild fires even
in arctic lands, the destruction of biologically diverse ecosystems, and changes in
the amount, frequency, and intensity of precipitation. Some of these changes are
already occurring (disappearance of glaciers, coral bleaching, wildfires) while oth-
ers will only kick in at a later stage. The challenge for humanity is that the longer
global warming is allowed to carry on, the stronger future ecological stresses will
be and the sooner we may reach ecological tipping points that lock in large-scale
and irreversible environmental damage (Lenton et al., 2019; Dalby, 2020).
International society has recognized the threat that global warming poses to
human well-being and prosperity. What is unclear, however, is whether the UN’s
multilateral climate regime can quickly enough come up with an effective re-
sponse. The 197 countries that negotiated the 2015 Paris Agreement to the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed to keep global
warming to well below 2°C. In order to stay within this temperature target, they
introduction 5
will need to bring GHG emissions under control, first by reaching a global emis-
sions peak as soon as possible and then by bringing them down to reach a balance
between GHG emissions and sinks (so-called net zero) by the second half of this
century. All of this is to be achieved through a system of voluntary climate mitiga-
tion pledges that are to be reviewed internationally. The key question is whether
the Paris Agreement’s framework for ratcheting up national climate ambitions
can set the world on the path towards deep decarbonization, and within a time-
frame that keeps global warming below 2°C (Falkner, 2016b). The past record of
multilateral efforts is far from encouraging. Issue complexity, institutional inertia,
and diverging national interests have turned climate change into a ‘wicked’ global
problem that seems to exceed the problem-solving capacity of environmental
multilateralism (Levin et al., 2012; Keohane and Victor, 2016).
The shortcomings of UN-centred climate multilateralism have raised the ques-
tion of whether an alternative, minilateral approach is needed to advance inter-
national climate mitigation. In climate change as much as in other global policy
arenas, overcoming political and economic conflicts among the most powerful
countries is a critical first step towards international cooperation. This also ap-
plies to multilateral regimes that grant every member an equal vote and make
consensus-based decision-making the norm. In the WTO trade regime as much
as in the UNFCCC climate regime, and indeed in the UN Security Council, some
states are ‘more equal’ than others. As The Economist noted in the run-up to
the UN Climate Summit in September 2019, with three-quarters of global GHG
emissions coming from just 12 economies, a minilateral deal by the dozen ‘great
and middling-but-mucky powers’ might ‘break the impasse, pushing enough of
the world onto a steeper mitigation trajectory to benefit all—and be widely emu-
lated’ (2019: 14). Similar calls for a minilateral solution have been issued by others
too, particularly so since the 2009 Copenhagen conference, which failed to agree
a legally binding successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol (Falkner, 2016a: 88–89).
Focusing international environmental negotiations on the few powers that really
matter and that have the economic clout to solve global environmental problems
is seen by some analysts as a way out of widespread multilateral gridlock (Naı́m,
2009; Victor, 2011; Nordhaus, 2015) that has bedevilled not just the climate regime
but also other international environmental forums.
Irrespective of whether a minilateral solution to climate change is feasible, the
spotlight that global warming throws on the world’s leading powers raises broader
questions about their role in global environmental politics. For various reasons,
the great powers, whether established or emerging, occupy a central place in
debates around global environmental sustainability. Because their international
power is invariably based on a large domestic economy and industrial base, great
powers are usually a key source of global environmental degradation. Their over-
sized economic and ecological footprint gives them the power to inflict major
harm on global ecological systems. At the same time, most great powers also
6 falkner and buzan
possess significant technological and environmental capacities, as well as diplo-

matic clout and experience with international leadership. The great powers are
thus central to any international effort to advance global environmental protec-
tion. They are, in other words, of systemic importance to global environmental
sustainability.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, debates around the worsening climate crisis and how
to avert it have raised questions about the environmental responsibilities of the
most powerful nations. Most established great powers from the group of indus-
trialized economies (e.g. US, Germany, UK, Japan) have already accepted some
special responsibilities for the global environment, though they fail to agree on
how far these responsibilities should go. Ever since the creation of the interna-
tional environmental agenda in the 1970s, they have taken on more demanding
environmental obligations and provided environmental aid to poorer countries,
reflecting both their greater economic capability and larger historical responsi-
bility. In recent years, emerging powers from the developing world (e.g. China,
India, Brazil) have faced growing demands to make a greater contribution to
global environmental protection. Although still officially classified as developing
countries, they have come under pressure to redefine their position within GEP
in line with the growing environmental footprint of their expanding economies.
In the international climate negotiations, this has led to the emergence of more
fluid international alliances and bargaining groups. The BASIC group (Brazil, In-
dia, South Africa and China), for example, emerged in 2009 and helped steer the
climate regime in the direction of more balanced international mitigation efforts
among all major emitters. Emerging powers may be defending their developing
country status, but they cannot escape being asked to take on greater international
responsibilities.
In this way, the global climate crisis has brought into sharper relief the vexed
questions of how to define and differentiate global environmental responsibilities,
and how these should apply to the world’s leading powers. As yet, there is little
consensus among the great powers, whether established or emerging, about these
questions. However, as global warming accelerates and begins to threaten not just
major ecological systems but also the national sovereignty of states (e.g. low-lying
island states faced with rising sea levels) and the stability of the international or-
der (e.g. intensified resource conflicts, disruptive migration flows), climate change
may soon emerge as a systemic threat to international society that requires great
powers to take on special managerial responsibilities. As yet, coordinated great
power management (GPM) for climate change seems a distant possibility, and
the great powers can mainly be described as ‘great irresponsibles’ when it comes
to climate change mitigation. But ‘events’ could change that, and the question of
how international power inequality intersects with the global ecological crisis, and
what special role great powers should play, is already firmly established on the
international agenda.
introduction 7
As mentioned above, great powers have had an ambiguous presence in the IR lit-
erature on GEP. It has long been assumed—implicitly if not always explicitly—that
the world’s leading powers are deeply implicated in many global environmen-
tal problems. Simply by being major economies with an outsized industrial and
military presence, great powers are often blamed for causing pollution and ex-
cessive consumption of natural resources. There is also a widespread sense that
great powers are key to creating international rules for environmental protection,
whether as environmental leaders or veto players. Talk of great powers as ‘the
main actors in global environmental politics’ (Streck and Terhalle, 2013: 534) has
become commonplace, especially in the context of the climate regime, in which
geopolitical dimensions and great power cooperation have gained in importance,
not least since the 2009 Copenhagen conference (Brenton, 2013; DeCanio and
Fremstad, 2013; Terhalle and Depledge, 2013). Yet, paralleling the IR discipline
generally, despite recognising power inequality as an important structural condi-
tion, the GEP literature has never developed a clear and unambiguous definition
of what counts as a ‘power’, let alone a ‘great power’, in the environmental field.
The nature of international power, the role of great powers, and whether there is a
distinct group of environmental great powers thus remain undertheorized in GEP.
Overview of the Book
In this book we take a first step towards closing this gap by developing a theo-
retical framework that connects established IR approaches to the study of great
powers and GPM with GEP perspectives on the role played by major powers. We
apply this framework to a selection of countries that can claim to be environmen-
tal great powers and examine their evolving role in the context of international
climate politics.
In Chapter 2, the editors, Barry Buzan and Robert Falkner, set out the theo-
retical and conceptual framework that guides the contributions to this volume.
In a first step, they review the IR literature and distinguish between material and
social approaches to the study of great powers. They identify some of the diffi-
culties in determining which countries count as great powers at any given time
and discuss how the power shift from the West towards emerging powers and the
transition towards deep pluralism in international society is further complicating
the great power landscape. In a second step, Buzan and Falkner relate the great
power concept to global environmental politics. Applying a material and social
conception of power, the authors distinguish between two forms of environmental
power in international relations: negative power, which reflects a country’s control
over environmental resources and ability to cause environmental harm; and posi-
tive power, which rests on a country’s capability to promote global environmental
protection. Based on this dual notion of environmental power, they establish the
8 falkner and buzan
conditions under which individual countries can count as environmental great

powers before exploring the attribution of special international responsibilities
that comes with great power status. The chapter concludes with a review of the
historical evolution of special environmental responsibilities and the impact that
full securitization of the environment would have on great power responsibilities
in the environmental field.
In Chapter 3, Robyn Eckersley discusses the role that the US has played in
global environmental politics. As the world’s preeminent military, economic, and
environmental power, the US’s participation is essential if international environ-
mental policymaking is to succeed. Most scholars point to a long-term decline
in US environmental leadership and engagement, from an active role in shaping
the international environmental agenda in the 1970s and 1980s to a gradual re-
treat from leadership since the end of the Cold War, and particularly during the
anti-environmental Trump administration. Eckersley’s analysis offers a corrective
to this narrative of declining US leadership. She points to long-standing differ-
ences in US engagement across the wide range of international environmental
regimes and a persistent concern with projecting core economic interests and in-
dustrial competitiveness against intrusive international environmental regulation.
Her analysis shows that, despite playing an active role in international climate pol-
itics, the US has been reluctant to embrace special environmental responsibilities
in this area. Global environmental responsibility has never featured as part of US
grand strategy.
In Chapter 4, Pichamon Yeophantong and Evelyn Goh explore China’s rise
as a major environmental power and how it has come to define its global re-
sponsibilities towards the global environment. Thanks to its large population and
spectacular economic growth, the country has gained significant environmen-
tal power, with systemic consequences for global planetary health. The authors
argue that China has been slow to develop a positive and constructive role in
addressing environmental problems that could match its ability to cause envi-
ronmental harm, thus making it only a partial environmental great power. Yeo-
phantong and Goh point to the inherent tensions in China’s international climate
stance between its continued identity as a developing country that defends the
Global South’s reduced environmental responsibilities and an emerging discourse
of China’s great power status and responsibility for global climate cooperation.
China offers a prime example of how the strict North–South divide in defining
environmental responsibilities has started to break down, but without a new and
stable configuration of environmental great power responsibilities emerging.
The European Union’s emergence as a ‘green great power’ is the focus of
Chapter 5. As Katja Biedenkopf, Claire Dupont, and Diarmuid Torney point out,
the EU is not a fully fledged state and has therefore been neglected in the lit-
eratures on great powers and GPM. However, the EU has gradually acquired a
distinctive role in GEP, speaking and negotiating on behalf of its 27 member states.
introduction 9
Thanks to its unique quality as an international actor and considerable market

power, the EU has assumed a leading role in shaping international regulatory
standards, including in the environmental sector. Based on two cases studies of cli-
mate change and chemicals safety, Biedenkopf, Dupont, and Torney demonstrate
that the EU should indeed be considered a great power in GEP. It is internation-
ally recognized as a key player in global climate governance, which has become a
central element of the EU’s political identity and international diplomacy. How-
ever, given the EU’s success in reducing climate emissions and managing chemicals
pollution, its negative power has shrunk relative to other powers. Somewhat para-
doxically, the success of the EU’s environmental policy has therefore reduced its
veto power in global environmental politics, forcing it to rely ever more on its
positive environmental power to shape international environmental debates and
policies.
In Chapter 6, Kathryn Hochstetler focuses on Brazil as an emerging power, both
in international politics and in the field of environmental protection. She argues
that the country’s significant ecological endowments and impacts across a range of
environmental sectors make it, structurally at least, an environmental great power.
In the international climate negotiations at the Copenhagen conference in 2009,
Brazil joined other emerging powers in the BASIC grouping, thereby signalling its
intent to play a more active role in shaping the post-Kyoto climate treaty. However,
the country has struggled to exercise its newly found power in GEP in a consis-
tent manner. Despite earlier successes in fighting deforestation under President
Lula, the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest has gathered momentum again
under President Bolsonaro and the country has taken a backseat role in recent
international climate negotiations.
In Chapter 7, Miriam Prys-Hansen explores the shifting politics of responsibility
around India’s changing international status in global environmental and climate
politics. Building on the sociological understanding of great power responsibility,
she traces how different actors, both within and outside the country, have come to
attribute global responsibilities in line with India’s rising power and environmental
impact, and how the country has responded to such expectations. The Modi gov-
ernment has displayed some environmental leadership through its solar energy
initiative and as part of the BASIC group in the climate negotiations, suggesting
a certain degree of fluidity in the country’s traditional stance in climate politics.
However, Prys-Hansen’s close reading of government statements demonstrates
that India has largely resisted calls for enhanced environmental responsibility
that would reflect its rising power status. The country continues to defend the
long-established principle of a North–South division of responsibilities and sticks
to its identity as a developing country in the UNFCCC regime. Unlike China,
India has thus shown greater reluctance to respond to external and internal de-
mands for a realignment of its international environmental responsibilities in line
with its emerging power status and its own great power aspirations.
10 falkner and buzan
Chapter 8 discusses the case of Russia, which has received far less attention in
the literature on GEP than other major powers. Reviewing three decades of the
country’s involvement with the international climate regime, Alina Averchenkova
identifies several shifts in Russia’s approach. In the early 1990s, at a time when
Russia sought to reassert its claim to great power status after the collapse of the So-
viet Union, Russia offered initial support for international environmental norms
and alluded to a sense of great power responsibility. As the author points out, how-
ever, Russia struggled to gain international recognition for its early contribution
to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and took a more cautious approach in sub-
sequent negotiations on emission reduction targets. Russia supported the Kyoto
Protocol and briefly assumed a pivotal role in international climate politics in the
early 2000s, when its ratification of Kyoto ensured the treaty’s entry into force.
However, deep domestic divisions over climate policy and a worsening economic
outlook for the country have helped to marginalize ‘common responsibility’ and
‘international cooperation’ framings of the climate challenge in favour of a more
nationalist outlook. Russia has slowly but steadily taken a backseat role in the cli-
mate negotiations, adopting a conservative and sovereigntist approach to global
climate responsibility.
In Chapter 9, Shirley Scott explores the extent to which climate change has be-
come securitized in international society. Scott notes that existing concepts of
security have been broadened to include an ever wider range of global threats,
including climate change, and that this has created momentum to also expand
traditional notions of great power responsibility. Building on the Copenhagen
School of security studies, she argues that full climate securitization at the interna-
tional level would require a move towards an international emergency response,
with the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) accepting a climate governance
role based on its Chapter VII powers. Although the majority of countries now rec-
ognize climate change as a security threat and various UN members have initiated
UNSC debates on climate security, international society is still far from empow-
ering the Security Council with the authority to take decisive action against global
warming. Two of the five permanent UNSC members (Russia and China) oppose
such a move, while many developing countries express concerns about the use of
coercive measures in the fight against climate change.
In Chapter 10, Sanna Kopra discusses the link between great power respon-
sibility and leadership in international climate politics. Building on the English
School understanding of great powers, which combines material capabilities with
social recognition, Kopra asks whether any of the existing great powers can count
as ‘great climate powers’—powers that have a significant impact on global warm-
ing trends and are willing to act against the global climate threat. Her analysis of
international climate politics leads her to conclude that none of the conventional
great powers have so far assumed great power responsibility for climate stabil-
ity. A successful securitization of climate change might change this, as it would
introduction 11
turn climate change into a systemic threat to the stability of international society.
However, even if climate securitization were possible, it would most likely lead to a
minimalist great power response based on pluralist ethics, and not to a deeper sol-
idarist commitment to addressing the deep causes of climate change and its global
humanitarian challenges. Unsurprisingly, as Kopra concludes, the existing great
powers have proved themselves to be great climate irresponsibles.
In Chapter 11, Susan Park broadens the perspective beyond climate change to
consider how great powers have performed across a wider range of international
environmental issues, from ozone layer depletion to biodiversity, whaling, chem-
ical management, hazardous waste, forestry, and climate change. As Park argues,
environmental great powers have been at the forefront of creating multilateral en-
vironmental agreements (MEAs). They invariably play an influential role, acting
as leaders, laggards, swing states, or brokers in international environmental nego-
tiations. Reviewing great powers’ performance in seven environmental regimes,
Park concludes that they mostly act in accordance with their national interests and
identities. They have delegated some limited authority to the international envi-
ronmental institutions that underpin MEAs, but deep divisions remain over the
question of what technical capacity and resources these should be endowed with.
In Chapter 12, Stacy VanDeveer and Tim Boersma focus on the global politics
of coal, which is at the centre of global efforts to stop global warming and is closely
entwined with great power politics. With the help of three case studies—the US,
EU, and China—the authors explore what great power responsibility might look
like for coal politics in the context of an escalating climate crisis. VanDeveer and
Boersma contrast the existing ambition for international climate leadership with
a detailed analysis of the reality of coal politics in the three cases before expanding
the focus to consider the situation in other leading coal powers (Australia, India,
Indonesia, and Russia). Based on this analysis, the authors reach a sobering con-
clusion: leading coal powers have so far failed to follow up their environmental
rhetoric and claims to leadership in international climate politics with responsible
domestic action to phase out coal production and consumption.
In the last chapter, Robert Falkner and Barry Buzan draw some broad conclu-
sions from the contributions to this volume. Reviewing the great power concept
and how it applies to the environmental field, they argue that some major powers
do indeed count as systemically important in GEP, owing to their outsized ecolog-
ical footprint and environmental capabilities. The established great powers of the
Global North have accepted special responsibilities but lack a consensus on how far
these go, while the emerging powers of the Global South remain reluctant to match
their great power aspirations with comparable special responsibilities. Even if the
environmental great powers were to reach a consensus on their special respon-
sibilities, other barriers to developing a GPM approach to climate change persist.
Most importantly, the current international climate regime offers great powers few
privileges and rights that would balance their special responsibilities. The classic
12 falkner and buzan
GPM bargain that can be found in the international security arena does not eas-
ily apply to climate politics. However, should climate change be fully securitized
as the impacts of global warming further disrupt the international order, a move
towards great power responsibility and management cannot be ruled out. Indeed,
serious thought should be given about how to embed a stronger sense of environ-
mental raison de système, an ethic of collective responsibility for planetary health,
amongst the group of environmental great powers.
References
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Dalby, Simon. (2020). Anthropocene geopolitics: Globalization, security, sustainability.
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2
Great Powers and Environmental
Responsibilities: A Conceptual Framework
Barry Buzan and Robert Falkner
Introduction
This chapter sets out the conceptual framework for this volume. The first section
opens with a discussion of the traditional concept of great power in International
Relations (IR). It explores how ongoing international transformations require a
new understanding of international order, what it means to be a great power,
and how great power capabilities can be mapped onto special rights and respon-
sibilities in global international society. The second section then explores the role
that great powers play in global environmental politics. It opens with a discus-
sion of the concept of environmental power, distinguishing its two principal forms
and uses: negative power to destroy the environment and block international
environmental action and positive power to engender positive change and pro-
mote effective environmental cooperation. Based on this conceptualization, this
chapter then explores which countries can count as environmental great powers
and whether their power operates within or across environmental sectors and at
global or regional levels. The third and last section examines the question of great
power responsibility and whether and how special responsibilities apply to great
powers in the environmental field.
Great Powers in Global International Society
Great Powers: Two Approaches
Ever since humankind began organizing itself into independent political com-
munities, it has almost always been the case that the distribution of power and
capabilities amongst them has been notably uneven. Powers with larger capabil-
ities than others generally have more expansive, far-reaching interests in trade,
Barry Buzan and Robert Falkner, Great Powers and Environmental Responsibilities: A Conceptual Framework.
In: Great Powers, Climate Change, and Global Environmental Responsibilities. Edited by Robert Falkner and Barry Buzan,
Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198866022.003.0002
great powers and environmental responsibilities 15
ideology, and security. They may also be accorded higher status by other actors. In
the absence of government over the international system/society as a whole, such
great powers are the obvious place to look for any management of international re-
lations that might be possible. That is why the concept of great powers plays such
a large role in IR theory. The idea that great powers should take particular respon-
sibility for managing international society is, however, relatively recent. Holsti
(1991: 71–82, 114–137) shows how the institution of great power management
(GPM) emerged along with the balance of power during the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries as replacements for a declining dynastic principle. He argues that
this practice became much more evident and formalized from the Treaty of Vienna
(1815) and the Congress of Europe (see also Bull, 1977: 200–229; Wight, 1977: 42,
136–141; Watson, 1992: 138–262; Simpson, 2004).
Following Barnett and Duval (2005), we can define power as working in two
principal ways: as an attribute of actors in social interactions (e.g. a material re-
source such as military force), and as a constitutive social process that shapes
actors’ social identities and capabilities (e.g. recognition of actors as having legit-
imate authority). These two paths are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they usually
intersect.
The material approach is most closely associated with realism and looks at the
assets and capabilities of the leading powers, trying to define a small leading group
on that basis. As Barnett and Duval (2005: 40) put it, power is ‘the ability of
states to use material resources to get others to do what they otherwise would not’.
The difficulty with approaching the question in this way is that there is no consen-
sus on the prior question about how to define power in international relations. As
Waltz (1979: 131) acknowledges, the power of states depends on a whole range of
variables including military strength, economic development, societal cohesion,
the size and education of the population, political competence, and geographical
and resource endowments. But how one should weigh off these various compo-
nents remains far from clear. Do Russian nuclear weapons trump Japanese wealth
and technology? And if power in international relations is to be understood ba-
sically in terms of a potentially measurable set of capabilities, the problem is that
capabilities do not always correlate with outcomes (e.g. the defeat of the US in
Vietnam, or of the USSR in Afghanistan). Or is material power to be understood
in terms of its consequences in the changed behaviour of other actors who respond
to it? If so, the problem is that power becomes a circular concept, defining causes
in terms of effects.
The social approach is most closely associated with the English School (ES),
but it also works for constructivism. The English School views power as a multidi-
mensional concept, encompassing material as well as ideational factors. It is nicely
captured in two widely cited definitions. The first is Bull and Watson’s (1984: 1)
16 buzan and falkner
definition of international society, which establishes the key distinction between

the ES’s societal approach, and the system approach of materialists:
a group of states (or, more generally, a group of independent political com-

munities) which not merely form a system, in the sense that the behaviour of
each is a necessary factor in the calculations of the others, but also have estab-
lished by dialogue and consent common rules and institutions for the conduct
of their relations, and recognise their common interest in maintaining these
arrangements.
The second definition is Bull’s (1977: 200–202) societal understanding of a great

power. He stipulates that, in addition to being in the front rank of military
capability (the key material condition), great powers must be:
recognised by others to have, and conceived by their own leaders and peoples
to have, certain special rights and duties. Great powers, for example, assert the
right, and are accorded the right, to play a part in determining issues that affect
the peace and security of the international system as a whole. They accept the
duty, and are thought by others to have the duty, of modifying their policies in
the light of the managerial responsibilities they bear.
Note how this social definition makes space for material factors, even though it
could exclude a state that had front rank military capability but was not accorded
recognition as a ‘great responsible’ by others. This contrasts with more material
definitions that often accept victory in a great power war as conferring entry to
the rank of great power. History abounds with militarily formidable ‘barbarian’
powers, including the Xiongnu, the Huns, the Vandals, and the Crusaders, who
had little or no thought about ‘modifying their policies in the light of the manage-
rial responsibilities they bear’. Trump’s America came close to rejecting the idea
that it had any obligation to accept responsibilities for global order.
Both of these approaches are clear enough in principle, and being able to specify
what counts as a great power is central to important strands of IR theory. Neore-
alism and neoliberalism, especially as they depend on polarity theory, absolutely
must be able to make clear designations of who is a great power and who is not.
The same is true for the ES concept of GPM, which has been an important in-
stitution of international society for over two centuries (Buzan, 2014: 103–104,
145–147). Yet as Buzan (2004: chapters 3–5) argues, IR has so far failed to pro-
duce a settled, scientific definition of ‘great power’ on the basis of which the great
powers at any given time can be identified and listed in an uncontroversial way.
What gets counted has varied, and contestation over the list at any given time is
common. Even leading theorists such as Waltz (1979: 131) and Wight (1979: 41)
in the end resort to common sense. We are just supposed to know a great power
when we see one. But we often don’t.
Is the EU a great power, or does its non-state form exclude it from considera-
tion, as most realists would think? Was Japan a great power when its GDP overtook
that of the Soviet Union, which was generally categorized as a superpower? Was
the US a great power in the 1880s, by which time it had the world’s biggest
economy but had converted little of its wealth into military power and played an
isolationist role in the balance of power? Common sense can make the category
of great power uncomfortably broad. Before the First World War there were sup-
posedly nine great powers, but the gap between Britain, the US, and Germany, on
one end of the spectrum, and Italy, Japan and the Ottoman Empire, on the other,
was huge, both militarily and economically. Further confusing the issue are the
many cases of ‘honorary’ great powers, where status is given despite capabilities
having become inadequate: Sweden (after 1648), the Ottoman Empire (during the
nineteenth century), France and China (in 1945), Russia (during the 1990s).
Not surprisingly, this ambiguity has generated considerable taxonomical laxity,
both in public discussion and in IR theory, when it comes to categorizing states
by power. After the Second World War there was a general terminological shift
from ‘great power’ to ‘superpower’, accompanied by a widespread understand-
ing that the system structure had shifted from its longstanding multipolar form
(usually 5–10 great powers) to a bipolar one (two superpowers). This shift was
made without much thought being given to whether superpower and great power
were synonyms or represented different categories. In practice, Waltz, and the
many purveyors of polarity theory who followed him, operated on the assumption
that they were synonyms, with ‘superpower’ simply expressing what great powers
looked like when polarity was a low number. Consequently, their theories oper-
ated on the basis of a single distinction between great/super-powers on the one
hand, and all of the lesser states on the other. This created some theoretical ab-
surdities when it came to dealing with China in the 1970s, whose rise challenged
bipolarity, without China being seen as a superpower. One fudge was to talk of
a ‘great power triangle’ (or sometimes quadrangle) in Asia, thereby avoiding the
question of China’s global standing (Segal, 1982; Thomas, 1983). Another fudge
was to talk of China as a ‘half ’ pole (Hinton, 1975), while avoiding the crucial def-
initional question of what this might mean for the theory. When the Soviet Union
imploded, leaving the US as seemingly the sole superpower, some talked about
hyperpowers and suchlike, indicating that great and super-power were not syn-
onyms. But with the rise of China quickly forcing a reconsideration of unipolarity,
many assumed the return of a two-superpower system. Within this, a few writ-
ers inserted a category of ‘middle powers’, mainly aimed at the likes of Canada,
Norway, Sweden, and Australia, who punched above their weight in some areas of
international diplomacy (Holbraad, 1984). Hurrell (2006: 18–19) toyed with the
idea of ‘intermediate powers’ to talk about the BRICs.
Reacting against this taxonomical confusion, Buzan and Wæver (2003; see also
Buzan, 2004) argued that superpowers and great powers were in fact distinct clas-
sifications, and that the most useful next step down in this typology was regional
powers. Middle powers were not irrelevant, but they were a small, exceptional,
and generally Eurocentric category, whereas regional powers were numerous and
found everywhere. The essence of this classification was in terms of the geograph-
ical scope of their influence. For superpowers, the world was their region. Great
powers operated mainly within their own regions and the ones adjacent to them,
though they had to be taken into account in global calculations. Regional powers
operated mainly within their own regions. Britain during the nineteenth century
and the US after 1945 were clear examples of superpowers. The Soviet Union after
1945 just about made it into the superpower camp. During the Cold War, Britain,
France, China, Japan, and increasingly the EU operated as great powers, making
the system not bipolar but one with a mix of two superpowers and several great
powers.1 Post-Cold War, the system was not unipolar, but one superpower and
four great powers, plus many regional powers. Contemporary regional powers
include countries such as Pakistan, Iran, South Africa, Brazil, Nigeria, Indone-
sia, Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.2 There is a great deal of difference between
a system/society that has one superpower and then only regional powers and be-
low, and one with one superpower, several great powers, and quite a few regional
powers.
The terms superpower, great power, regional power, and middle power are all in
widespread use both academically and in public discourse. Polarity theory in IR
depends absolutely on there being a clear distinction between a small class of great
or superpowers and the rest, yet remains unembarrassed by the fact that no con-
sensus has yet been reached on either how to define these classifications in any
precise and non-controversial way, or on any taxonomy for ranking powers. This
longstanding and ongoing problem of how to define great powers at any given
time is now under pressure from two further problems, one very broad and gen-
eral, the other quite specific. The general one is the simultaneous decline in the
economic, political, and cultural dominance of the West, and the rising interest
in so-called emerging powers. We capture this development with the idea that the
system structure is moving towards deep pluralism. The more specific one is the
diffusion of some capabilities away from the powers at the top end of the spec-
trum to both state and non-state actors lower down the spectrum, as can be seen
1 Realists don’t generally acknowledge that the EU can be a member of this club because, even though
it has actor qualities in some internationally significant respects, it is not a state.
2 For the full definitions, see Buzan and Wæver (2003: 30–39).
in issue areas such as global environment, development, and health (Bukovansky

et al., 2012).
Deep Pluralism
What do these general thoughts about great powers and GPM tell us about the
condition of global international society now (in 2021) and how that will shape
the global politics of climate change? Since the global financial crisis that broke in
2007–2008, the relative wealth, power, and cultural and ideological authority of
the West, and of the US in particular, have been in decline. The leadership of the
US and the UK has been further undermined by the votes for Trump and Brexit
in 2016. At the same time, the relative wealth, power, and cultural and ideolog-
ical authority of what were previously classed as developing countries, and are
now talked of as emerging powers, particularly China, but also India and others,
have been on the rise. This dual development looks to be pushing the international
system/society into a new, and in some ways unprecedented, post-Western struc-
ture. It seems quite plausible that this structure will contain no superpowers,
several great powers, and many regional powers. As wealth, power, and cultural
and ideological authority increasingly diffuse to a wider circle of states and soci-
eties, it will become impossible for any country to either hold onto (the US) or
acquire (China) the necessary preponderance of wealth and power to be a super-
power. Trump burned the global social capital of the US at a prodigious rate, caring
nothing for the effects of his policies on the alliances, intergovernmental organiza-
tions (IGOs), and trading arrangements that underpinned US leadership. Some of
this damage will be unrecoverable given the uncertainty that now hangs over the
polarized character of US domestic politics. In China, Xi Jinping has been push-
ing the country in a more authoritarian and aggressive direction that scares both
its neighbours and many of the other great and regional powers. This argument is
of course vulnerable to the ambiguity of these categories established above, but it
seems likely that, while the US and China will be primus inter pares, they will not
be in an entirely different class from India, the EU, and possibly Russia, Brazil, and
Japan. They will be great powers in the sense that their influence extends beyond
their own regions, and that they have to be taken into account at the global level,
but the world will not be their region, and therefore neither will be a superpower.
What is emerging will be novel in a number of respects. Increasingly, power,
wealth, and cultural and ideological authority will be wielded by non-Western as
well as Western actors (Buzan and Lawson, 2015: chapter 9; Acharya and Buzan,
2019: chapter 9). As the last superpower wanes and emerging powers rise, what is
unfolding does not look like classical multipolarity. Certainly, there will be sev-
eral centres of wealth, power, and cultural and ideological authority, and thus in a
sense global international society (GIS) will be multipolar. But there will be many
non-state actors in play in this GIS, some of which will wield significant amounts
of wealth, power, and authority. States will probably remain the dominant form of
actor, but will be much more entangled in webs of global governance than is im-
plied in the term multipolarity. Even just thinking about states, the emerging GIS
will still not be multipolar as classically understood because, lacking any super-
powers or any aspiring to be superpowers, it will not feature a realist-type struggle
for domination of the whole system. Although they are all embedded in a highly
interdependent global economy, and a single planetary environment, none wants
to, or can, lead or dominate GIS. The US is losing both the will and the legitimacy
to do so, and neither Europe nor Japan can fill its shoes. The rising great powers
China and India are still developing countries and have neither the capacity, the
will, nor the legitimacy to play the hegemon. They still prioritize their own devel-
opment over their global responsibilities. Indeed, it is an interesting question as to
whether the very idea of hegemonic leadership, which has been closely associated
with Western hegemony for more than two centuries, will be delegitimized in this
emerging system.
Various labels have already been put forward to capture the novelty and com-
plexity of this emergent construction: plurilateralism (Cerny, 1993), heteropolarity
(der Derian, 2003), no one’s world (Kupchan, 2012), multinodal (Womack, 2014),
multiplex (Acharya, 2014), decentred globalism (Buzan, 2011), polymorphic glob-
alism (Katzenstein, 2012), and multi-order world (Flockhart, 2016). Acharya and
Buzan (2019: chapter 9) offer the concept of deep pluralism to capture what is now
unfolding. They define deep pluralism to mean a diffuse distribution of power,
wealth, and cultural and political authority, set within a strongly integrated and
interdependent system in which there is a significant move towards a GIS in
which both states and non-state actors play substantial roles. Non-state actors
range across the spectrum from civil (e.g. Red Cross/Crescent, Médecins Sans
Frontières) to uncivil (e.g. Islamic State), with many in between (e.g. Facebook).
While power asymmetries remain, it describes a world not only without a global
hegemon but in which the very idea of such a role is no longer legitimate. Such a
world might feature different economic and political ideologies and systems, in-
cluding the remnants of the liberal order. This will be a novel system, and not only
because we have got used to living in a system with a high concentration of power
dominated by superpowers. There has never been a system like the one now emerg-
ing in which the density and interdependence of the system is high and rising, but
the distribution of wealth and power is relatively diffuse. Power was diffused dur-
ing pre-modern times, but the density and interdependence of the system at that
time was low.
Deep pluralism describes where the current momentum of GIS is taking us
whether we like it or not. But we also need terms to indicate whether that con-
dition is understood and acted upon in a positive or negative light, and where the
scope for agency and policy lie. Contested pluralism means that there is substantial
resistance to the material and ideational reality of deep pluralism. This might take
various forms: states resisting the roles and standing of non-state actors; former
superpowers (most obviously the US) refusing to give up their special rights and
privileges; great powers refusing to recognize each other’s standing and playing
against each other as rivals or enemies. Consensual pluralism means that the main
players in GIS not only tolerate the material, cultural, ideological, and actor-type
differences of deep pluralism, but also respect and even value them as the foun-
dation for coexistence. Another way of seeing this is that consensual pluralism is
about the preservation and/or cultivation of the political and cultural diversity and
distinctness that are the legacy of human history, to be valued for its own sake in
the same way as biodiversity (Jackson, 2000: 23). It is highly probable that deep
pluralism in either form will see a sharp weakening of the homogenizing liberal
teleology that has been both an implicit and explicit assumption in much West-
ern thinking about the evolution of the global order. This raises the question of
whether GIS will have sufficient cultural and ideological unity to foster deep co-
operation on global challenges, such as environmental protection (Falkner and
Buzan, 2019).
Within this unfolding new structure of deep pluralism the rise of China, In-
dia, and other emerging non-Western powers is creating a growing interest in new
great powers and their roles and responsibilities in international society (Gaskarth,
2015). A lot of the discussion here focuses on the so-called BRICS group of states
(Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). While BRICS has some actor quality
in terms of setting up its own institutions (the BRICS bank), it is otherwise an
odd grouping. China is on the brink of being an emerged rather than an emergent
power. India is on the borderline between being a big regional power and a small
great power, with Brazil further behind on the same track. Russia is not emergent
at all, but rather a fallen and declining superpower. South Africa is clearly only
a regional power. China and India (and perhaps later Brazil and Indonesia) raise
the question of whether countries still classified as ‘developing’ can also be clas-
sified as great powers? Since the nineteenth century, being at or near the leading
edge of industrialization and modernity have been necessary conditions for great
power status (Buzan and Lawson, 2015: 240–270). If this condition is breaking
down, what are the implications for how we understand both the qualifications
for great power status and the rights and responsibilities associated with great
power status? As noted, big developing countries such as China and India quite
rightly give their own development first priority, and understandably argue that
they should not be obliged to burden themselves with global managerial responsi-
bilities. There has been a particular focus on rising China, which is pressured from
without to become a more responsible great power and from within to balance the
domestic political needs of the Chinese Communist Party with the necessity to
engage in a Western-defined global economic order (Jones, 2014). More broadly,
there has been interest in how rising powers gain the ‘legitimate’ great power sta-
tus in ‘recognition games’ (Suzuki, 2008) and some discussions on the legitimacy
of power (Reus-Smit, 2014).
The exercise of GPM responsibility under deep pluralism will be more diffuse
and more complicated than under the relatively concentrated domination of the
US over the last few decades. Ideological differentiations mattered during both the
interwar and Cold War years, and they may well matter again under deep plural-
ism, where there will not only be a divide between authoritarians and democracies,
but also one between the different civilizational values represented by the US,
Europe, Russia, China, India, and the Islamic World. We might anticipate that
under deep pluralism the extent and character of great power cooperation/conflict
generally will depend on whether deep pluralism is more contested or more con-
sensual. Within that, a great deal will depend on how the great powers respond
to the various shared-fate threats, such as climate change and pandemics, that af-
fect them all. Such threats stand outside ideological and cultural framings to a
much greater extent than do questions of global economic management or hu-
man rights. This ideological neutrality opens a path to the possibility of GPM on
a shared-threat functional issue such as climate change, even if deep pluralism, as
seems increasingly likely, unfolds in contested form.
Diffusion of Capabilities
An entirely different complication for great power responsibility and manage-

ment is raised by the diffusion of some capabilities away from great powers and
towards both lesser states and non-state actors. Increasingly, as Cui and Buzan
(2016: 207–210) argue, great power responsibility and global governance now
overlap, and might even be thought of as merging. In specific issue areas, the am-
biguity about what constitutes a ‘great power’ becomes a major problem. Saudi
Arabia might be a ‘great power’ in oil and religion, but in general terms only a re-
gional power. Once we get down to energy, disease control, cybersecurity, climate
change, and suchlike, the criteria for defining not only great powers but also great
power responsibilities may need to be tailored to the specifics of the issue. As we
discuss below, the same applies to the field of global environmental protection.
And as the convergence of great power responsibility and global governance sug-
gests, in some issue-areas special responsibilities are diffusing not only to actors
other than great powers, but to actors other than states.
The diffusion of capability and responsibility away from great powers is a very
complicated issue. Since it has been set out in detail by Bukovansky et al. (2012),
it does not require detailed elaboration here. Great powers have often been ‘great
irresponsibles’, making themselves more part of the problem of world order than
part of the solution. This paralysis at the top has opened up space for more bottom-
up forms of global governance involving lesser powers, IGOs, and non-state actors.
Great power capabilities might well have been decisive in relation to the classical
high politics agenda, but as an ever-wider array of functional, non-military issues
has come onto the security agenda, the capabilities of other kinds of actors have
become more relevant. In these functionally specific issue-areas, even the capa-
bilities of quite small actors might count as ‘great’. The Ebola crisis of 2014 is an
interesting case involving not only great powers but also non-state actors such as
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and drug companies, whose specialized capabil-
ities made them an essential part of the response to the medical emergency, and
IGOs that were important to legitimation and coordination (Cui and Buzan, 2016).
This opens the pathway to a quite radical reinterpretation of special responsibili-
ties, which are becoming more widely diffused to a range of actors able to deploy
special capabilities in relation to specific issue-areas of global order. This develop-
ment does not remove great powers from the equation, but it does open up a much
more diverse and complicated picture of the relationship between capabilities on
the one hand, and special rights and responsibilities on the other.
How, then, do these general considerations about great powers and great power
responsibilities play into the environmental sector?
Environmental Power and Great Powers
As argued in the first part of this chapter, the concept of ‘great powers’ has been
central to IR theorizing about international order, but important ambiguities per-
sist with regard to defining what constitutes power in international relations, and
the criteria for identifying great powers in specific issue-areas. Both these prob-
lems are clearly evident in the field of global environmental politics (GEP). As we
discuss in this section, there are important similarities between GEP and other in-
ternational issue-areas that justify talk of environmental great powers. The effects
of power inequality on outcomes in international environmental negotiations can
be found across a wide range of environmental issues, from climate change to the
regulation of chemicals and marine protection. At the same time, GEP is also char-
acterized by a high degree of diffusion of relevant capabilities, and lesser powers
and non-state actors generally play a more significant role. The general premises
of the great power concept, and great power theory, do not translate to GEP in a
straightforward manner. It is important, therefore, to start with a discussion of the
issue-specific characteristics of power in GEP before we can approach the question
of what counts as a great power in the environmental field.
Environmental Power
The dual material and social understanding of power discussed above is appli-
cable to all international policy fields, including GEP. In a material sense, a
state’s environmental power is based on its control over important ecosystems
or natural resources (e.g. forests, rivers, fossil fuels) or its ability to cause signif-
icant transboundary environmental harm. Furthermore, a state with significant
economic and political might (military strength is generally a less fungible power
resource in GEP) can use such capabilities to influence international bargain-
ing over environmental rules, for example by providing environmental aid or
threatening trade sanctions. Environmental power also has an important social
dimension in that states that command legitimate authority in GEP are able to
influence the identities and interests of other states, thereby shaping outcomes
in international environmental policymaking. Environmental power exists where
states are able to provide intellectual or entrepreneurial leadership that sets inter-
national agendas or shapes bargaining outcomes. We can also find it where states
create social structures that legitimate certain forms of environmentally relevant
behaviour (e.g. regulated vs unregulated forms of pollution), define environmental
roles and responsibilities (e.g. differentiated responsibilities under the UNFCCC),
or create or privilege certain types of meaning that shape relevant social fields of
action (e.g. ‘sustainable development’ and ‘green growth’ discourses).
It is important to recognize that that the exercise of environmental power
can serve different purposes. Some literature restricts the term ‘environmental
power’ to only those actors that use their power to advance global environmen-
tal objectives (e.g. Sotero and Armijo, 2007; Dauvergne and Faria, 2012; Viola
and Franchini, 2014). This is too restrictive a conception, however, as it ignores
ongoing contestation over what counts as environmentally friendly behaviour
(e.g. some environmentalists support pro-nuclear energy policies as they reduce
greenhouse gas emissions, while others oppose them as they create long-term risks
of nuclear accidents and radioactive pollution). It also fails to capture situations in
which states can be said to possess environmental power but use it to weaken,
rather than strengthen, global environmental objectives. ‘Environmental power’,
just like economic or military power, should be understood as a neutral concept.
It reflects a state’s ability to influence processes and outcomes in GEP, and to shape
other states’ behaviour, interests, or identities, irrespective of its underlying mo-
tivation or objective. This means that, broadly speaking, we can distinguish two
principal uses of environmental power: negative and positive. Both uses of environ-
mental power are essential to understanding a state’s overall power and influence
in GEP, and by implication its (potential) great power status.
This distinction between negative and positive uses of power is not a unique
feature of GEP alone. Any form of power gives rise to similarly diverging, and in-
deed conflicting, uses. From the perspective of maintaining international peace
and stability, military power is a predominantly negative form of power when
used in an offensive capacity to pursue a country’s expansionist goals, but can also
serve a positive purpose when used for defensive purposes, to contain or defeat
military aggression, to maintain a balance of power, or to support humanitar-
ian interventions. Economic power similarly gives rise to negative usage where
it allows powerful countries to pursue their own interest by exerting leverage over
weaker countries, but such economic leverage is also at the heart of international
sanctioning mechanisms that seek to uphold international trade rules.
In the environmental field, negative power reflects a country’s control over cer-
tain environmental ‘goods’ and/or its ability to produce environmental ‘bads’ in
the form of environmental degradation. The former is the case where countries
control large shares of natural resources or ecosystems (e.g. forests, lakes, rivers,
biodiverse habitats) that are of global, regional, or just transboundary significance.
In such cases, control over significant environmental goods gives countries the
ability to degrade or destroy internationally significant ecosystems or resources,
or to refuse to cooperate in their international management. The latter is the case
where countries cause a significant share of global environmental degradation (e.g.
emissions of pollutants, consumption of environmental goods) and are therefore
able to undermine international environmental management efforts by refusing
to reduce transboundary environmental harm. In both cases, significant negative
power gives rise to de facto veto power in international environmental affairs as
countries in control of environmental goods/bads can slow down, weaken, or even
block multilateral environmental efforts (Porter and Brown, 1996: 14; Falkner,
2005: 591).
Examples of such situations where one or several countries possess veto power
include ozone layer depletion, where five industrialized countries (USA, Germany,
France, Britain, Japan) dominated the global market for ozone-depleting sub-
stances at the time of the ozone regime negotiations in the mid-1980s; interna-
tional climate politics, where the top 10 emitters are responsible for two-thirds
of global greenhouse gas emissions; international whaling regulation, where a
small number of states (Japan, Norway, Iceland) are responsible for most of the
global whaling catch; or deforestation, where three countries (Brazil, Congo, In-
donesia) control large parts of the world’s remaining tropical rainforests. As these
illustrations show, negative power in GEP is issue-specific, and countries that
possess it in one environmental issue area may not possess it in others. Some
developed or rapidly developing economies with large populations (e.g. United
States, China) tend to have a large ecological footprint across all or most envi-
ronmental issue-areas, largely because they consume a large share of the Earth’s
natural resources and produce a large share of global pollution. Because they pos-
sess negative power across a wide range of issues, they can be considered critical
to the successful management of the global environment. Others (e.g. Norway,
Indonesia), however, will have globally significant negative power only in those
few issue areas where they control significant shares of global environmental
goods/bads.
The positive use of power in GEP rests on a country’s ability to engender
positive change in international environmental politics and promote effective
solutions for global, regional, or transboundary environmental problems. This
constructive use of power is closely related to the concept of international en-

vironmental leadership (Skodvin and Andresen, 2006; Eckersley, 2020), which
is based on the notion that leaders are needed to establish environmental is-
sues on the international agenda, propose cooperative solutions and diffuse
innovative policy ideas, provide technological and economic aid in support of
environmental policies, and push for an international consensus behind spe-
cific regulatory approaches. Such leadership can take many forms, from facil-
itating compromise and coalition-building (entrepreneurial leadership) to the
creation and diffusion of innovative policy solutions (intellectual leadership)
and the use of economic incentives and sanctions to change actors’ behaviour
(structural leadership) (Young, 1991; Tews, 2004; Skodvin and Andresen, 2006).
The environmental leadership literature assumes that such leadership is pro-
vided not only by powerful states but also by other actors, such as less power-
ful countries or even individuals in international organizations acting as norm
entrepreneurs (Young, 1991). In this sense, GEP lends itself to the diffusion
of capabilities and responsibilities away from great powers, and is a signa-
ture sector for the merger of GPM and global governance (Cui and Buzan,
2016).
The literature on the history of GEP has identified several instances in which
powerful states have used such positive power to promote global environmental
solutions. The US played a key role in establishing environmental stewardship
as a fundamental norm in international society at the 1972 Stockholm confer-
ence and beyond (Falkner and Buzan, 2019; Falkner, 2021: chapter 5), and US
pressure was instrumental in getting to international environmental agreements
on issues ranging from the protection of endangered species to ozone layer de-
pletion (DeSombre, 2000). In the 1990s, Japan’s dominant role as a provider of
international environmental aid, especially in Southeast Asia, led to the country
being described as an ‘environmental superpower’ (Dauvergne, 1998: 2). Inter-
national environmental leadership is generally said to have passed from the US
to the EU since the 1990s (Kelemen and Vogel, 2010), and the EU has more re-
cently played a leading role in pushing for higher international environmental
standards and new environmental agreements (Zito, 2005; Vogler and Stephan,
2007; Kelemen, 2010), even though the US continues to a play a leadership role
in certain specific contexts, such as air pollution (Gouldson et al., 2015). More re-
cently, the Obama administration negotiated a bilateral climate agreement with
China in 2014 that signalled America’s renewed support for international climate
action. This bilateral agreement was widely praised as a key game changer in the
Paris Agreement negotiations, as it ensured that the two largest greenhouse gas
(GHG) emitters were committed to working towards the goal of climate change
mitigation.
It is important to note that these two uses of power in GEP are not mutually ex-
clusive. In fact, in many cases positive and negative dimensions of environmental
power coexist or overlap. A large and populous country may cast a long ecological
shadow but may nevertheless play an active international role seeking to advance
environmental protection. Thus, China, the US, and the EU are the three leading
emitters of GHG emissions, but each of them can be said to have taken a leader-
ship role at various points in the recent history of international climate politics. We
also need to consider the issue-specific nature of the use of environmental power.
Countries that lead on one international environmental issue may be laggards on
other issues. Indeed, countries rarely take a consistent stance across the wide range
of environmental problems that can be found on the international agenda. Japan
and Norway, for example, are noted for their international leadership in some
environmental areas (e.g. supporting biodiversity protection in developing coun-
tries) but play a more obstructionist role in other areas (e.g. whaling). More often
than not, some of the most powerful nations on the planet can be found to be both
leaders and laggards in international environmental politics, and some oscillate
repeatedly between negative and positive uses of environmental power (e.g. US
foreign policy shifts from Bush to Obama, and from Trump to Biden). Just as in
other global policy fields, great powers may aspire to be responsible leaders but
often end up acting as the ‘great irresponsibles’ (Bull, 1980).
Great Powers in Global Environmental Politics
What makes a powerful country a ‘great power’ in GEP? In line with the ES’s so-
cial framing, we can stipulate that great power status is a social phenomenon that
depends on other actors according a country recognition as a responsible power.
Great powers, as Bull (1977: 200–202) defined them, are ‘recognised by others to
have, and conceived by their own leaders and peoples to have, certain special rights
and duties.’ How does this notion of great power status manifest itself in the field
of GEP? Should we expect conventional great power status directly to translate
into GEP? Or are there issue-specific characteristics in the environmental field
that need to be taken into account when discussing the role and responsibilities of
great powers?
Building on the above discussion of environmental power, it is fair to conclude
that the conventional great powers are likely to possess both significant negative
and positive environmental power. Their dominant military and economic might
is invariably based on a resource-intensive industrial system that casts a long eco-
logical shadow over the planet, and their political power gives them considerable
diplomatic clout in international negotiations, including on environmental mat-
ters. That said, the usually small group of states that are considered to be great
powers in international society are not the only ones that possess relevant environ-
mental power across the many environmental issue-areas. This accords with the
view of Bukovansky et al. (2012: 73–78) that the domains of special responsibility
are fragmented into issue-areas, each different in its social construction, actors,
sources and types of power, social dynamics, etc. One implication of this is that,
even allowing for ambiguities, the group of environmental great powers is larger
than the group of great powers. Another is that similar ambiguities will attend any
attempt to draw up a definitive list of environmental great powers. A brief discus-
sion of the most likely contenders for the status of great power in GEP reveals the
ambiguity implicit in this categorization.
What Counts as an Environmental Great Power?
Some cases are fairly straightforward. The world’s most powerful nation, the US, is
both a superpower in conventional terms and one of the world’s leading environ-
mental powers. As the largest economy with a high per capita ecological footprint,
the US is both deeply implicated in many global environmental problems and plays
a critical role in most multilateral environmental negotiations. In the early days of
modern environmental politics, it pioneered new forms of environmental regula-
tion, which were widely copied around the world, and promoted the creation and
expansion of the international environmental agenda from the 1970s onwards.
The US continues to lead on environmental issues where it has a strong domestic
policy mandate, though the administrations of George W. Bush (2001–2009) and
Donald Trump (2017–2021) are noted for their assertive anti-regulatory stance.
Over time, the US has thus moved away from its early role as international envi-
ronmental leader and has, more often than not, come to exercise negative power
by rejecting a special responsibility for the global environment (Falkner, 2005).
The EU, initially a laggard on environmental issues in the 1970s and 1980s, has
more recently pushed for international action on a wide range of environmen-
tal issues, most notably climate change (Wurzel and Connelly, 2010). Much like
the US, the EU possesses considerable environmental power with global signif-
icance. Its economy, although more energy efficient and with a lower per capita
ecological footprint than that of the US, is a major source of global environmen-
tal degradation. The EU’s claim to be an environmental leader has been widely
noted, both as a demandeur in international negotiations and a ‘market power’
(Damro, 2015) that has the ability to raise global regulatory standards (Selin and
VanDeveer, 2006), though questions persist about its ‘actorness’ (Vogler, 1999)
and coherence (Barnes, 2010) as a power in international forums.3
3 This question of the EU’s ‘actorness’ is a general one in thinking about great powers. The strict
state-centrism of realists means that they cannot ‘see’ the EU as an actor because it is not a state. If
actorness is taken as an empirical question rather than as a theoretical presupposition, then the EU
clearly has a significant degree of actor quality, and more so in issue-areas such as GEP, than in the
‘high politics’ of the traditional security agenda.
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“You mean a goof?” I queried, wondering how she could have
penetrated the unhappy man’s secret.
“No, a goop. A goop is a man who’s in love with a girl and won’t
tell her so. I am as certain as I am of anything that Ferdinand is fond
of me.”
“Your instinct is unerring. He has just been confiding in me on that
very point.”
“Well, why doesn’t he confide in me, the poor fish?” cried the high-
spirited girl, petulantly flicking a pebble at a passing grasshopper. “I
can’t be expected to fling myself into his arms unless he gives some
sort of a hint that he’s ready to catch me.”
“Would it help if I were to repeat to him the substance of this
conversation of ours?”
“If you breathe a word of it, I’ll never speak to you again,” she
cried. “I’d rather die an awful death than have any man think I
wanted him so badly that I had to send relays of messengers
begging him to marry me.”
I saw her point.
“Then I fear,” I said, gravely, “that there is nothing to be done. One
can only wait and hope. It may be that in the years to come
Ferdinand Dibble will acquire a nice lissom, wristy swing, with the
head kept rigid and the right leg firmly braced and—”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was toying with the hope that some sunny day Ferdinand Dibble
would cease to be a goof.”
“You mean a goop?”
“No, a goof. A goof is a man who—” And I went on to explain the
peculiar psychological difficulties which lay in the way of any
declaration of affection on Ferdinand’s part.
“But I never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life,” she
ejaculated. “Do you mean to say that he is waiting till he is good at
golf before he asks me to marry him?”
“It is not quite so simple as that,” I said sadly. “Many bad golfers
marry, feeling that a wife’s loving solicitude may improve their game.
But they are rugged, thick-skinned men, not sensitive and
introspective, like Ferdinand. Ferdinand has allowed himself to
become morbid. It is one of the chief merits of golf that non-success
at the game induces a certain amount of decent humility, which
keeps a man from pluming himself too much on any petty triumphs
he may achieve in other walks of life; but in all things there is a
happy mean, and with Ferdinand this humility has gone too far. It has
taken all the spirit out of him. He feels crushed and worthless. He is
grateful to caddies when they accept a tip instead of drawing
themselves up to their full height and flinging the money in his face.”
“Then do you mean that things have got to go on like this for
ever?”
I thought for a moment.
“It is a pity,” I said, “that you could not have induced Ferdinand to
go to Marvis Bay for a month or two.”
“Why?”
“Because it seems to me, thinking the thing over, that it is just
possible that Marvis Bay might cure him. At the hotel there he would
find collected a mob of golfers—I used the term in its broadest
sense, to embrace the paralytics and the men who play left-handed
—whom even he would be able to beat. When I was last at Marvis
Bay, the hotel links were a sort of Sargasso Sea into which had
drifted all the pitiful flotsam and jetsam of golf. I have seen things
done on that course at which I shuddered and averted my eyes—
and I am not a weak man. If Ferdinand can polish up his game so as
to go round in a fairly steady hundred and five, I fancy there is hope.
But I understand he is not going to Marvis Bay.”
“Oh yes, he is,” said the girl.
“Indeed! He did not tell me that when we were talking just now.”
“He didn’t know it then. He will when I have had a few words with
him.”
And she walked with firm steps back into the club-house.
It has been well said that there are many kinds of golf, beginning
at the top with the golf of professionals and the best amateurs and
working down through the golf of ossified men to that of Scotch
University professors. Until recently this last was looked upon as the
lowest possible depth; but nowadays, with the growing popularity of
summer hotels, we are able to add a brand still lower, the golf you
find at places like Marvis Bay.
To Ferdinand Dibble, coming from a club where the standard of
play was rather unusually high, Marvis Bay was a revelation, and for
some days after his arrival there he went about dazed, like a man
who cannot believe it is really true. To go out on the links at this
summer resort was like entering a new world. The hotel was full of
stout, middle-aged men, who, after a misspent youth devoted to
making money, had taken to a game at which real proficiency can
only be acquired by those who start playing in their cradles and keep
their weight down. Out on the course each morning you could see
representatives of every nightmare style that was ever invented.
There was the man who seemed to be attempting to deceive his ball
and lull it into a false security by looking away from it and then
making a lightning slash in the apparent hope of catching it off its
guard. There was the man who wielded his mid-iron like one killing
snakes. There was the man who addressed his ball as if he were
stroking a cat, the man who drove as if he were cracking a whip, the
man who brooded over each shot like one whose heart is bowed
down by bad news from home, and the man who scooped with his
mashie as if he were ladling soup. By the end of the first week
Ferdinand Dibble was the acknowledged champion of the place. He
had gone through the entire menagerie like a bullet through a cream
puff.
First, scarcely daring to consider the possibility of success, he had
taken on the man who tried to catch his ball off its guard and had
beaten him five up and four to play. Then, with gradually growing
confidence, he tackled in turn the Cat-Stroker, the Whip-Cracker, the
Heart Bowed Down, and the Soup-Scooper, and walked all over their
faces with spiked shoes. And as these were the leading local
amateurs, whose prowess the octogenarians and the men who went
round in bath-chairs vainly strove to emulate, Ferdinand Dibble was
faced on the eighth morning of his visit by the startling fact that he
had no more worlds to conquer. He was monarch of all he surveyed,
and, what is more, had won his first trophy, the prize in the great
medal-play handicap tournament, in which he had nosed in ahead of
the field by two strokes, edging out his nearest rival, a venerable old
gentleman, by means of a brilliant and unexpected four on the last
hole. The prize was a handsome pewter mug, about the size of the
old oaken bucket, and Ferdinand used to go to his room immediately
after dinner to croon over it like a mother over her child.
You are wondering, no doubt, why, in these circumstances, he did
not take advantage of the new spirit of exhilarated pride which had
replaced his old humility and instantly propose to Barbara Medway. I
will tell you. He did not propose to Barbara because Barbara was not
there. At the last moment she had been detained at home to nurse a
sick parent and had been compelled to postpone her visit for a
couple of weeks. He could, no doubt, have proposed in one of the
daily letters which he wrote to her, but somehow, once he started
writing, he found that he used up so much space describing his best
shots on the links that day that it was difficult to squeeze in a
declaration of undying passion. After all, you can hardly cram that
sort of thing into a postscript.
He decided, therefore, to wait till she arrived, and meanwhile
pursued his conquering course. The longer he waited the better, in
one way, for every morning and afternoon that passed was adding
new layers to his self-esteem. Day by day in every way he grew
chestier and chestier.
Meanwhile, however, dark clouds were gathering. Sullen

mutterings were to be heard in corners of the hotel lounge, and the
spirit of revolt was abroad. For Ferdinand’s chestiness had not
escaped the notice of his defeated rivals. There is nobody so chesty
as a normally unchesty man who suddenly becomes chesty, and I
am sorry to say that the chestiness which had come to Ferdinand
was the aggressive type of chestiness which breeds enemies. He
had developed a habit of holding the game up in order to give his
opponent advice. The Whip-Cracker had not forgiven, and never
would forgive, his well-meant but galling criticism of his back-swing.
The Scooper, who had always scooped since the day when, at the
age of sixty-four, he subscribed to the Correspondence Course
which was to teach him golf in twelve lessons by mail, resented
being told by a snip of a boy that the mashie-stroke should be a
smooth, unhurried swing. The Snake-Killer—But I need not weary
you with a detailed recital of these men’s grievances; it is enough to
say that they all had it in for Ferdinand, and one night, after dinner,
they met in the lounge to decide what was to be done about it.
A nasty spirit was displayed by all.
“A mere lad telling me how to use my mashie!” growled the
Scooper. “Smooth and unhurried my left eyeball! I get it up, don’t I?
Well, what more do you want?”
“I keep telling him that mine is the old, full St. Andrew swing,”
muttered the Whip-Cracker, between set teeth, “but he won’t listen to
me.”
“He ought to be taken down a peg or two,” hissed the Snake-Killer.
It is not easy to hiss a sentence without a single “s” in it, and the fact
that he succeeded in doing so shows to what a pitch of emotion the
man had been goaded by Ferdinand’s maddening air of superiority.
“Yes, but what can we do?” queried an octogenarian, when this
last remark had been passed on to him down his ear-trumpet.
“That’s the trouble,” sighed the Scooper. “What can we do?” And
there was a sorrowful shaking of heads.
“I know!” exclaimed the Cat-Stroker, who had not hitherto spoken.
He was a lawyer, and a man of subtle and sinister mind. “I have it!
There’s a boy in my office—young Parsloe—who could beat this man
Dibble hollow. I’ll wire him to come down here and we’ll spring him
on this fellow and knock some of the conceit out of him.”
There was a chorus of approval.
“But are you sure he can beat him?” asked the Snake-Killer,
anxiously. “It would never do to make a mistake.”
“Of course I’m sure,” said the Cat-Stroker. “George Parsloe once
went round in ninety-four.”
“Many changes there have been since ninety-four,” said the
octogenarian, nodding sagely. “Ah, many, many changes. None of
these motor-cars then, tearing about and killing—”
Kindly hands led him off to have an egg-and-milk, and the
remaining conspirators returned to the point at issue with bent
brows.
“Ninety-four?” said the Scooper, incredulously. “Do you mean
counting every stroke?”
“Counting every stroke.”
“Not conceding himself any putts?”
“Not one.”
“Wire him to come at once,” said the meeting with one voice.
That night the Cat-Stroker approached Ferdinand, smooth, subtle,
lawyer-like.
“Oh, Dibble,” he said, “just the man I wanted to see. Dibble, there’s
a young friend of mine coming down here who goes in for golf a little.
George Parsloe is his name. I was wondering if you could spare time
to give him a game. He is just a novice, you know.”
“I shall be delighted to play a round with him,” said Ferdinand,
kindly.
“He might pick up a pointer or two from watching you,” said the
Cat-Stroker.
“True, true,” said Ferdinand.
“Then I’ll introduce you when he shows up.”
“Delighted,” said Ferdinand.
He was in excellent humour that night, for he had had a letter from
Barbara saying that she was arriving on the next day but one.
It was Ferdinand’s healthy custom of a morning to get up in good

time and take a dip in the sea before breakfast. On the morning of
the day of Barbara’s arrival, he arose, as usual, donned his flannels,
took a good look at the cup, and started out. It was a fine, fresh
morning, and he glowed both externally and internally. As he crossed
the links, for the nearest route to the water was through the fairway
of the seventh, he was whistling happily and rehearsing in his mind
the opening sentences of his proposal. For it was his firm resolve
that night after dinner to ask Barbara to marry him. He was
proceeding over the smooth turf without a care in the world, when
there was a sudden cry of “Fore!” and the next moment a golf ball,
missing him by inches, sailed up the fairway and came to a rest fifty
yards from where he stood. He looked round and observed a figure
coming towards him from the tee.
The distance from the tee was fully a hundred and thirty yards.
Add fifty to that, and you have a hundred and eighty yards. No such
drive had been made on the Marvis Bay links since their foundation,
and such is the generous spirit of the true golfer that Ferdinand’s first
emotion, after the not inexcusable spasm of panic caused by the
hum of the ball past his ear, was one of cordial admiration. By some
kindly miracle, he supposed, one of his hotel acquaintances had
been permitted for once in his life to time a drive right. It was only
when the other man came up that there began to steal over him a
sickening apprehension. The faces of all those who hewed divots on
the hotel course were familiar to him, and the fact that this fellow was
a stranger seemed to point with dreadful certainty to his being the
man he had agreed to play.
“Sorry,” said the man. He was a tall, strikingly handsome youth,
with brown eyes and a dark moustache.
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Ferdinand. “Er—do you always drive like
that?”
“Well, I generally get a bit longer ball, but I’m off my drive this
morning. It’s lucky I came out and got this practice. I’m playing a
match to-morrow with a fellow named Dibble, who’s a local
champion, or something.”
“Me,” said Ferdinand, humbly.
“Eh? Oh, you?” Mr. Parsloe eyed him appraisingly. “Well, may the
best man win.”
As this was precisely what Ferdinand was afraid was going to
happen, he nodded in a sickly manner and tottered off to his bathe.
The magic had gone out of the morning. The sun still shone, but in a
silly, feeble way; and a cold and depressing wind had sprung up. For
Ferdinand’s inferiority complex, which had seemed cured for ever,
was back again, doing business at the old stand.
How sad it is in this life that the moment to which we have looked
forward with the most glowing anticipation so often turns out on
arrival, flat, cold, and disappointing. For ten days Barbara Medway
had been living for that meeting with Ferdinand, when, getting out of
the train, she would see him popping about on the horizon with the
love-light sparkling in his eyes and words of devotion trembling on
his lips. The poor girl never doubted for an instant that he would
unleash his pent-up emotions inside the first five minutes, and her
only worry was lest he should give an embarrassing publicity to the
sacred scene by falling on his knees on the station platform.
“Well, here I am at last,” she cried gaily.
“Hullo!” said Ferdinand, with a twisted smile.
The girl looked at him, chilled. How could she know that his
peculiar manner was due entirely to the severe attack of cold feet
resultant upon his meeting with George Parsloe that morning? The
interpretation which she placed upon it was that he was not glad to
see her. If he had behaved like this before, she would, of course,
have put it down to ingrowing goofery, but now she had his written
statements to prove that for the last ten days his golf had been one
long series of triumphs.
“I got your letters,” she said, persevering bravely.
“I thought you would,” said Ferdinand, absently.
“You seem to have been doing wonders.”
“Yes.”
There was a silence.
“Have a nice journey?” said Ferdinand.
“Very,” said Barbara.
She spoke coldly, for she was madder than a wet hen. She saw it
all now. In the ten days since they had parted, his love, she realised,
had waned. Some other girl, met in the romantic surroundings of this
picturesque resort, had supplanted her in his affections. She knew
how quickly Cupid gets off the mark at a summer hotel, and for an
instant she blamed herself for ever having been so ivory-skulled as
to let him come to this place alone. Then regret was swallowed up in
wrath, and she became so glacial that Ferdinand, who had been on
the point of telling her the secret of his gloom, retired into his shell
and conversation during the drive to the hotel never soared above a
certain level. Ferdinand said the sunshine was nice and Barbara said
yes, it was nice, and Ferdinand said it looked pretty on the water,
and Barbara said yes, it did look pretty on the water, and Ferdinand
said he hoped it was not going to rain, and Barbara said yes, it would
be a pity if it rained. And then there was another lengthy silence.
“How is my uncle?” asked Barbara at last.
I omitted to mention that the individual to whom I have referred as
the Cat-Stroker was Barbara’s mother’s brother, and her host at
Marvis Bay.
“Your uncle?”
“His name is Tuttle. Have you met him?”
“Oh yes. I’ve seen a good deal of him. He has got a friend staying
with him,” said Ferdinand, his mind returning to the matter nearest
his heart. “A fellow named Parsloe.”
“Oh, is George Parsloe here? How jolly!”
“Do you know him?” barked Ferdinand, hollowly. He would not
have supposed that anything could have added to his existing
depression, but he was conscious now of having slipped a few rungs
farther down the ladder of gloom. There had been a horribly joyful
ring in her voice. Ah, well, he reflected morosely, how like life it all
was! We never know what the morrow may bring forth. We strike a
good patch and are beginning to think pretty well of ourselves, and
along comes a George Parsloe.
“Of course I do,” said Barbara. “Why, there he is.”
The cab had drawn up at the door of the hotel, and on the porch
George Parsloe was airing his graceful person. To Ferdinand’s
fevered eye he looked like a Greek god, and his inferiority complex
began to exhibit symptoms of elephantiasis. How could he compete
at love or golf with a fellow who looked as if he had stepped out of
the movies and considered himself off his drive when he did a
hundred and eighty yards?
“Geor-gee!” cried Barbara, blithely. “Hullo, George!”
“Why, hullo, Barbara!”
They fell into pleasant conversation, while Ferdinand hung
miserably about in the offing. And presently, feeling that his society
was not essential to their happiness, he slunk away.
George Parsloe dined at the Cat-Stroker’s table that night, and it
was with George Parsloe that Barbara roamed in the moonlight after
dinner. Ferdinand, after a profitless hour at the billiard-table, went
early to his room. But not even the rays of the moon, glinting on his
cup, could soothe the fever in his soul. He practised putting sombrely
into his tooth-glass for a while; then, going to bed, fell at last into a
troubled sleep.
Barbara slept late the next morning and breakfasted in her room.
Coming down towards noon, she found a strange emptiness in the
hotel. It was her experience of summer hotels that a really fine day
like this one was the cue for half the inhabitants to collect in the
lounge, shut all the windows, and talk about conditions in the jute
industry. To her surprise, though the sun was streaming down from a
cloudless sky, the only occupant of the lounge was the octogenarian
with the ear-trumpet. She observed that he was chuckling to himself
in a senile manner.
“Good morning,” she said, politely, for she had made his
acquaintance on the previous evening.
“Hey?” said the octogenarian, suspending his chuckling and
getting his trumpet into position.
“I said ‘Good morning!’” roared Barbara into the receiver.
“Hey?”
“Good morning!”
“Ah! Yes, it’s a very fine morning, a very fine morning. If it wasn’t
for missing my bun and glass of milk at twelve sharp,” said the
octogenarian, “I’d be down on the links. That’s where I’d be, down on
the links. If it wasn’t for missing my bun and glass of milk.”
This refreshment arriving at this moment he dismantled the radio
outfit and began to restore his tissues.
“Watching the match,” he explained, pausing for a moment in his
bun-mangling.
“What match?”
The octogenarian sipped his milk.
“What match?” repeated Barbara.
“Hey?”
“What match?”
The octogenarian began to chuckle again and nearly swallowed a
crumb the wrong way.
“Take some of the conceit out of him,” he gurgled.
“Out of who?” asked Barbara, knowing perfectly well that she
should have said “whom.”
“Yes,” said the octogenarian.
“Who is conceited?”
“Ah! This young fellow, Dibble. Very conceited. I saw it in his eye
from the first, but nobody would listen to me. Mark my words, I said,
that boy needs taking down a peg or two. Well, he’s going to be this
morning. Your uncle wired to young Parsloe to come down, and he’s
arranged a match between them. Dibble—” Here the octogenarian
choked again and had to rinse himself out with milk, “Dibble doesn’t
know that Parsloe once went round in ninety-four!”
“What?”
Everything seemed to go black to Barbara. Through a murky mist
she appeared to be looking at a negro octogenarian, sipping ink.
Then her eyes cleared, and she found herself clutching for support at
the back of the chair. She understood now. She realised why
Ferdinand had been so distrait, and her whole heart went out to him
in a spasm of maternal pity. How she had wronged him!
“Take some of the conceit out of him,” the octogenarian was
mumbling, and Barbara felt a sudden sharp loathing for the old man.
For two pins she could have dropped a beetle in his milk. Then the
need for action roused her. What action? She did not know. All she
knew was that she must act.
“Oh!” she cried.
“Hey?” said the octogenarian, bringing his trumpet to the ready.
But Barbara had gone.
It was not far to the links, and Barbara covered the distance on
flying feet. She reached the club-house, but the course was empty
except for the Scooper, who was preparing to drive off the first tee. In
spite of the fact that something seemed to tell her subconsciously
that this was one of the sights she ought not to miss, the girl did not
wait to watch. Assuming that the match had started soon after
breakfast, it must by now have reached one of the holes on the
second nine. She ran down the hill, looking to left and right, and was
presently aware of a group of spectators clustered about a green in
the distance. As she hurried towards them they moved away, and
now she could see Ferdinand advancing to the next tee. With a thrill
that shook her whole body she realised that he had the honour. So
he must have won one hole, at any rate. Then she saw her uncle.
“How are they?” she gasped.
Mr. Tuttle seemed moody. It was apparent that things were not
going altogether to his liking.
“All square at the fifteenth,” he replied, gloomily.
“All square!”
“Yes. Young Parsloe,” said Mr. Tuttle with a sour look in the
direction of that lissom athlete, “doesn’t seem to be able to do a thing
right on the greens. He has been putting like a sheep with the botts.”
From the foregoing remark of Mr. Tuttle you will, no doubt, have
gleaned at least a clue to the mystery of how Ferdinand Dibble had
managed to hold his long-driving adversary up to the fifteenth green,
but for all that you will probably consider that some further
explanation of this amazing state of affairs is required. Mere bad
putting on the part of George Parsloe is not, you feel, sufficient to
cover the matter entirely. You are right. There was another very
important factor in the situation—to wit, that by some extraordinary
chance Ferdinand Dibble had started right off from the first tee,
playing the game of a lifetime. Never had he made such drives,
never chipped his chip so shrewdly.
About Ferdinand’s driving there was as a general thing a fatal
stiffness and over-caution which prevented success. And with his
chip-shots he rarely achieved accuracy owing to his habit of rearing
his head like the lion of the jungle just before the club struck the ball.
But to-day he had been swinging with a careless freedom, and his
chips had been true and clean. The thing had puzzled him all the
way round. It had not elated him, for, owing to Barbara’s aloofness
and the way in which she had gambolled about George Parsloe like
a young lamb in the springtime, he was in too deep a state of
dejection to be elated by anything. And now, suddenly, in a flash of
clear vision, he perceived the reason why he had been playing so
well to-day. It was just because he was not elated. It was simply
because he was so profoundly miserable.
That was what Ferdinand told himself as he stepped off the
sixteenth, after hitting a screamer down the centre of the fairway,
and I am convinced that he was right. Like so many indifferent
golfers, Ferdinand Dibble had always made the game hard for
himself by thinking too much. He was a deep student of the works of
the masters, and whenever he prepared to play a stroke he had a
complete mental list of all the mistakes which it was possible to
make. He would remember how Taylor had warned against dipping
the right shoulder, how Vardon had inveighed against any movement
of the head; he would recall how Ray had mentioned the tendency to
snatch back the club, how Braid had spoken sadly of those who sin
against their better selves by stiffening the muscles and heaving.
The consequence was that when, after waggling in a frozen
manner till mere shame urged him to take some definite course of
action, he eventually swung, he invariably proceeded to dip his right
shoulder, stiffen his muscles, heave, and snatch back the club, at the
same time raising his head sharply as in the illustrated plate (“Some
Frequent Faults of Beginners—No. 3—Lifting the Bean”) facing page
thirty-four of James Braid’s Golf Without Tears. To-day he had been
so preoccupied with his broken heart that he had made his shots
absently, almost carelessly, with the result that at least one in every
three had been a lallapaloosa.
Meanwhile, George Parsloe had driven off and the match was
progressing. George was feeling a little flustered by now. He had
been given to understand that this bird Dibble was a hundred-at-his-
best man, and all the way round the fellow had been reeling off fives
in great profusion, and had once actually got a four. True, there had
been an occasional six, and even a seven, but that did not alter the
main fact that the man was making the dickens of a game of it. With
the haughty spirit of one who had once done a ninety-four, George
Parsloe had anticipated being at least three up at the turn. Instead of
which he had been two down, and had to fight strenuously to draw
level.
Nevertheless, he drove steadily and well, and would certainly have
won the hole had it not been for his weak and sinful putting. The
same defect caused him to halve the seventeenth, after being on in
two, with Ferdinand wandering in the desert and only reaching the
green with his fourth. Then, however, Ferdinand holed out from a
distance of seven yards, getting a five; which George’s three putts
just enabled him to equal.
Barbara had watched the proceedings with a beating heart. At first
she had looked on from afar; but now, drawn as by a magnet, she
approached the tee. Ferdinand was driving off. She held her breath.
Ferdinand held his breath. And all around one could see their
respective breaths being held by George Parsloe, Mr. Tuttle, and the
enthralled crowd of spectators. It was a moment of the acutest
tension, and it was broken by the crack of Ferdinand’s driver as it
met the ball and sent it hopping along the ground for a mere thirty
yards. At this supreme crisis in the match Ferdinand Dibble had
topped.
George Parsloe teed up his ball. There was a smile of quiet
satisfaction on his face. He snuggled the driver in his hands, and
gave it a preliminary swish. This, felt George Parsloe, was where the
happy ending came. He could drive as he had never driven before.
He would so drive that it would take his opponent at least three shots
to catch up with him. He drew back his club with infinite caution,
poised it at the top of the swing—
“I always wonder—” said a clear, girlish voice, ripping the silence
like the explosion of a bomb.
George Parsloe started. His club wobbled. It descended. The ball
trickled into the long grass in front of the tee. There was a grim
pause.
“You were saying, Miss Medway—” said George Parsloe, in a
small, flat voice.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Barbara. “I’m afraid I put you off.”
“A little, perhaps. Possibly the merest trifle. But you were saying
you wondered about something. Can I be of any assistance?”
“I was only saying,” said Barbara, “that I always wonder why tees
are called tees.”
George Parsloe swallowed once or twice. He also blinked a little
feverishly. His eyes had a dazed, staring expression.
“I’m afraid I cannot tell you off-hand,” he said, “but I will make a
point of consulting some good encyclopædia at the earliest
opportunity.”
“Thank you so much.”
“Not at all. It will be a pleasure. In case you were thinking of
inquiring at the moment when I am putting why greens are called
greens, may I venture the suggestion now that it is because they are
green?”
And, so saying, George Parsloe stalked to his ball and found it
nestling in the heart of some shrub of which, not being a botanist, I
cannot give you the name. It was a close-knit, adhesive shrub, and it
twined its tentacles so loving around George Parsloe’s niblick that he
missed his first shot altogether. His second made the ball rock, and
his third dislodged it. Playing a full swing with his brassie and being
by now a mere cauldron of seething emotions he missed his fourth.
His fifth came to within a few inches of Ferdinand’s drive, and he
picked it up and hurled it from him into the rough as if it had been
something venomous.
“Your hole and match,” said George Parsloe, thinly.
Ferdinand Dibble sat beside the glittering ocean. He had hurried

off the course with swift strides the moment George Parsloe had
spoken those bitter words. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts.
They were mixed thoughts. For a moment joy at the reflection that
he had won a tough match came irresistibly to the surface, only to
sink again as he remembered that life, whatever its triumphs, could
hold nothing for him now that Barbara Medway loved another.
“Mr. Dibble!”
He looked up. She was standing at his side. He gulped and rose to
his feet.
“Yes?”
There was a silence.
“Doesn’t the sun look pretty on the water?” said Barbara.
Ferdinand groaned. This was too much.
“Leave me,” he said, hollowly. “Go back to your Parsloe, the man
with whom you walked in the moonlight beside this same water.”
“Well, why shouldn’t I walk with Mr. Parsloe in the moonlight
beside this same water?” demanded Barbara, with spirit.
“I never said,” replied Ferdinand, for he was a fair man at heart,
“that you shouldn’t walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same water. I
simply said you did walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same water.”
“I’ve a perfect right to walk with Mr. Parsloe beside this same
water,” persisted Barbara. “He and I are old friends.”
Ferdinand groaned again.
“Exactly! There you are! As I suspected. Old friends. Played
together as children, and what not, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“No, we didn’t. I’ve only known him five years. But he is engaged
to be married to my greatest chum, so that draws us together.”
Ferdinand uttered a strangled cry.
“Parsloe engaged to be married!”
“Yes. The wedding takes place next month.”
“But look here.” Ferdinand’s forehead was wrinkled. He was
thinking tensely. “Look here,” said Ferdinand, a close reasoner. “If
Parsloe’s engaged to your greatest chum, he can’t be in love with
you.”
“No.”
“And you aren’t in love with him?”
“No.”
“Then, by gad,” said Ferdinand, “how about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Will you marry me?” bellowed Ferdinand.
“Yes.”
“You will?”
“Of course I will.”
“Darling!” cried Ferdinand.
“There is only one thing that bothers me a bit,” said Ferdinand,

thoughtfully, as they strolled together over the scented meadows,
while in the trees above them a thousand birds trilled Mendelssohn’s
Wedding March.
“What is that?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Ferdinand. “The fact is, I’ve just discovered
the great secret of golf. You can’t play a really hot game unless
you’re so miserable that you don’t worry over your shots. Take the
case of a chip-shot, for instance. If you’re really wretched, you don’t
care where the ball is going and so you don’t raise your head to see.
Grief automatically prevents pressing and over-swinging. Look at the
top-notchers. Have you ever seen a happy pro?”
“No. I don’t think I have.”
“Well, then!”
“But pros are all Scotchmen,” argued Barbara.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m sure I’m right. And the darned thing is that
I’m going to be so infernally happy all the rest of my life that I
suppose my handicap will go up to thirty or something.”
Barbara squeezed his hand lovingly.
“Don’t worry, precious,” she said, soothingly. “It will be all right. I
am a woman, and, once we are married, I shall be able to think of at
least a hundred ways of snootering you to such an extent that you’ll
be fit to win the Amateur Championship.”
“You will?” said Ferdinand, anxiously. “You’re sure?”
“Quite, quite sure, dearest,” said Barbara.
“My angel!” said Ferdinand.
He folded her in his arms, using the interlocking grip.
CHAPTER II
HIGH STAKES
The summer day was drawing to a close. Over the terrace outside
the club-house the chestnut trees threw long shadows, and such
bees as still lingered in the flower-beds had the air of tired business
men who are about ready to shut up the office and go off to dinner
and a musical comedy. The Oldest Member, stirring in his favourite
chair, glanced at his watch and yawned.
As he did so, from the neighbourhood of the eighteenth green,
hidden from his view by the slope of the ground, there came
suddenly a medley of shrill animal cries, and he deduced that some
belated match must just have reached a finish. His surmise was
correct. The babble of voices drew nearer, and over the brow of the
hill came a little group of men. Two, who appeared to be the
ringleaders in the affair, were short and stout. One was cheerful and
the other dejected. The rest of the company consisted of friends and
adherents; and one of these, a young man who seemed to be
amused, strolled to where the Oldest Member sat.
“What,” inquired the Sage, “was all the shouting for?”
The young man sank into a chair and lighted a cigarette.
“Perkins and Broster,” he said, “were all square at the
seventeenth, and they raised the stakes to fifty pounds. They were
both on the green in seven, and Perkins had a two-foot putt to halve
the match. He missed it by six inches. They play pretty high, those
two.”
“It is a curious thing,” said the Oldest Member, “that men whose
golf is of a kind that makes hardened caddies wince always do. The
more competent a player, the smaller the stake that contents him. It
is only when you get down into the submerged tenth of the golfing
world that you find the big gambling. However, I would not call fifty

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List of Tables and Figures ix

PART I . IN T RODU C TION

PA RT II . E NVI RON M E N TAL POW ER S

PA RT I II . INTE R NAT IONA L I N STI TU T ION S AND

PA RT IV. C ONC LU SION S

5.1. Global GHG emissions of the top six emitters 101

5.1. EU 27 member states’ total GHG emissions, 1990–2018, measured as

ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations

IBSA India, Brazil, South Africa

SSCAF South-South Cooperation Assistance Fund

Alina Averchenkova is a Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute

Robyn Eckersley is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor in the Discipline of Political

Robert Falkner is Associate Professor of International Relations and Research Director of

Kathryn Hochstetler is Professor of International Development and Head of Department

Susan Park is Professor of Global Governance in the Department of Government and

Miriam Prys-Hansen is a Lead Research Fellow and Head of Research Programme 4:

Ciplet, Roberts, and Khan, 2015). However, questions of power asymmetry in

Great Powers and the Global Climate Challenge

possess significant technological and environmental capacities, as well as diplo-

Overview of the Book

conditions under which individual countries can count as environmental great

Thanks to its unique quality as an international actor and considerable market

Roberts, J. Timmons, and Parks, Bradley C. (2007). A Climate of Injustice: Global

Great Powers in Global International Society

Great Powers: Two Approaches

definition of international society, which establishes the key distinction between

a group of states (or, more generally, a group of independent political com-

The second definition is Bull’s (1977: 200–202) societal understanding of a great

in issue areas such as global environment, development, and health (Bukovansky

An entirely different complication for great power responsibility and manage-

Environmental Power and Great Powers

constructive use of power is closely related to the concept of international en-

Great Powers in Global Environmental Politics

What Counts as an Environmental Great Power?

Meanwhile, however, dark clouds were gathering. Sullen

It was Ferdinand’s healthy custom of a morning to get up in good

Ferdinand Dibble sat beside the glittering ocean. He had hurried

“There is only one thing that bothers me a bit,” said Ferdinand,

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