Climate Terror A Critical Geopolitics of Climate Change

x. To acknowledge this is to underline the importance of critical social science research on climate
change. If climate change is about change in the human– nature interface then it is important to
acknowledge that the history of the destruction and disappearance of nature in pursuit of primacy and
domination, including the colonial chapter, is much longer than the history of global warming.

12. To the extent that fears once suffered in private have come to be perceived and dealt with as public
problems, the ground is prepared for the understanding of fear as contingent, as a political problem.
This long term transformation may be described as the ‘democratisation’ of fear, not in the ridiculous
sense that everyone comes to exercise their right to be afraid, or is duty- bound to be so, but rather that
fear, especially its debilitating and anti- democratic forms, ceases to be seen as ‘natural’ and comes
instead to be understood as a contingent human experience, as a publicly treatable phenomenon, as a
political problem for which tried and tested political remedies may be found. (Keane 2001: 32–35;
emphasis added)

12, 13. Needless to say this question begs insights from various other disciplines, especially geography.
The new geopolitics of fear, argues Rachel Pain (2009) is ‘globalized’ in the sense that ‘emotions are
positioned as primarily being produced and circulating on a global scale, rather than rooted in the
existing biographies of places and their social relations; and second, in that they tend to be discussed as
though they apply to everyone all of the time.

Globalized fear is a ‘metanarrative that tends to constitute fear as omnipresent and connected, yet at
the same time analyses it remotely, lacking grounding, embodiment or emotion’ (Pain 2009: 467). She
would argue that there is a significant geography to the so- called ‘globalized’ fear in the sense that
‘Global risks and threats do not map neatly onto local fears’ (Pain 2010) and moreover ‘those most
affected by fear in the current geopolitical climate are marginalized minority groups’ (ibid.). Our analysis
of the new geopolitics of climate fear in the chapters to follow endorses these insights.

15, 16. The critical take of Saffron O’Neill and Sophie Nicholson- Cole (2009) on fear- inducing or shock-
provoking representations of climate change is that despite some promise for drawing popular attention
to climate change, fear appears to be neither an appropriate nor an effective catalyst for invoking a
‘genuine’ personal response to and engagement with climate change.

19. How is it that despite the IPCC ‘consensus’ – arrived at by both earth climate scientists and the
relevant bureaucracies of the countries they represent – the response of various state parties, (despite
rhetorical commitments shown and shared so enthusiastically at the Conference of Parties to climate
change mitigation and adaptation) is so varied in terms of domestic responses and implementation?

24. Progress, as a concept, became a dangerous myth in the context of environmental crises when, as
Bury (1960) writes, it was linked with the Baconian idea that scientific knowledge should be applied to
human manipulation of the natural environment. Progress came to be seen as intrinsically tied to
changing, taming, and controlling the nonhuman world. Nature could now be scientifically and
technologically ‘improved’ upon, and many environmentally degrading acts ensued under the banner of
‘western progress’ (Doyle 2001: 112).

26, 27. Early environmentalists, in understanding the Earth as finite, saw environment versus
development tussles in the context of zero- sum games, with win- loss outcomes. The brilliance of the
ecological modernists was to develop an approach to resolving developmental and environmental
objectives by depicting them as achievable through a positive sum game. Heavily reliant on scientific
expertize and technology- driven responses, ecological modernization encapsulated a discourse which
was market friendly, working in close collaboration with development and business interests. As will be
discussed in Chapter 4, it was now argued that economic growth and environmental protection were
now both coherent with sustainable development.

30. Climate change is the Weberian ideal type of environmental issue emerging from discourses of
ecological modernization and sustainable development. Without the transition from early oppositional
environmental politics to more corporatist forms of politics, which produced EM and SD, climate change,
as an issue, would not have achieved such prominence, regardless of any essential importance, crisis
imperative, or Earthly urgency attached to it.

34. Much of this dominant trope relates to creating alternative forms of energy which do not necessarily
undermine the projects of industrialization, modernity, technocracy, or capitalism, but replace these
versions of Western- inspired, science- led progress with a version which is more environmentally
friendly and more carbon-neutral (but still westerninspired and controlled).

47. However, in the global South, the day of reckoning already exists. The metaphoric flood is in the
past, not in a climate- changing future. In the South, crucial green welfare issues are almost always
purely perceived in an anthropocentric manner, and most of these intersect with basic human rights:
the right to have a healthy water source; the right to shelter; the right to food sovereignty; and the right
to energy security. We argue that post- materialist and post- industrialist discourses do not recognize
the colonialist realities of the global South, where people wrestle with massive environmental debts
incurred upon them by centuries of exploitation by the North (the past and the present), rather than
trading in sustainable climate footprints (the present and future).

49. EM and SD have been key components of an influential discourse in the global North over the past
two decades, utilized in UK environment policy. Both Revell (2005) and Barry and Paterson (2004) argue
that the UK has embraced a weak version of EM and SD, with politicians from both Conservative and
Labour parties deploying the language of SD in their election manifestos and speeches on the
environment (see Salih 2009). At a time of increased ecological awareness, the ‘ win- win’ (Revell 2005)
philosophy of EM enables politicians to offer policy solutions to these threats that also contribute to
economic growth. A reduction in economic growth and consumption rates, it is often argued, would
limit the degree to which the state can make public welfare provision.

It is our claim that ‘sustainable development’ is part of a broader process of ‘ post- politicalization’.
Before examining what is considered to be ‘ post- political’ about the present condition, it is first
necessary to consider ‘the political’. ‘Politics’ is often used as a term to denote the institutional sphere of
the state and the organized competition for votes and governing that takes place within its boundaries.

50. Post- political theorists (Valentine 2005) argue that the space of the political is contracting in the
face of the hegemonic grip that neo- liberal ideas have over public affairs (Catney and Doyle 2011b). The
political realm is increasingly limited to managerial concerns over ‘what works’ (as if these decisions
were not themselves ‘political’) than with the clash of competing alternative principles of social and
economic order.
51. We argue that a particular global North ( post- materialist, intergenerational) conception of
sustainability has come to dominate conceptions of welfare and even the governance of the state in the
global South, marginalizing more immediate welfare concerns in these states. Climate change is a key
discursive site where this post- politics takes place; it is, on many occasions, a depoliticizing clutch of
green ideas and actions.

52. Neopopulism Paddison (2009: 3) tentatively asserts that a new style of neopopulist governance has
emerged which fosters a range of strategies which seek to advance neoliberal policies, though
principally consensus building, persuasion and even coercion (for example, outlawing forms of protest)
are part of the politicians’ repertoire. Swyngedouw (2009) more directly links the rise of neopopulism to
the rise of post- political governance and the advancement of neoliberalism, arguing that politicians
engaged in neopopulist strategies seek to invoke the rhetoric of external ‘threats’ against a unified
‘people’ in order to build a consensus through which alternative narratives are foreclosed.

55. As noted above, sustainable development suggests that we need to have greater regard for how
future generations can enjoy similar resources and opportunities to the ones we presently enjoy (see
Dobson 1999).

64. Given these premises, the argument then concludes: Given the substantial cost that such a reduction
will give rise to, it is not worth the benefits even to the international climate effort. Instead, India would
advocate equitable emissions entitlements to the atmosphere. The former Indian minister for
Environment, Saifuddin Soz, is reported to have said at Kyoto, [p]er ‘capita basis is the most important
criteria for deciding the rights to environmental space. This is a direct measure of human welfare. Since
the atmosphere is the common heritage of humankind, equity has to be the fundamental basis for its
management’ (ibid.).

77. In short, by now re- territorializing all major environmental issues into one climate category, climate
security is a flawed position on two counts: first, environmental catastrophe for the many in the global
South is a daily reality, not a calamity- in- waiting. Secondly, the ultimate day- of- judgment, a future day
when the earth’s climate change will lead to another great flood, imagines an environmental
punishment being dished out, ultimately by forces of nature. Projecting a force- of- nature as the
ultimate source of retribution conveniently provides cover for the key perpetrators, mouthing climate
change platitudes from their homes and universities in the affluent world. What is glossed over by these
imaginative geographies of climate change, ‘global’ as well as ‘national’, is the long- standing history of a
multitude of socio- ecological injustices in the global South.

81. So, it has not taken much for neo- liberal, industryfunded, wise use think tanks like the Lavoisier
Group, Frontiers for Freedom, Clean Air Institute, Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy, and the Clean
and Safe Energy Coalition … Heartlands Institute, and the Institute for Free Enterprise

84. On the right, within the mercantilist or ‘realist’ understandings of political economy, the role and
importance of the state is obviously accentuated. Key assumptions of this position are based on: the
primacy of the group (in this case the modern state) rather than the individual over most elements of
social life (O’Brien and Williams 2010). Also, critical to this position’s premise is Hedly Bull’s contention
that the inter- state system is anarchical and it is therefore the duty of each state to protect its own
interests (Bull 1977). In this vein, the state is the pre- eminent actor in the domestic and international
spheres, existing a priori to the market, and the international system is a struggle for power and wealth
between rational states. Relations between states are characterized by unending conflict and the pursuit
of power, and the nature of the global economy reflects the interests of the most powerful states. In
this mercantilist view, due to the fact that markets can oftentimes be negative in their effects, state
control of key economic activities or, at least, state assistance to central economic sectors is favored.
Security concerns dictate that too much dependence on key energy sources derived from abroad is
undesirable, despite any economic benefit (O’Brien and Williams 2010). In this manner, from an
economic nationalist view, the United Kingdom, for example, may embrace alternative energy systems,
not only because of climate change being viewed as an essentialist threat, but also, for example, to
guard against an over- reliance on Russian gas and oil, which may threaten its national security in the
future.

100. Like neo- liberals, the classical liberal position argues for the primacy of the individual, and upholds
the basic tenets of the capitalist economic system. But liberalism differs from its neo- liberal or radical
libertarian cousins, as it maintains that the state has a role to intervene in human affairs when the will of
the anti- social minority (in this case environmentally degrading companies), interferes with the wishes
of the majority. In this light, the Kyoto Protocol is firmly entrenched in the liberal tradition, as it sees a
role for responsible, democratic governments coming together to provide sticks as well as carrots to
alter poor, climate- degrading, national and corporate practices.

106. The reality is that climate economics is largely a Northern document, a map with clear lines of
cultural imperialism. Of course, the dissolution of the concept of the Other has not occurred in the
South: in fact, the boundaries have often solidified with the acknowledgment that globalization has
delivered disproportionate amounts of wealth and power to Northern and Southern elites (Doyle 2005).

This leads to a crucial point: in most parts of the world, for many years, climate was seen as a non-
issue – an issue constructed by western science, and then utilized as an environmental security issue to
control the less affluent from pursuing the very path of development which the minority world has
pursued without restraint since the scientific and industrial revolutions.

113. Borders are conceived, constructed, imposed and even resisted primarily through emotional
geographies that are far from being politically innocent or eternally disembodied. These boundary
producing (between ‘us’ and ‘them’) imaginative- emotional geographies are often deployed at the
service of power- political- policing practices of the institutions of statecraft.

114, 115. In the last few years a new cycle of fear, one that shares many common features in Europe
and the United States, has invaded our consciousness. I do not think it actually began with 9/11, which
only confirmed and deepened it. In both regions of the West, this new cycle includes fear of the Other,
the outsider who is coming to invade the homeland, threaten our identity, and steal our jobs. In both
regions, it includes fear of terrorism and fear of weapons of mass destruction, the two being easily
linked. It includes fear of economic uncertainty or collapse. It includes fear of natural, environmental,
and organic disasters, from global warming to disease pandemics. In sum, it involves fear of an uncertain
and menacing future, over which there is little, if any, possible human control.