Energy, Power and

Climate Change
Chapter 2 – Power Shift

Presentation By
Sarowar Jahan
North South University
MESM
Source:
1. POWER IN A WARMING WORLD:The New Global Politics of Climate
Change By David Ciplet, J. Timmons Roberts and Mizan R. Khan
2. https://s2017globenvtalprobs.wordpress.com/
Another Lens

• We need to find a new direction for climate change to head into if

we want a change to actually happen. Here are four prominent
perspectives that already exist on the developments in global
climate change politics: structuralist, institutionalist, market
pragmatist (Practical person) and eco-socialist perspectives. They
give use insight but none explain the international interaction or
offer turning points we want to see in climate change. There is a
fifth lens that can be used, it builds upon the work of an Italian
social theorist Antonio Gramsci and it offers a more better
direction while creating a strategic perspective on power. This
concept is a great one, but it’s not fully developed as a whole. This
concept has three main components with it; strategic view on
hybridity, layered views that considers fragmented governance
institutions and historical dimension on world order which try to
help out the climate change.
Power and Climate

 The relationship between the energy we use today and Earth’s

climate depends on the source of the energy. People use
energy for heating, for transportation, for lighting, for
manufacturing, for communication, and for growing and
harvesting food.

 Structuralist perspective is the most common lens in which

scholars have analyzed international climate change. This
approach looks at climate change as an inaction that
primarily is based between states, political, ideological,
military and economic asymmetries. Its realist relations is
focus mainly on how powerful the states are in a military and
economic asymmetries.
Power and Climate

 Second, the institutionalist approach focuses on the

importance of resolving global environmental conflicts. The
focus needs to be on the power differentials between states
and point to the cooperative and mutually beneficial
dimensions of multilateralism in terms of increasing as a
whole than relative power.

 The third approach is market pragmatist and the solution for

this approach is too view climate change in leveraging and
reforming powerful private sectors actors within markets to
keep the incentives and penalties. This approach has the
state actors minimized and the focused on business interests.
Power and Climate

 The fourth and final approach will refer to an eco-socialist

perspective and it explicitly rejects the idea that when it
comes to a climate change solution the answer will be found
in the same economic model that was creating the problems
in the first place. This approach wants us to see past
incrementalist and reformist approaches.
Power and Climate

 All 4 of these perspective give very good insight into the

importance of the climate crisis, the obstacles we are facing in
realizing political solution and the many chances we have to shift
courses. The one problem we have is that each of these
approaches comes with some degree of an insufficient theory on a
larger scale in social change. Structuralists has an over-
determined outlook view that endures power relations in climate
change politics and gives no attention to political and social
system shift. Institutionalists will reduce the problem to mostly
political change, but will neglect how existing institution serve as
a terrain for the social struggle. Market pragmatists will present
historical social and economic structures with inevitable and
downplay but they could also completely neglect the ability of how
social movement shift and define our preferences. Eco-socialists
has an emphasis on bottom change but will neglect the
importance of building far-reaching institutions.
Transnational Coalitions

 This approach is concerned on how we are

competing transnational coalitions while we
struggle to try and preserve with the challenge of
having the principles and practices through an
organized global society. This approach builds on
from Italian sociologist Antonio central concept of
hegemony and the social class is exerted in the
supremacy in two ways: the first as domination and
the second as intellectual or moral leaderships.
Fragmented Climate Governance

 We look at the importance of the global

governance architecture and how it shapes the
power relations in the layered approach. When we
look at the intellectual tradition of the earth
systems governance in the global governance
architecture and how it is used to describe the
overarching systems of public and private
institutions that are active and how they are valid
when it comes to giving an issue on the area of
world politics.
States, Markets, Ecosystems and civil Society

 The strategic power relations we use are an

attentive to how are governance structures and
coalition engaged in the conditioned by the broader
historic structure of the shifting world order. The
four areas of analysis direct our attention to the
ways that a dominant global political order is
vulnerable to attack and reform. This will adapt to
accommodate the bottom up challenges we face as
well as to identify the specific issues historically
that remain firmly off of negotiating table.
Shifting World Order

 Climate change is a global problem and with any

adequate solution, it must be global. To achieve
a solution globally will be tricky because it has long
been assumed that may of the strongest
environmental movements and states that have the
most monetary (exp: Financial, Economic etc.)
resources to address the issue will be in the wealthy
nations.
U.S. Decline and China’s Rise

 In the U.S. hegemonic cycle, the profitability of

manufacturing in the core nations dropped sharply in the
late 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, as job-heavy production
shifted to cheap labor zones such as Mexico and China.
Ecological collapse and development space

 New access to unconventional fossil fuels reserves

will generate many new geo-political and social
conflicts that will have many important
implications for the international climate politics.
With the non-infinite supply of fossil fuels on
earth and the many reserves now found even
though the cost of accessing these will grow higher
down the road or more depending on how far
offshore, we at one time will have to go and get
them. These new access will greatly help us but
will not be a good long term solution for the globe
as a whole.
THANKS TO ALL