How climate change will affect our political theory—for better and worse
Despite all the science and summits, leading capitalist states have not managed to mitigate anything close to an adequate level of carbon emissions. There is no way the world will warm less than the critical 2C threshold. What are the likely political-economic outcomes? Where is our warming world headed? Possibilities in the struggle for climate justice depend on our capacity to anticipate where the existing global order is likely to go. Climate Leviathan provides a radical way of thinking about how environmental change will intensify existing challenges to global order, unearthing the forces for a planetary variation on existing forms of sovereignty. Drawing on a wide range of political thought, Wainwright and Mann argue that rapid climate change will transform global political economy and our world’s basic political arrangements, leading toward a capitalist planetary sovereignty. Alternative futures must be constructed in the face of these transformations.
“In the face of the contemporary ecological crisis, can sovereignty maintain the absolute character that has defined it from the beginning and continue the mediatory functions that modernity attributed to it? And how can national sovereignty deal with that global crisis? Can ‘political realism’ address the themes of ecological crisis? These are some of the thorny questions that Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann confront in this book. Bringing down the Leviathan seems the only possible response. The nature of the problem is clear, and its solution is a struggle we have to win.”
—Antonio Negri
“Urgent, provocative and elegantly executed, Climate Leviathan provides a map for climate politics in the stormy decades ahead. As the boat rocks ever more violently and we seek to set the compass, this work will be of foundational importance.”
—Andreas Malm, author of Fossil Capital
“Here is the political theory for climate justice we've been waiting for: penetrating, politically committed, accessible. Climate Leviathan should be read, and debated, by everyone concerned about capitalism, climate, and justice.”
—Jason Moore, author of Capitalism in the Web of Life
“A crucial intervention into the philosophical debates about climate change. Climate change forces us to question the self-evidence of our thinking about politics. If capitalism persists and cannot stop climate change, where is the world going? No one can predict the future. But Climate Leviathan offers a bold and brilliant map of our prospects.”
—Kojin Karatani, author of The Structure of World History
