Climate Change, the Environment, and the Political-Economic Future

The end of the world is upon us! The end of capitalism is needed! The end of democracy is approaching! These emphatic statements are often thrown into the academic discourse of futurism. Climate change is, among other factors, projected to overwhelm world economic cities with flooding and create a migrant crisis more overwhelming than the world has yet seen. And the neoliberal capitalist mindset, which prioritizes profit over environmental beauty and human livelihood yet is deeply entrenched in moderate and conservative politics, is a reason why proper response to climate change will be a daunting future task. Yet these emphatic statements avoid the realities and possibilities of positive work, fuel anger instead of collaboration, and provide an aura of hedonistic, nihilistic resignedness to already challenging lives. How about this: Humanity faces many great challenges in adapting to and alleviating a changing climate, and the adjustment of political and economic models will be one of the most daunting of these. Although this sentence does not have a ring and does not provide distorted comfort, it has a realism that acknowledges the human-made problems that face our futures and the fact that most of us will face them in the future. It also acknowledges that humans can be part of the solution, and that solution will be one which human life continues: it is useless and defeating to think otherwise. Conclusively, it states that changes must occur in positive reform that reacts to climate change, but this reform does not necessarily have to be drastic and off-putting. An action-oriented, practical attitude in adjusting current models to take nature into account is a must of future politics, economics, and environmental discourse.

Climate change already pervades society. The industrial revolution allowed humans to innovate, build, and profit, but its effects often go hand-in-hand with environmental degradation. Climate change has largely been fueled by coal, oil, and natural gas, the fossil fuels that currently support modern industrial lifestyles. These fossil fuels, as well as methane and other greenhouse gasses, warm the air and trigger major environmental change over long timescales. Some examples of climate change caused by greenhouse gases are ice melt resulting in sea level rise, warmer average temperatures resulting in more frequent heat waves and droughts, and oceanic bleaching resulting in coral reef die offs and oceanic dead zones. Already, “Loss of wetlands from Louisiana's coastal region, estimated at some 100 km2 per year, is caused by many factors, including...sea-level rise.” (Magdoff and Foster) and “recent bleaching events mean two thirds of the Great Barrier Reef north of Townsville is now dead rock” (Bradley). Coral and wetland loss do not only mean a decrease in pristine environmental beauty: they mean loss of habitats and death or flight for plants and animals which these habitats sustain. Environmental degradation also includes human losses in the tourism industry as well as the loss of home and livelihood of people living in damaged or destroyed areas. Moreover, the environmental impacts of climate change can occasionally be felt in quick and severe bursts. Climate change upsets the balance, often triggering severe fires and extreme weather events. James Bradley describes a hurricane and resulting flood that fit this mold in his novel Clade: “the first wave of the storm hits, a wall of rain racing across the fields towards them. Even after a lifetime in Sydney Adam finds the sheer volume of water startling, the way they are drenched almost immediately. Yet it isn't the rain that is truly frightening but the wind, which strikes like a living thing, bending trees back upon themselves and flinging branches and bins and scraps of clothing through the air...Outside the water is still rising, the level now above the ground-floor windows. Cars and bins and refuse are pouring past, borne by the torrent, swirling and colliding as they sweep along the road” (Bradley 117, 127). This description is not foreign to most modern-day readers, as hurricanes such as Maria, Florence, and Michael have filled recent headlines with stories of ferocious nature, property destruction, and survival in the face of death or vice versa. Bradley's description allows readers from places not directly affected by these disasters to experience through reading their enormity and trials. Human life has and will be directly impacted by the changing climate.

Climate change, yet, is not the only major environmental problem, but it often overshadows other problems in modern political discourse. The industrial revolution's widespread taking of natural lands for human habitation and profit-making caused environmentalist reactions long before climate change became widely recognized by scientists. In fact, the modern environmentalist movement first championed species preservation and pollution elimination more than global warming alleviation. University of Chicago professor Dipesh Chakrabarty argues: "there is another to way to view climate change: as part of a complex family of interconnected problems, all adding up to the larger issue of a growing human footprint on the planet that has, over the last couple of centuries and especially since the end of the Second World War, seen a definite ecological overshoot on the part of humanity" (Chakrabarty 27). Humanity's impact of the natural world needs to be viewed holistically. However, an environmentalist mindset prioritizing climate change is justified because climate change is sparked by business practices also used to pollute, log, and overfish and can spark ecosystem depletion and destruction that makes further change worse. In her ethnography Friction, Anna Tsing argues that militarization and global corporatism created “resource frontiers...where entrepreneurs and armies were able to disengage nature from local ecologies and livelihoods” (Tsing 28). Resources exploited in this way include timber that sustains indigenous communities and absorbs Co2, marshlands that alleviate floods, and coal and oil that directly intensify climate change. If humanity continues to think of natural areas as containers of exploitable resources instead of as holistic ecosystems that provide life-sustaining practices, ecosystem-maintaining and beautiful animals such as honeybees and tigers will continue to fall towards extinction (Bradley 207).

The unfortunate reality of public discourse regarding climate change is that political polarization, especially in the USA, is currently obstructing positive action that would address climate change. The US political spectrum has not always been heavily polarized on climate change, and in fact a Republican president, Richard Nixon, oversaw the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (Antonio 195). After neoliberal policies became the norm in the 1980's, environmentalism was connected with “dreaded” regulation by often conservative believers in the absolute “free market”. Anti-environmentalist rhetoric became tied to climate change ignorance and denial by 1990, and from then on conservative/Republican media has effectively promoted climate skepticism to its viewers (Antonio 196-197, Palm et al. 884, 893). In 2014, 46% of Americans believed that climate change is a hoax, not important, or an unresolved issue (Palm et all 888). Because of confirmation bias, “individuals strive to shape their opinions on politically salient issues to conform with those of their party, reject information and ideas that conflict with party ideology, and become ever more convinced that their party’s position is accurate” (Kahan within Palm et al. 885). In fact, both conservative and liberal views on climate change have polarized on average in recent years because of this bias (Palm et al. 888). It has therefore become very hard to convince conservative people that climate change is an urgent and easily-unifying sociopolitical and moral issue. Rationally-minded people have often touted science and personal experience as avenues for a changing minds, but research shows that neither of these tactics are effective at a widespread level among conservatives. Climatology's use of predictive models in conveying climate change to neoliberal governments has not proven fruitful (Tsing 106) and “the preponderance of survey research in the United States has shown that scientific articles or assessment reports do not move public opinion.” Many Americans have not directly experienced climate change's impact, and even among those who have experienced extremely warm winters and hot summers, their experience either affirms their belief in climate change or only temporarily changes their view. It can be concluded that new methods of climate advocacy must be adopted, such as climate documentaries (Palm et al. 885-886), the teaching of climate science to young people from conservative families, and tactics that equally prioritize the economy and environment. A concentrated, out-of-the box approach that may cater to some conservative and free-market ideologies may be the only way for voters to predominantly support environmentalist climate action.

Politics does not dispel climate change action plans only through mass popular opinion, as corporations are free to collaborate with politicians and vice versa in order to increase profits for both groups at the expense of the environment. Often, lack of critical thinking among supporters of corporations causes them to propagate political candidates that exploit their labor in the name of “economic progress” regarding GDP that disproportionally benefits the rich (Antonio 196). An example of this trend is portrayed within the deteriorating environmental landscape of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, as the newly-elected President creates a “plan for putting people back to work [by]...suspend[ing] 'overly restrictive' minimum wage, environmental, and worker protection laws for those employers willing to take on homeless employees and provide them with training and adequate room and board” (Butler 26). This passage continues and implies that the President is legally mandating forced labor, and some scholars argue that current practices reflect this speculation. For example, many people are forced by “job blackmail” into environmentally-damaging jobs because it is what puts food on the table (Magdoff and Foster 1). Corporations “benefit from subsidies, externalizing their costs, avoiding transparency, and monopolizing markets... [they] ignore market realities and lobby for making new rules, or overlooking old ones, that will best achieve their private benefits” (Hawken et al. 265). This government-corporate relationship of lobbying and subsidies creates a “revolving door” in which officials trade places within this structure, perpetually furthering the aim of continued extracting of fossil fuels through deregulation and scientific skepticism (Magdoff and Foster 14). The presence of a deep, collaborative, and anti-environmental relationship between corporations and politicians reveals that solving climate crisis must be broader in scope than just addressing strictly environmental concerns. Fundamental changes to our political-economic reality, most definitely including campaign finance reform and lobbying restrictions, must come along to effectively facilitate changes towards a greener climate policy that benefits ordinary people. Free-market ideology actually can be an advantage in convincing conservatives of these changes: Is a market truly free if big-time oil companies are artificially propped up over upstart renewable resource companies by governments?

"For all their power and vitality, markets are only tools. They make a good servant but a bad master and a worse religion. They can be used to accomplish many important tasks, but they can’t do everything, and it’s a dangerous delusion to begin to believe that they can — especially when they threaten to replace ethics or politics" (Hawken et al. 261). If only current policy makers at least would adhere to this reasoning. Disappointingly, neoliberal economic ideology that decries any regulation or other government influence that protects current and future environments has become unassailable “[a]fter decades of privatization, social benefit cuts, reduction of the safety net, and dominant financial markets” and has formed “a complex of institutions, habits, and attitudes, or a “habitus” insouciant about social and ecological limits” (Antonio and Brulle). Extreme capitalist neoliberal ideology and the consumerist economy it supports has become so deeply entrenched in daily life that most people either take it for granted or notice its problems but believe that change is unrealistic or impossible. Daily routines directly connected to a strictly capitalist economy are especially hard to change, even in slight ways that if multiplied could make an impact in averting climate crisis: “Although many Americans believe in anthropogenic warming and fear its consequences, it is uncertain if even they are ready to expend significant resources or alter their way of life to meet the challenge” (Antonio and Brulle 199-200). Products derived from industrial processes and harmful towards ecosystems, such as plastics made from petroleum, paper made from tropical rainforests, and electronic devices made of mined products, are so often used by rich and middle class people that lives without them are unimaginable. Another factor in considering how deeply entrenched we are in an economic system that exploits nature is how human “developed” society is removed from natural beauty. In fact, “over 95% of the contiguous United States has been altered from its original state” (Fleischner in Sessions 118) and the small amount of land preserved in National Parks is seen as an “escape” by city-dwellers and suburbanites while being too small to contain full, healthy ecosystems (Sessions 92, 94). The loss of close connection with nature leads to loss of care among people when further environmental destruction is propagated (Magdoff and Foster 8). In fact, spacial removal from natural environments can cause people to become more eager to take part in potentially-enriching, as well as polluting and Co2-producing, extractive capitalist ventures: this trend is shown in Tsing's Friction through Javanese urbanites being much more eager to extract resources from Kalimantan than local Meratus Dayak peoples (Tsing 25). Current capitalist practices are deeply entrenched and promote unsustainable ways of living.

"A system that has only one goal, the maximization of profits in an endless quest for the accumulation of capital on an ever-expanding scale, and which thus seeks to transform every single thing on Earth into a commodity with a price, is a system that is soulless; it can never have a soul, never be green" (Magdoff and Foster 16). Green socialists Magdoff and Foster describe capitalism as an ideology, but it is more realistic to frame this quotation in relation to current practices of many businesses. As so many conservative and libertarian people hold beliefs in individualistic economic motivation dearly, and capitalist markets do provide a relatively efficient way of trading goods and services on the small-scale, a rapid overthrow of the entire current system would fuel divisiveness and confusion that would prevent climate solutions from being proposed. Benefits of a local capitalist structure are seen in Parable of the Sower, as main character Lauren and her companions often find refuge from the violence within markets. Lauren comments on her store of choice, which provides security when much of the outside world does not: “We all resupplied yesterday at a local Hanning Joss. We were relieved and surprised to see it – a good dependable place where we could buy all we needed from solid food for the baby to soap to salves for skin chafed by salt water, sun, and walking” (Butler 199). Having a sense of familiarity when climate crisis is bringing unfamiliar, dangerous changes will be beneficial to keep social order, so keeping basic structures of money and entrepreneurship as alleviation and adaptation begin is a smart idea. It is also important to know that access to consumerist goods, infrastructure, and wealth has spread through capitalism to “underdeveloped” nations along with negative imperialist and anti-environmental undertones. In their book Factfulness, Rosling et al. express: “Just 200 years ago, 85 percent of the world population was still...in extreme poverty. Today, the vast majority of people are...in the middle...with the same range of standards of living as people had in Western Europe and North America in the 1950s” (Rosling et al. 38). Capitalism allows this new middle class to become aware of climate issues, as seen in cosmopolitan college student nature lovers becoming environmentalists (Tsing 253). Capitalism provides tools that can be part of climate solutions.

With action needed within a short timeframe and the current economic and political structures not able to kickstart it, a fundamental restructuring, but not overthrow, of economics and politics must occur in the short term to address environmental and climate issues holistically. Specifics of this restructuring must include a separation of anti-environmentalist corporate interests from political actions, increased oversight of capitalist methods of resource extraction, and promotion of better methods of natural resource use. Implementation of programs that provide people with at least a moderate standard of living sustainable through climatic disruptions and finance environmental projects that provide innovative and profitable new ways to work are also needed to address current environmental quandaries. One proposed way forward that touches on many of these solutions is natural capitalism as proposed by Hawken et al.. Although Magdoff and Foster's quote from the previous paragraph tries to dispute the argument that capitalism is incompatible with environmentalism, it fails in this goal because Hawken et al. acknowledge that a profit-prioritizing mindset is not essential to capitalism and the Earth's environment, or natural capital, is a priceless sustainer of the Earth's life systems that must be preserved for capitalist markets to even exist (Hawken et al. 9). Focusses of this natural capitalism include radical efficiency and recycling of resources, replicating biological systems in capitalist innovations, and changing “the product” from the material object to the service it provides so businesses can be obliged to repair or recycle materials (Hawken et al. 10-11). Natural capitalism is also an option politically feasible in the current climate, as "It is neither conservative nor liberal in its ideology, but appeals to both constituencies. Since it is a means, and not an end, it doesn’t advocate a particular social outcome but rather makes possible many different ends. Therefore, whatever the various visions different parties or factions espouse, society can work toward resource productivity now, without waiting to resolve disputes about policy (Hawken et al. 20). Options outside of a complete overturning of capitalist systems must be prioritized in addressing urgent environmental issues: once the natural world is stabilized and rejuvenated, more equitable forms of resource distribution can be considered.

"It's important to have hope that something can be done at some level to protect what's of value in the world, and I think something can be done. But such hope must be informed by a realistic understanding of human beings as they are. There's a type of hope now which I think is very harmful, which essentially is a form of blocking out reality because it's too difficult to contemplate. I think that's a much more hopeless view" (Gray). In this quotation, philosopher and economist John Gray provides a reasonable kind of hope that should be expected as humanity continues to face the challenges of environmental crisis. Humans are social creatures that have worked together on seemingly impossible tasks ever since our ancestors began to, in groups, strategically hunt animals much bigger than any individual human. We also have been gifted with a brain more intelligent than that of most if not all other species. Gray's argument is persuasive in how it regards a multifaceted climate crisis, but his description of hope that “blocks out reality” must be carefully considered. Palm et al. state that “many Americans believe that even if climate change does cause disruption, society will either adapt or find a technological solution” (Palm et al. 885). It is lightly implied by this quote that it is unlikely that technological adaptations or solutions to climate change will be effective and that Americans are blocking out the disastrous future ahead of them, but to a hopeful mind it is Palm et al. who are blocking out the reality of humanity's ability to invent creative solutions in both material and idea. Overall, problem solving during a climate crisis needs to be an action-oriented matter of collaboration between minds with different opinions on the specifics of worldview and ideology but the similar goal of keeping Earth healthy. Tsing describes such an environmental collaboration in Friction, using the example of environmentalists, nature lovers, and indigenous peoples coming together to prevent the spread of logging (Tsing 247-249). This collaborative action is a practical beacon of hope that humanity should alight.

Literature, including climate fiction, is an important resource that can potentially change minds while also providing hopeful environmentalist thinkers with methods of collaboration and modes of action. It can be described that “The very marginality of literature, like that of the court jester, allows it to call into question the established order of things, and to attempt to recruit the power of the narratee in the interests of the narrator” (Ashcroft 21). Authors of climate fiction set in the future can provide warnings that make readers feel the effects of climate change with greater intensity than they would while viewing scientific models that show little of how this change impacts everyday life. Like much other science fiction, climate fiction usually provides the reader both cognition that keys them into the story's realism and estrangement from their present situation that allows them to peer at subjects from a different angle (Roberts 8). In Clade, a Bangladeshi immigrant to Australia named Amir agonizingly describes his feelings. His home was overtaken by the sea and his wife and daughter died in the resulting mayhem: “I was hurt in my heart, almost catatonic...I couldn't bear the thought of [Australian authorities] taking me back [to what's left of Bangladesh]” (Bradley 164). Readers who do not currently believe that climate change is a major issue could call anti-environmentalist media into question because they may have heard environmentalist news stories about sea level rise, and Bradley connects a continuation of sea level rise with deep human pain and loss. Readers who realize the environmental and human cost of sea level rise may also realize that the time to act to prevent this change and the resulting migration crisis it will trigger is now, when low-lying countries are still for the most part above water. These thinkers could actively collaborate with the residents of threatened areas in constructing infrastructure that prevents beach erosion and holds back water, creating campaigns that promote lifestyles committed to preventing sea level rise, and creating worst-case scenario evacuation plans that help people orderly move to accepting and generous places. A spread in the popularity of climate fiction will help in the advance of environmental progress.

Climate change will soon pose a major challenge to the Earth's environment and human civilization, but humanity is poised to successfully navigate this challenge if people can actively come together to practically realign economic and political systems so that they take environmental health into account. This realignment is full of opportunities other than the preservation of life-supporting systems, because ideas that uphold ecological preservation tend to correspond with ideas of a more just world for all humanity. And the technologies that are involved in environmental preservation will also lead to innovations that can enhance people’s enjoyment of life and nature.

Works Cited

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Sessions, George. “Ecocentrism, Wilderness, and Global Ecosystem Protection.” The Wilderness Condition: Essays on Environment and Civilization, edited by Max Oelschlaeger, Island Press, 1992, pp. 90-128.

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