ISBN 978-0-7456-4693-0. Anthony Giddens' "The Politics of Climate Change" was published by Polity Press in 2009. Giddens is a prolific author with at least another 28 titles to his name plus another 12 edited works to his credit. He is a former Director of the London School of Economics, a Fellow of Kings College and a Member of the House of Lords. By the sound of things there is nothing about modern political philosophy that he doesn't know. This is his first venture into the murky world of Climate Change but his work is largely original and desperately needed. Giddens argues that the very reason we are failing to tackle Climate Change is that we are failing to understand its connection to international energy geopolitics and the power of oil. This is probably the first good book since Kunstler's "Long Emergency" to focus on the interchange between Peak Oil and Climate Change. The added dimension of politics is what has been missing and explains why, despite all the fine words of Tickell and Stern, the attempts to replace Kyoto have been such a miserable failure. It may sound as if this 264 page book (including acknowledgements, introduction, nine chapters, afterword, notes, references and index) might be really boring but you would be wrong. If anything this is one of the most accessible books on the topic that we have seen.
It is also far more useful and believable than Mike Hulme's "Why we disagree about Climate Change" that, although enlightening, offered little in the way of solutions. Where these two authors do agree is that a Kyoto-style agreement cannot be reached because we fail to understand the problem. Hulme assumes that this is some vague and ill-defined issue of philosophy suggesting we don't know what we want and are generally quarrelsome. Hardly helpful. Giddens is more to-the-point in his analysis. It is the Realpolitik that gets in the way. Political power is the problem. He goes further in arguing that as most past, present and future emissions only come from 6 countries (if you include the EU is one nation) they should get together and agree targets. Hulme had come to a similar conclusion in saying that multiple local agreements are best. Although finding Stern's approach naive (on page 201 "...there is no mention of politics in Stern's discussion, no analysis of power, or of the tense nature of international relations."), Giddens appears to agree that what is needed is a long-term central body to over-see and enforce multiple multi-lateral and regional Climate Change agreements. Stern suggested such a body at the level of the WTO and this, again, appears a reasonable way forward, if only because we haven't tried in and we need something, anything, to break the deadlock.
The first Chapter on Risk is pretty much standard fair for this kind of book but we don't have to wait long before Chapter 2 kicks in with the Peak Oil argument. In this he aligns with Stern in suggesting that decarbonisation is economically inevitable although he doesn't dwell on the matter much. Giddens' view is simply that the world map of politics is being drawn up as a race for the last of the planet's fossil fuels. Since decarbonisation challenges the status quo of the role that Russia, the Central Asian Republics and OPEC play then this is the pivotal point for world affairs the lens through which we must look to understand why climate change negotiations are on a road to nowhere. Agreements that were reached were as a result of backroom political trade-offs rather than any real desire to tackle the problem. It is all just political posturing which achieves little or nothing. Since the passing of the Bush Jnr years in the Whitehouse, and the arrival of Barack Obama, there is now more chance of getting the USA to take a leading role via multi-lateral action. This clearly illustrates that actions are at the whim of global politics and we have to understand what is driving world affairs before we understand how to tackle such a global issue. In Chapter 3 Giddens lays into the "green movement" and largely dismisses them as irrelevant because he perceives them as a political group that contest the existence of the very institutions that we need to create and enforce the policies to combat Climate Change. In fact he dismisses the role of such organisations for the rest of the book and just generically refers to "NGO's". He sees their contribution as less than useful as they do not engage geopolitics on the world stage nor do they understand it. In this he is both partially right and probably wholly unfair. He is thinking and describing mostly the "Green Party" and doesn't give credit for how diverse the NGO's are in this area. The "Greens" (big 'G') are but one element. Giddens probably focuses on them because they are a political party so he is aware of them. Since they are unlikely to gain much real power this is all rather a moot point anyway.
By Chapter 5 Giddens talks about the roles of Carbon Taxes which he seems to prefer of Carbon Trading, although he leaves room for both. Like the rest of us he is waiting for Carbon Markets to work rather than act as a political fig leaf. As they remain unproven he prefers Carbon Taxes which Stern was largely dismissive of. Even Stern accepted they had a role on a national level but he didn't have much enthusiasm for them. By Chapter 7 we have moved on to Climate Change Adaptation. This is a most peculiar section of the book as Giddens appears to take on the role of insurance salesman and devotes most of the chapter to discussing financial insurance. This is not what most of us think of when we describe "adaptation". This chapter stands out as an oddity as being the only section where the authors goes off at a nearly irrelevant tangent. Stern has clearly illustrated that we cannot insure ourselves financially against Climate Change. By Chapter 8 the author is back on-message as he examines Climate Change negotiations before moving rapidly onto the final Chapter on Geopolitics. This section resonates the most as offering the most original analysis of the problem of reaching agreement. Giddens argues persuasively that we have left the post-Cold War honeymoon period and are back into a new Cold War - the war for resources. The players now are largely China and the USA. He suggests that these two should hold Cold War style summits to thrash out agreements to avoid conflict. If not he believes that we could see events spiral out of control and end up with the use of genuine weapons of mass destruction.
Giddens has created a work here that aligns with much that we have observed in the real world of climate politics. On page 11 he writes "we must create a positive model of a low-carbon future". This could be lifted right out of the work of the Transition Towns movement. He goes on to say that "It won't be a green vision, but one driven by political, social and economic thinking." Quite! He echoes the thoughts that we have here at PCL; Climate Change is not an environmental issue and to pigeon hole it as such guarantees that we will not deal with it. Giddens' advice to policy makes are thus: 1) Promote political and economic convergence upon a positive vision of a low-carbon future. It should overlap all areas of public policy. A low-carbon economy is a competitive one. 2) Embed the concern with Climate Change into every day lives so it is in the foreground all the time. 3) Avoid making party political points out of Climate Change. It is not a left wing issue. It is for the radical centre. The state must ensure action over the long term so policy must transcend the lifetimes of individual parliaments. 4) Perform long term risk assessments. He goes onto question the role of economic growth in developed countries and suggests that this is outmoded. Such growth is only needed in the developing world but all Nations need to engage in proactive adaptation.
To Giddens the neo-liberal experiment has failed because it was too short-termist. Future success will not depend on some return to Soviet style centralised planning but rather a return to long-termism in Government policy making. Governments must ensure that the markets will fix the problem by simply planning ahead. Unlike Stern, Giddens' is not dismissive of Climate Change sceptics saying (on page 24) "...the sceptics deserve and must receive a hearing. Scepticism is the lifeblood of science..." Finally this author confirms that "oil is the enemy of freedom" and a curse. On page 218 he adds "If the industrial nations could break away from their wholesale dependency on oil and natural gas; it would benefit not only them but, perversely. also the producer nations." We couldn't have said it better ourselves. This book is a near perfect analysis of where we have gone so terribly wrong in tackling Climate Change. We thought it could be fixed with a type of new Montreal Agreement and the sort of market trading that worked well to fix acid rain. However, we were mistaken. Fossil fuels are strategic assets to be fought over. We are addicted to them. The closest way we can fix this is to adopt the thinking of arms negotiations of the cold war. This may seem brutal and harsh, but that, sadly, is how it is. If there is one book you read on Climate Change this year make it this one. Please.
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