So, it’s true then. Climate change can only be beaten by a New World Order.
Like the Titanic, the climate catastrophe knows no democracy. The
majority of the victims are trapped in the cheap lower decks, from
which there is no escape. Those who are driving climate change are
simultaneously attacking the poorest of the poor and threatening their
own means of survival. Those who seek to protect their citizens and
properties in Britain, the US and Japan from the flooding that will
occur when rivers burst their banks and sea levels rise are falling
prey to the illusion that the social and political consequences of
climate change can be addressed by a solo effort. This is merely
another way of dodging the key issue of global justice.
And those
who argue that "climate protection doesn’t hurt" (to use the words of
the German environment minister Sigmar Gabriel), that we can get
climate change under control by using fuel-efficient engines and
building clean power stations, are kidding themselves. Climate change
is not solely a matter of hurricanes, droughts, floods, refugee
movements, impending wars or unprecedented market failure. Suddenly,
and for the first time in history, every population, culture, ethnic
group, religion and region in the world faces a future that threatens
one and all. In other words, if we want to survive, we have to include
those who have been excluded. The politics of climate change is
necessarily inclusive and global – it is cosmopolitics.
Slightly worrying for all those who simply think that reducing emissions would be enough. Or, possibly, could it be, is it even vaguely possible, that our Professor of Sociology is simply grasping at whatever he can to bolster his desire for such a New World Order?
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