Lesson 11: Environment and Climate

Environment and Climate

Enduring Question

• Does the global system have the tools to combat climate change?

What 3°C of Global Warming Looks Like

Key Terminology

• Climate change: process that increases severity of extreme weather events.

• Biodiversity: describes all life forms on earth in all their forms.

• Sustainable development: retooling how a state’s development occurs so that it is cleaner and more aware of environmental impacts.

• Resource curse: negative effect that natural resource wealth has on governance.

• The Green New Deal: series of climate-related policy measures intended to use government capital to invest in green jobs and establish zero emissions targets.

Key Terms: Climate Change, Biodiversity, and Sustainable Development

• Climate Change:

  • No issue is more international than climate change. Climate change is a multifaceted issue that touches on economics, politics, and social structures across the globe. Its impacts are not confined by national borders, making it a uniquely international challenge.

  • The earth's climate has never been constant. Throughout its history, the Earth's climate has experienced natural cycles of warming and cooling. However, the current rate of change is unprecedented.

  • Over the last century, human activity, principally the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and natural gas, have driven global warming and a resulting large-scale shift in weather patterns. The reliance on fossil fuels for energy has released significant amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, trapping heat and causing a rise in global temperatures.

  • Climate change is a dynamic process that increases the severity of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, droughts, and flooding as the earth continues to warm. As the planet warms, extreme weather events become more frequent and intense, leading to devastating consequences for communities and ecosystems.

• Biodiversity:

  • Biodiversity describes all the life forms on earth in all their various forms, from the smallest bacteria, to plants, insects, and the largest mammals. The concept of biodiversity encompasses the variability among living organisms from all sources, including diversity within species, between species, and of ecosystems.

  • The different elements within earth's biosphere rely on the others to survive. The biosphere is a complex web of interconnected living organisms, each playing a vital role in maintaining the health and stability of the planet. Loss of even a single species can have cascading effects on the entire ecosystem.

  • Due to industrialisation and human activity, biodiversity loss is reaching critical levels. Activities such as deforestation, pollution, and overexploitation of resources are pushing many species towards extinction, disrupting ecosystems, and threatening the long-term survival of countless organisms.

• Sustainable Development:

  • Sustainable development concerns retooling how a state's development occurs so that it is cleaner, more aware of impacts on natural systems, and produces fewer emissions and pollutants than in traditional industrial processes. It seeks to balance economic growth with environmental protection and social equity, ensuring that development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

  • This is important as the large number of 'developing' states need to follow a development path in order to improve the lives and prosperity of their citizens and reduce poverty, much as the states of the Global North already have. Developing countries aspire to achieve similar levels of prosperity as developed countries, but they need to do so in a way that does not exacerbate climate change or biodiversity loss.

  • If they do not do so sustainably, then it will exacerbate climate change and biodiversity loss and endanger the health and security of future citizens. Unsustainable development practices can have far-reaching consequences, jeopardizing the well-being of present and future generations, and undermining the long-term stability of societies and ecosystems.

Fabian Socialist Concepts

• ‘Change’ – no clearly responsible actors

• ‘biodiversity’ – steady state economics, closed system, ‘natural’ equilibrium- is a comet impact natural?

• ‘Sustainable’ – anthropocentric concept

Timeline

• 2050

• 2025

Towards a Global Consensus

• The Stockholm Conference (UNEP created) was the starting point for global environmental protection, where human health was linked with environmental and ecosystem health. It marked a significant step in recognizing the interconnectedness of human well-being and the environment, leading to the establishment of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

• Brundtland Report (1987) outlined the need for ‘sustainable development’ in economic, environmental, and social spheres. The report provided a comprehensive framework for addressing environmental and developmental challenges, emphasizing the importance of integrating environmental considerations into economic and social policies.

• The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro recognised the loss of biodiversity and rapid climate change and the need for reforms. It brought together world leaders to address pressing environmental issues and resulted in landmark agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Towards a Global Consensus, cont.

• The 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, and Rio+20 in 2012, established collaborative partnerships and created mechanisms for follow-up of commitments. These summits aimed to strengthen international cooperation on sustainable development and ensure that commitments made at previous conferences were effectively implemented.

• The 2015 Paris Agreement established a long-term plan to address climate change. Four important standout challenges are:

  • Climate mitigation and adaptation strategies may not be sufficient. The scale and pace of climate change may outstrip the effectiveness of current mitigation and adaptation efforts, requiring bolder and more innovative approaches.

  • The role of the US in global climate politics shifted due to denialism. Political shifts within the United States have led to uncertainty and inconsistency in its commitment to addressing climate change, undermining global efforts to combat the crisis.

  • If states don’t make ambitious changes, goals won’t be met on time. The lack of ambitious climate action by many countries puts the goals of the Paris Agreement at risk, highlighting the urgent need for greater commitment and action.

  • Increased push for shifts in societal consumptive patterns. Addressing climate change requires a fundamental shift in societal values and behaviors towards more sustainable consumption patterns, reducing the demand for resource-intensive goods and services.

  • Is the western lifestyle compatible with the planet? The high-consumption lifestyles prevalent in Western societies may not be sustainable in the long term, raising questions about the need for a reevaluation of values and priorities.

Global Income Deciles and Associated Lifestyle Consumption Emissions

• Richest 10% responsible for almost half of total lifestyle consumption emissions. The wealthiest individuals and households contribute disproportionately to greenhouse gas emissions through their consumption patterns, highlighting the need for targeted policies to reduce their environmental impact.

• Poorest 50% responsible for only around 10% of total lifestyle consumption emissions. The poorest segments of the population have a much smaller carbon footprint, emphasizing the importance of addressing poverty and inequality in the context of climate action.

Should You Wash Your Jeans?

• 3,781 liters of water used during the life cycle of a pair of Levi's jeans.

• 11 billion kilograms of clothing that ends up in U.S. landfills each year - that's 32 kg per person.

• 1 billion liters of water saved by Levi's since 2011 by using new garment finishing processes.

• 33.4 kilograms CO₂ emissions during the life cycle of a pair of Levi's jeans.

• 15% Percentage of recycled cotton that can be used in a new pair of jeans, using current technologies.

• 3 years Average life of a pair of Levi's jeans.

Carbon Intensity of Eating: g CO2e/kcal

• Drinks: 2.2

• Snacks, sugar: 0.6

• Oils, spreads: 0.8

• Fruit: 4.6

• Vegetables: 2.8

• Cereals, breads: 1.3

• Dairy: 4.5

• Chicken, fish, pork: 3.8

• Beef, lamb: 14.1

• Note: Figures are grams of carbon dioxide equivalents per kilocalorie of food eaten (g CO2e/kcal). Intensities include emissions for total food supplied to provide each kilocarie consumed. This accounts for emissions from food eaten as well as consumer waste and supply chain losses. All figures are based on typcial food production in the USA. Estimates are emissions from cradle to point of sale, they do not include personal transport, home storage or cooking, or include any land use change emissions Sources: ERS/USDA, LCA data, IO-LCA data, Weber & Matthews

• Shrink That Footprint

Towards a Global Consensus, cont.

• IR’s role has been focused on how globally popular and commonly held norms spread and diffuse across and within nations. International Relations scholars have examined how environmental norms gain traction and influence state behavior, contributing to the development of international environmental law and policy.

• Not True

• The majority of scholars and policymakers agree on the importance of climate change, making an argument that it is a global norm. Climate change is widely recognized as a pressing global challenge, with a broad consensus among scientists and policymakers on the need for action.

• Norm does not mean action

• One of the most neglected issues of environmental protection is the need for fresh water and the disputes it causes. Access to clean and sustainable water resources is a growing concern, with increasing competition and conflict over water resources in many regions of the world.

• Disputes are not conflict per se

• Water usage and allocation will likely form the next major international challenge. Managing water resources effectively and equitably is essential for ensuring social stability, economic development, and environmental sustainability.

• Primary source of international contact

UN conferences

• Conference diplomacy can have impacts

  • Agenda setting

  • popularizing issues and raising consciousness

  • galvanizing administrative reform

  • adopting new norms, certifying new doctrinal consensus and setting global standards

  • promoting mass involvement of new actors

UN Conferences - Dimitrov, Radoslav S.

• Empty institutions are defined as social arrangements that consist of relatively stable rules and procedures that exclude regulatory policymaking or policy implementation. These institutions may serve symbolic or legitimizing functions without necessarily leading to concrete policy outcomes.

• They include explicit and implicit rules and procedures, may or may not involve a permanent bureaucratic apparatus, and entail an institutionalized process that includes budgets for regular (international) meetings and domestic preparation to participate in them.

• The focus of this project is on no-policy agreements and organizations negotiated by state governments at the international level, without prejudice to other types of institutional arrangements by state and nonstate actors that also deserve academic investigation.

UN conferences cont.

• What unites all strands of institutionalism is the cardinal assumption of governance as the principal reason for creating institutions. Institutions are typically created to address collective problems and promote cooperation among actors.

• Hard policymaking is not the only function of institutions whose roles also include the facilitation of learning, role definition, and the ascription of authority (Young 1999b). Institutions can play a crucial role in fostering knowledge sharing, shaping identities, and legitimizing certain norms and behaviors.

• Yet, the substantive management of common policy problems remains a central reason for institutions in academic theorizing. While institutions may serve multiple functions, their primary purpose often remains to address and manage shared challenges.

• The late Elinor Ostrom (1998, 9) stated that the main quest in social sciences is the development of a theory of institutional change in order to design institutions that facilitate more productive outcomes in social dilemmas. Understanding how institutions evolve and adapt is essential for designing effective governance structures that can address complex social and environmental problems.

• "Because decentralized cooperation is difficult to achieve and often brittle, states devise institutions to promote cooperation and make it more resilient" (Koremenos et al. 2001, 766). Institutions can provide a framework for cooperation and help to overcome barriers to collective action.

• International agreements are not always effective in providing solutions, and an abundant literature engages in measuring effectiveness and explaining its variance (Underdal 1992; Sprinz and Helm 1999; Young 2001; Miles et al. 2002; Mitchell 2003). Evaluating the effectiveness of international agreements is crucial for identifying factors that contribute to their success or failure.

• The literature on institutional effectiveness also shares the assumption that delivering substantive policy is a key function of institutions.

UN conferences cont.

• There is a strong tendency for academics to treat institutional ineffectiveness as an unintended consequence (Finnemore 2014). Researchers often assume that institutions are designed to be effective and that failures are due to unforeseen circumstances or design flaws.

• Barnett and Finnemore (1999) portray a world where IOs break loose of state control and act autonomously in ways unexpected by the state actors who created them. International organizations can develop their own agendas and pursue their own interests, which may not always align with the interests of their member states.

• They find the causes of institutional mutation in the internal bureaucratic culture of organizations. The internal dynamics and culture of international organizations can influence their behavior and effectiveness.

• Structured comparative studies attribute underperformance to several groups of factors: design failure due to imperfect rules, inadequate incentives for compliance, and lack of information (Ostrom 1990); institutional obsolescence and failure to adapt to evolving circumstances; and capture by special interest groups (Prakash and Potoski 2016).

• A recent special issue of the journal Regulation and Governance focused on dysfunctional institutions and also asked the question “Do institutions always work as intended?" (Prakash and Potoski 2016).

• The volume examined institutions as diverse as the US Congress and international humanitarian organizations and identified problems with information processing and misallocation of property rights as some of the reasons for dysfunctionality.

UN Conferences cont.

• These studies illustrate the deep assumption in the existing literature that institutions are at least intended to deliver policy output. The academic literature on institutions often assumes that they are created with the intention of achieving specific policy goals.

• "Functionalist accounts underscore the importance of institutional design because institutions are outcomes of deliberation and reflect the collective desire of actors to secure win-win outcomes" (Prakash and Potoski 2016, 118).

• When multilateral initiatives do not deliver, scholars generally believe something "went wrong" and look for reasons in design problems and unexpected effects-without considering the possibility that institutional inefficiency can be fully intentional because inaction is beneficial to certain political actors.

• Hence the focus on institutions that underperform, "fall short" of expectations, or produce unintended consequences.

• What if institutions are not intended to deliver in the first place? What if they are deliberately designed to fail?

Fossil Fuels

• Oil sector's '$3bn-a-day profits for last 50 years'

• Vast sums provide power to 'buy every politician' and delay action on climate crisis, says expert

UN Conferences cont.

• The rest of the night was spent on a linguistic exercise-how to create text that is so ambiguous and inscrutable that it would allow both sides to save face. Negotiators often engage in complex linguistic maneuvers to reach agreements that satisfy multiple parties with conflicting interests.

• The result was paragraph 3(c) that postulated that countries would establish a new international body and "within five years. . . consider, with a view to recommending, the parameters of a mandate for developing a legal framework on all types of forests" (Intergovernmental Forum on Forests 2000, 41).

• This text did not contain any of the three phrases the United States opposed and allowed both sides to claim victory: Canada and the European Union (EU) could claim that a five-year review would lead to treaty negotiations, while the United States, Brazil, and others could demonstrate there was no decision on a future treaty.

• The text was the result of linguistic gymnastics and was ridiculed by NGOs, who dubbed it the "Monty Python paragraph."

• Curiously, environmental NGOs had opposed treaty negotiations because they believed that the deep political disagreements that evidently produced stalemate would lower the least common denominator and produce a weak treaty that could undermine local and national policies by legitimizing lower standards and allowing governments to hide behind international obligations (On-site interview with Bill Mankin, 2000).

• However, NGOs opposed the establishment of any international institution and were even more strongly against the creation of a nonbinding forum. This underscores the puzzle of why states created UNFF.

UN Conferences cont.

• The most compelling evidence that provides a clue to the character and purpose of the new institution is that the United Nations Forum on Forests was the brainchild of the United States, a key opponent of international forest policy. The creation of the UNFF by a country opposed to international forest policy raises questions about its intended purpose and effectiveness.

• Indeed, UNFF utterly lacks policy-making power.

• The purpose and working modalities are defined in Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Resolution 2000/35: the UNFF should meet annually, be open to all states, operate in a transparent manner, and have a bureau consisting of one chairperson and four vice-chairs.

• The resolution is remarkably vague on the powers of the new institution. The lack of clear and specific powers for the UNFF raises concerns about its ability to address global forest issues effectively.

• Only one paragraph (4[f]) addresses the substantive mandate of UNFF: "The Forum shall seek ways and means of strengthening synergies and coordination in policy development and implementation of forest-related activities, inter alia, by making reports of its sessions available to relevant United Nations bodies and other international forest-related organizations."

• This mandate omits any decision-making powers regarding forest management. The absence of decision-making authority for the UNFF limits its capacity to take concrete action on forest conservation and sustainable management.

• Clearly, an institution whose only task is to hold meetings and make reports of them available cannot be expected to deliver much action.

The Environment as a Global Commons

• Common pool resource theory (Hardin, 1968), says that if resource consumers behave selfishly, they would exhaust the resources they were supposed to reserve (tragedy of commons). The tragedy of the commons highlights the challenges of managing shared resources when individuals prioritize their own self-interest over the collective good.

• The are four categories in the theory of common pool resources; private goods, common goods, club goods, public goods. These categories help to classify different types of resources based on their characteristics of excludability and rivalry.

• Ostrom’s theory of cooperative approaches to resources governance (1990) posits that we can self-organise and govern our common pool resources (our ‘commons’). Ostrom's work emphasizes the potential for communities to develop effective governance systems for managing shared resources, challenging the assumption that centralized control is always necessary.

• Two views towards caring for a shared environment; individuals collaborating or care from state governments. These represent two contrasting approaches to environmental governance, with one emphasizing bottom-up initiatives and the other relying on top-down regulation.

Key Terms: The Resource Curse

• The concept of the 'resource curse' is defined as the negative effect that such natural resource wealth has on governance. The resource curse refers to the paradoxical situation where countries with abundant natural resources often experience lower economic growth and development than countries with fewer resources.

• States that are rich in minerals are often considered to be facing such a curse, because there is enormous interest on the part of outside entities to come into that territory, establish industrial mining operations and extract minerals from underground ores to process them into finished products or components.

• This can lead to corruption that diverts government attention away from the needs of its citizens and instead towards the centralisation of power and personal enrichment. Corruption and rent-seeking behavior can undermine governance and hinder development in resource-rich countries.

• Such scenarios have a negative impact on development - both economically and politically - that can affect a state for generations.

• In that sense, the 'curse' is not inevitable. But it does reflect the experiences of a significant number of newly formed nation-states in the twentieth century who found themselves blessed with valuable riches before they had developed robust political institutions, especially across the Global South.

Development and Improvement are Synonyms

• resource curse is based on a extractivist mindset

• lithium wasn't important until it was

• indigenous reserves were chosen because they didn't have arable land = mineral resources

• lack of system thinking, confined by nation states analysis of GDP growth

• lack of rethinking of IR categories

Issue

• Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI)- Energy needs to have 3:1 ratio to be viable

  • Biofuels 2:1

  • Oil Sands 5:1 (started 1:1)

  • Solar 10:1

  • Nuclear: 15:1

  • Wind 20:1

  • Conventional Oil 20:1

  • Coal 80:1

  • Historic Oil and Gas 100:1 (i.e. Development)

  • Hydropower >100:1

  • Which would you choose? Rye, Craig D., and Tim Jackson. "A review of EROI-dynamics energy-transition models." Energy policy 122 (2018): 260-272.

EROI - USA

• Ratio of Energy Returned on Energy Invested - USA

• Hydro

• Coal

• World oil production

• Oil imports 1990

• Oil and gas 1970

• Oil production.

• Ind

• Oil imports 2005

• Oil and gas 2005

• Oil imports 2007

• Nuclear

• Natural gas 2005

• Oil discoveries

• Photovoltaic

• Shale oil

• Ethanol sugarcane

• Bitumen tar sands

• Solar flat plate

• Solar collector

• Ethanol corn

• Biodiesel

Energy Reserves (Billion Tonnes Oil Equivalent)

• Data trendline from 2011 to 2081.

Fossil Fuel Consumption, 2021

• World

CO2 Emissions

• We have had very little success in reducing CO2 emissions. Despite international efforts and agreements, global CO2 emissions continue to rise, indicating the need for more effective mitigation strategies.

• CO2 emissions for all countries, in total, have been spiraling upward. The increasing CO2 emissions from all countries underscore the urgency of addressing climate change and transitioning to cleaner energy sources.

Major Transitional Shifts in Global Energy Supply, 1750-2015

• Years to achieve 5% and 25% adoption for:

  • Coal

  • Oil

  • Natural gas

  • Nuclear

ERoEI

• Hall, Charles AS, Jessica G. Lambert, and Stephen B. Balogh. "EROI of different fuels and the implications for society." Energy policy 64 (2014): 141-152.

• World oil and gas has a mean EROI of about 20:1

• The EROI for discovering oil and gas in the US has decreased from more than 1000:1 in 1919 to 5:1 in the 2010s, and for production from about 25:1 in the 1970s to approximately 10:1 in 2007

ERoEI cont.

• Coal, however, regained its former high EROI value of roughly 80:1 by 1990

• Hydroelectric power generation systems have the highest mean EROI value, 84:1

• Ethanol 5:1 (US 0.64:1)

• Wind power has a high EROI value, with the mean perhaps as high as 18:1

ERoEI cont.

• The EROI of conventional oil and gas in Canada has declined from roughly 20:1 to 12:1, a 40% decline.

• The EROI of conventional combined oil–gas– tar sands has also decreased during this same period from 14:1 to 7.5:1, a decline of 46%

Locked In

• Industrial revolution based on petro-civilization. The industrial revolution was fueled by the widespread use of fossil fuels, leading to significant economic growth but also contributing to environmental challenges.

• 81% of world energy = fossil fuels. The global energy system is still heavily reliant on fossil fuels, highlighting the need for a transition to cleaner and more sustainable energy sources.

• 72% of OECD energy is based on oil

• Energy based view- nonsense to waste fuel to ship raw materials to China to ship back to US for consumption ship back to China as waste

• Why does it happen?- Profitability and wealth (creorder)

  • Make money from strategic sabotage – limit possibilities for shareholder value (legal requirement)

Peak Oil

• Exploitation of reserves until not economically recoverable – inherent energy limits. Peak oil refers to the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline.

• Supply and demand limited by energy

• 2010 – What does the world value?- 9 of top 50 oil and gas

  • Top 500- Oil and gas 3153T

    • Banks 4030T

Role of the State

• State owned firms + Public firms (6729T). State-owned and public firms play a significant role in the global economy, particularly in sectors such as energy and infrastructure.

• Most heavily capitalized firms

• Alternative energy sector (177B in US, 114B in China). The alternative energy sector is growing rapidly, with significant investments being made in renewable energy technologies.

• PetroChina much larger and ability to exercise more control over economic decision-making

• 2030 – 18.6% alternative energy

• Need 38T to produce that

• Society is locked in to energy future that is driven by massive concentrations of wealth incapable of producing energy fixes – market cannot save us

Is Green Viable?

• Tesla production 1.8M per year (2023)

• 280 million vehicles (0.0064)

• In 2022, 85.4 million motor vehicles were produced around the world, an increase of 5.7% compared to 2021.

Biggest Companies 1993-2022

• Market capitalization- amazon

  • AliExpress

  • CISCO

  • Google Microsoft

  • Biggest Companies

• 1993-2022- market capitalization- ExxonMobil 360.09 Billion

  • (Alphabet) 306.83 Billion

  • PetroChina

  • ICBC 243.48 Billion

• BHP 226.18 Billion

  • Microsoft

  • Constr. Bank

• China Commucon 223.89 Billion

  • e Hathaway

  215.4 Billion

• BERKSHIRE 203.35 Billion
  HATHAWAY

  • China Mobile

  • TOYOTA 200 Billion

  • Toyota

• BR 199.96 Billion
  PETROBRAS

• Petrobras

  • Walmart 194.13 Billion

Walmart

• HSBC

  • ISIC178.1 Billion

HSIC 164.99 Billion

• Cisco

  • AIG 153.88 Billion

AIG

• Intel

  • (intel 147.36 Billion

BANK OF AMERICA

• k of America

  • 139.81 Billion

• BP

  • 134.11 Billion

• Novartis

NOVA 129.81 Billion

• er & Gamble

  • P&G 102.92 Billion
    G $$454.56

Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

• Working Group II Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability cont.

• There is a rapidly narrowing window of opportunity to enable climate resilient development- Societal choices about adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development made in arenas of engagement

  • Illustrative development pathways

  • Actions and outcomes characterizing development pathways

  • Dimensions that enable actions towards higher climate resilient development- Ecosystem ste

    stewardship

    • Knowledge diversity

    • Equity and justice

    • Inclusion

    • Areas of engagement- Community

      • Socio-cultural

      • Political

      • Ecological

      • Knowledge + technology

      • Economic + financial

      • Opportunities missed for higher climate resilient development

      • Sustainable Development Goals

      • Illustrative climatic or non-climatic shock, e.g. COVID-19, drought or floods, that disrupts the development pathway

      • Warming limited to below 1.5°C; adaptation enables sustainable development

      • Increasing warming; path dependence and adaptation limits undermine sustainable development

      • Dimensions that result in actions towards lower climate resilient development

      Ecosystem degradationExclusionAreas of engagementSingular knowledgeInequity and injusticeEntrenched systemsHigh global warming levelsLow riskMaladaptationUnsustainable development action

      Rising emissionstransformationMitigationAdaptationEquity and justiceLow global warming levelsRisingEmission*Low risk

      CLIMATE RESILIENT DEVELOPMENT

      SustainableDevelopment Goals

Harrington, Cameron

• "The ends of the world: International relations and the Anthropocene."

• A surge in the use of fossil fuels, in clear-cutting, in waste production, in the use and emission of certain pollutants, in the testing of nuclear weapons, and in other activities highly disruptive to nature have left tangible, measurable changes in Crawford Lake's sediments, proving not only that people have influenced earth's systems in new ways, but how. These activities have led to significant alterations in the Earth's systems, leaving a lasting impact on the planet.

• It is a monumental discovery given that the Anthropocene Working Group has been studying the topic for nearly 15 years. The findings of the Anthropocene Working Group provide compelling evidence of the profound and lasting impact of human activities on the Earth.

• According to the group's latest work, the Anthropocene technically commenced sometime between 1950 and 1954, and has been as significant as the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs, as far as its irreversible alteration (read: damage) of the earth.

Harrington cont.

• Dramatic human driven shifts in the functioning of the Earth system- warming of the ocean, surface temperatures, atmospheric increases in nitrous oxide, acidification of oceans, loss of land used for agriculture, massive decline in biodiversity. These shifts are indicative of the significant impact that human activities are having on the planet's environment and ecosystems.

• Anthropocene- Multidisciplinary debate about humans relationship world

  • still contested in geology

  • Are humans an extinction level event? A virus?

Harrington cont.

• Why has IR failed to deal with this issue? The discipline of International Relations has been slow to fully address the challenges posed by the Anthropocene, highlighting a gap in our understanding of the human-environment relationship.

• No longer feasible to ignore?

• Is IR wedded to holocene thinking

• Ocean acidification- 26% from preindustrial levels

  • 170% by 2100

  • massive redistribution of fishery yields, food security, human security

  • Trillion dollar loss annually

  • all marine fish species could be extinct by 2048

• Is this a security dilemma? Why not?

Harrington cont.

• Do we need more nonhumanactors in IR? Incorporating non-human actors into the study of International Relations could provide a more holistic understanding of global politics and environmental issues.

• Anthropocene – ‘central role of mankind in geology and ecology and the impact of human activities on earth and atmosphere at all scales’

• Does this need to be scientifically certain before we start utilizing it?

• is it a fundamentally apolitical vision of the future?

• Is responsibility an issue? Is mitigation enough?

Harrington cont.

• IR considers the world and unmoving and unchanging backdrop for theory. Traditional IR theory often views the environment as a static backdrop to human activity, failing to account for the dynamic and interconnected nature of the Earth's systems.

• petroculture civilization

• First wave - make environment a security issue for national security discourse

• Environment rendered as managerial problem - subset of IR - very little at ISA

• Is nature an impediment thinking about this problem?

Harrington cont.

• The bifurcation nature/culture

• nation as distinct from early political life

• state of nature as opposed to the world/system with which it comes

• humans not seen as animals

• Earth is actually interlocked cycles continuously in motion

• why can’t we theorize activity? Is this a human failing?

• Nature is heterogeneous, complex, shifting, not static - we still think of equilibrium

• is extinction even a thing?

Harrington cont.

• Making things international - Salter

• Environmental regimes cannot be understood without giving agency to the non-human actants that make up the biosphere. Environmental regimes need to consider the role and influence of non-human actors in shaping environmental outcomes.

• Global economic relations cannot be understood without reference to the independent agency of algorithms that act too quickly for human oversight or interference. Algorithms and other technological systems can have a significant impact on global economic relations, often operating beyond human control.

• The economy is not an external object, but a set of assumptions, processes, and practices.

• Security cannot be understood solely as a set of speech-acts, but also requires guns, tanks, drones, tear-gas, badges, and fences. A comprehensive understanding of security requires considering both the discursive and material aspects of security practices.

• In each of these areas, there are non-human actants that fundamentally alter the condition of human possibility, in ways that are unpredictable and irreducible to their constituent elements.

Perspectives

• Cosmology has to be framed in religious terms?

• Tillerson: what good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?

• Earth honoring faith is about recovering the sacred

• Whose earth is it anyway? ( white world supremacy – domination of the earth linked to the domination of brown bodies)

• What would creation justice look like?

• Reevaluation of our systems that respect the human alongside other life. Recognition of the sacred in both?

• Non-human persons

'Big Five' Mass Extinctions in Earth's History

• A mass extinction is defined by the loss of at least 75% of species within a short period of time (geologically, this is around 2 million years).

  • End Ordovician (444 Mya)

    • Family lose:27%

    • Genera lose:57%

    • Species lose:86%

  • Late Devonian (360 Mya)

    • Family lose:19%

    • Genera lose:35%

    • Species lose:75%

  • End Permian (250 Mya)

    • Family lose:57%

    • Genera lose: