Global Capitalism and Climate Change: The Need for an Alternative World System

366 Pages·2012·1.59 MB·English

by  Hans A. Baer

GLOBAL CAPITALISM
AND CLIMATE CHANGE
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Globalization and the Environment Series
Series Editors
Richard Wilk, Department of Anthropology, 130 Student Building, Indiana Univer-
sity, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA, or [email protected]
Josiah Heyman, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Old Main Building
#109, University of Texas, 500 West University Avenue, El Paso, TX 79968, USA, or
[email protected]
This AltaMira series publishes new books about the global spread of environmental
problems. Key themes addressed are the effects of cultural and economic globaliza-
tion on the environment; the global institutions that regulate and change human re-
lations with the environment; and the global nature of environmental governance,
movements, and activism. The series will include detailed case studies, innovative
multi-sited research, and theoretical questioning of the concepts of globalization
and the environment. At the center of the series is an exploration of the multiple
linkages that connect people, problems, and solutions at scales beyond the local and
regional. The editors welcome works that cross boundaries of disciplines, methods,
and locales and span scholarly and practical approaches.
Books in the Series
Power of the Machine: Global Inequalities of Economy, Technology, and Environment, by
Alf Hornborg (2001)
Confronting Environments: Local Environmental Understanding in a Globalizing World,
edited by James Carrier (2004)
Communities and Conservation: Histories and Politics of Community-Based Natural
Resource Management, edited by J. Peter Brosius, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, and
Charles Zerner (2005)
Globalization, Health, and the Environment: An Integrated Perspective, edited by Greg
Guest (2005)
Cows, Kin, and Globalization: An Ethnography of Sustainability, by Susan A. Crate
(2006)
Global Visions, Local Landscapes: A Political Ecology of Conservation, Conflict, and Con-
trol in Northern Madagascar, by Lisa L. Gezon (2006)
Globalization and the World Ocean, by Peter Jacques (2006)
Rethinking Environmental History: World-System History and Global Environmental
Change, edited by Alf Hornborg, John McNeill, and Joan Martínez-Alier (2007)
The World’s Scavengers: Salvaging for Sustainable Consumption and Production, by
Martin Medina (2007)
Saving Forests, Protecting People? by John W. Schelhas and Max J. Pfeffer (2008)
Capitalizing on Catastrophe: Neoliberal Strategies in Disaster Reconstruction, edited by
Nandini Gunewardena and Mark Schuller (2008)
World in Motion: The Globalization and the Environment Reader, edited by Gary M.
Kroll and Richard H. Robbins (2009)
War and Nature: The Environmental Consequences of War in a Globalized World, by
Jurgen Brauer (2009)
Computing Our Way to Paradise? The Role of Internet and Communication Technologies
in Sustainable Consumption and Globalization, by Robert Rattle (2010)
Global Capitalism and Climate Change: The Need for an Alternative World System, by
Hans A. Baer (2012)
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GLOBAL CAPITALISM
AND CLIMATE CHANGE
The Need for an
Alternative World System
Hans A. Baer
A Division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Lanham (cid:129) New York (cid:129) Toronto (cid:129) Plymouth, UK
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Published by AltaMira Press
A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com
10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom
Copyright © 2012 by AltaMira Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or
by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and
retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a
reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Baer, Hans A., 1944-
Global capitalism and climate change : the need for an alternative world
system / Hans A. Baer.
p. cm. — (Globalization and the environment series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7591-2132-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7591-2134-8
(ebook)
1. Climatic changes—Economic aspects. 2. Globalization. 3. Sustainable
development. I. Title.
QC903.B14 2012
330.12’6—dc23
2012016730
™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
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Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 The Impact of Climate Change on the Environment
and Human Societies 11
2 The Capitalist World System and its Contradictions 39
3 The Capitalist Treadmill of Production and
Consumption as a Generator of Greenhouse
Gas Emissions 57
4 The Inadequacies of Existing Climate Regimes for
Mitigating Climate Change 117
5 Why Green Capitalism Is Insufficient to Mitigate
Climate Change 149
6 A Vision of an Alternative World System:
Toward Global Democracy Based on Social Justice
and Environmental Sustainability 185
v
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vi / Contents
7 Toward an Ecological Revolution: Progressive
Transitional Reforms 213
8 Grassroots Responses to Climate Change:
Internationally, Nationally, and Locally 245
9 Conclusion 293
Resource Guide 307
Bibliography 313
Index 347
About the Author 353
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Preface
O ver the course of the past several years, a growing number of
anthropologists, as well as other social scientists, including soci-
ologist Anthony Giddens (2009), have turned their attention to
climate change or global warming. Roncoli and Magistro (2000)
had urged anthropologists to examine global climate change
as part and parcel of the anthropology of climate variability, a
phenomenon that includes droughts, hurricanes, and other in-
stances of erratic weather patterns. While archaeologist Brian Fa-
gan (1999:76) is correct in his seemingly dismissive assertion that
“global warming is nothing new for humanity,” the magnitude
of warming that the planet has been experiencing, particularly
in the past several decades, and that the vast majority of climate
scientists predict will occur throughout the present century and
beyond (even if it could be checked by monumental preemptive
measures) is on a magnitude never experienced by humanity, in
part due to the fact that there never have been so many people
inhabiting so many places in our fragile biosphere. He has been
discussing the impact of climate change, albeit of a more natural
form than an anthropogenic one, on human societies for some
time.
Of investigations into climate change in more recent times,
a notable effort is an anthology titled Anthropology and Climate
Change: From Encounters to Actions, edited by Susan A. Crate and
vii
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viii / Preface
Mark Nuttall (2009). This book is a welcome addition to the still-
emerging anthropology of climate change. Yet, a major short-
coming of this book, and of most of the anthropological work on
climate change thus far, is that it fails to view climate change as
yet another contradiction of global capitalism with its treadmill
of production and consumption heavily reliant on fossil fuels
and its commitment to ongoing economic expansion, regardless
of the social and environmental consequences. In Global Warm-
ing and the Political Ecology of Health, published shortly before
Crate and Nuttall’s anthology, Merrill Singer and I adopted a
critical anthropological perspective in examining the impact of
climate change on health. This present book seeks to go beyond
that earlier one in delineating the roots of climate change in
global capitalism and the systemic changes needed to create a
more socially just and environmentally sustainable world sys-
tem that would move humanity toward a safer climate. In this
effort, my approach is more that of a historical social scientist
who happens to have a PhD in anthropology than of an anthro-
pologist in the conventional sense of the word. In this effort, I
have been guided by the work of an array of political ecologists
and eco-Marxists, particularly John Bellamy Foster (2000, 2009)
(an environmental sociologist trained in political economy at
the University of Oregon and the editor of Monthly Review), Joel
Kovel (2007), Ariel Salleh (2009), and contributors to the journal
Capitalism Nature Socialism.
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Acknowledgments
My scholarly interest in climate change or global warming be-
gan in the hot summer of 2005 while working on the first edition
of Introducing Medical Anthropology (AltaMira Press, 2007) with
Merrill Singer. In chapter 7 of our textbook on “Health and the
Environment” we included a section on “The Impact of Global
Warming on Health.” Indirectly this small effort led to a book
titled Global Warming and the Political Ecology of Health (Left Coast
Press, 2009), the sixth book that we had done together. Merrill
and I became acquainted as graduate students in late 1975 in the
anthropology department at the University of Utah and we have
remained close friends, colleagues, and comrades in the struggle
for social justice and environmental sustainability ever since,
despite the geographical distance that separates us with him
residing in Storrs, Connecticut, and me in Melbourne, Australia.
Since coming to Melbourne, I have become a friend and col-
league of Verity Burgmann in the School of Social and Political
Sciences. We have written a book titled Australian Climate Politics
and Climate Movement (Melbourne University Press, 2012). I owe
much to Verity as an immigrant and soon-to-become Australian
citizen in acquainting me with Australian politics and social
movements. Both of us are partisan observers of the Australian
climate movement.
ix
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