Climate emergency mobilisation:
The role of the State
While we live in a distributed and connected global society where ‘the market rules’ in most countries, there is simply no possibility of a climate emergency mobilisation without strong action and direction by the state – mainly at the nation state level, though loosely coordinated through diplomacy.
This is not a question of democracy or not, though this is and will be further debated as we move into emergency mode. It is just the reality of how society and the market operate that only the state can make rules and give guidance.
This does not mean a return to state control of the means of production nor of nationalising industries. That would be a major strategic mistake, based on the past 50 years of evidence. However ‘leaving it to the market’ would equally fail. Indeed that approach is largely the reason we are in our current state of systemic risk.
This role of the state is even more critical when the issue we face is addressing a problem of market failure for the public good. (The ‘market failure’ being that without government intervention, markets don’t price greenhouse emissions or climate impacts and therefore don’t value reducing emissions).
Markets are very effective at some things – innovation, disruption, allocation of capital, moving to scale. They are totally ineffective at other things – pricing externalities, dealing with inequality, managing national defence. Thus every political system – independent of the presence of democracy - regulates and controls their market.
WWII provides a myriad of practical examples of state intervention then delivered by market institutions. But we also see strong peace time examples, with the dramatic economic transformation of countries like China, South Korea and many others. These transformations did not occur as natural product of the market, they were driven by the state for public benefit.
In the context of the climate emergency, the question of having market capitalism or not is a distraction. Short of military dictatorship, only market capitalism can deliver this change fast enough. It can’t however be the neo-liberal market capitalism we have been practicing in recent decades in the west. It needs to be a market capitalism guided and directed by the state, for the greater good.
This includes the pricing of carbon but also many other practical and far more decisive market interventions. Some of these would be seen as quite draconian today. As discussed in the One Degree War Plan, it could involve steps like:
Rationing of fuel, forced closures of power stations, banning the sale of polluting products like oil-based cars, reductions in plane travel, taxes on meat and dairy consumption and many more; and then in parallel:
Large incentives for clean industries to accelerate their investments and growth, major public education and advocacy, managing the social and employment consequences of the transition, investment in infrastructure, taxation reform.
It is of course very hard to imagine any of this in today’s political context, where many countries don’t even price carbon emissions. However, that is always the case before an emergency – just as it is then quickly accepted once an emergency is underway. By definition - and even by law in many countries - a state of emergency is a situation in which a government is empowered to perform actions that would not normally be acceptable to the market or the public.
Consider for example that just four days after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, the auto industry was ordered to cease production of civilian vehicles [FN3]. Over the proceeding period, gasoline and tires were rationed, campaigns were run to reduce meat consumption, and public recycling drives were held to obtain metals for the war effort. There was still plenty of resistance, but the political leadership of the day, with public, military and business support, simply overrode it for the greater public good - because the consequences of failure were unacceptable.
Still think it’s hard to imagine? Yes, it is.
But before you go there, you have to imagine the alternative. Without this response, we will likely see a descent through cascading climate change-induced crises with military conflict, accelerating costs, massive refugee flows, nations collapsing and global food crises as the world spirals down into economic and social collapse. As this risk becomes accepted it would also become clear that, if left uncontrolled, such cascading crises would inevitably require heavy government intervention and quite probably authoritarian rule to manage.
With that prospect unfolding, do you really think we will stand by and do nothing but observe and talk about the difficulty of acting? To then argue we should not interfere in the market?
Now that is ‘unrealistic’ and that seems ‘very hard to imagine’.
The assumption that it could not happen on climate change is also heavily based in a Western world view where the state has been systematically weakened. The high growth economies of the world in recent times have been successful largely because of the role of a strong state. This is again not a question of democracy – with China vs South Korea being a good example. The lesson to learn is not about democracy, it’s that the role of the state is key to rapidly changing an economy. This is often best covered by experts who are not steeped in the dominant Western view, like Chandrain Nair, author of The Sustainable State.
The other role for the state is the need to address the social consequences of rapid economic change, sometimes referred to as the issue of a ‘just transition’ – making sure economic change is managed in way which is fair and equitable. This is not just a moral issue, which it certainly is. It is also an intensely pragmatic influencer of likely success – reducing political conflict and polarisation.
In conclusion, we should recognise that only a strong state can possibly deliver action on the scale and at the speed needed to address The Climate Emergency. The next question becomes how could we ensure the state does so?
Ironically, a key role is actually one for powerful market players.
Footnotes
* ”From now on policy must protect the future from the past, not the past from the future”
The phrase “policy must protect the future from the past, not the past from the future”, was originally penned by tech futurist Tim O’Reilly, in 2012, describing the challenge for regulators when confronted with the emergence of disruptive and innovative business models. This now popular phrase has proved useful in helping communicate the climate emergency and the disruptive change that comes with it. Alex Steffen’s 2016 paper ‘Predatory delay and the rights of future generations’, used the phrase to emphasise the absurdity of global policies protecting the institutions causing the climate crisis, instead of responding to the crisis with the speed and scale that it demands. The phase was also used in a recent Breakthrough discussion paper by Spratt & Dunlop ‘The third degree: Evidence and implications for Australia of existential climate related security risk’. In this instance, the phrase was used to urge governments to model future scenario planning around the climate emergency, rather than relying on historic trends.
[FN3] Ferguson, R (2005). One Thousand Planes a Day: Ford, Grumman, General Motors and the Arsenal of Democracy. In History and Technology vol 21, pp149.