Authors & Concepts
- Mitchell (Carbon democracy) -link between energy source (carbon or oil) & politics
- Swyngedouw - depoliticisation risks & repoliticisation
- Aronoff - Green Keynsianism
- Beck - Reflexive modernisation
- Gilman - Eco-fascism
- Li & Shapiro - Environmental Authoritarianism
- Fraser - Eco-socialism
- Holleman - new imperialism & colonialism & shit like that
- Bullard - environmental racism
- McAdam & Felli - climate migration (from different perspectives)
- Plumwood - gender & migration
- Cunsulo & Ellis - environmental grief
- Jensen - Eco-guilt
- Carvalho et al - Climate inaction
- Scheuerman: Climate action
Power & Environment
Political Ecology:
- Power shapes environment through access, use, distribution, degradation
- Marginality: power differentials between humans manifest among environment & interactions w/
environment
- Ecology: how humans relate to surroundings
- Political economy: how political ECONOMIC power shapes the environment
- Implications:
- Environment - dynamic social construction
- Nature & society are interlinked
- Environmental disrepair as a social problem - historical contingency, economic &
political pressures (vs. biological, technological, etc.)
- Environment & our interactions w/ it shape power
- Eg. Mitchell, Carbon Democracy
- Dominant energy source - political activity & actors
- Coal & politics
- Coal workers empowered by reliance on coal, gave them labour &
political power
- Denser human population spread this across the world - mass politics
- Industrialisation - democracy
- Oil & Politics
- Industrially isolated & geographically remote production
- Fewer workers, fewer opportunities for worker disruption - translation of
labour power into political demands
- Democratic backsliding
Depoliticisation & Post-Politics
- Depoliticisation: removing of issue from political discourse, closing it off from debate &
deliberation - removes it from questions of power
, - Post-Politics
- Political formation that rejects ideological disagreement
- Universalizes specific political positions & demands
- Hidden normative power - ‘capitalism has won’
- Expert-led administration - discouraging heterodoxy & sidelining the demox
- End of history??
- Depoliticised Environments
- Larger post-political context & lack of emancipatory subject - make environmental
concerns vulnerable to depoliticisation
- Despite urgency - perceived to be a future concern
- Climate denialism
- Singular & uniform notions of nature & realm of necessity
- Discursive mechanisms
- Via scientization: Scientific problem, technological solution
- Via economization: Market predetermines politics, democratic deliberation unneccesary
- Via moralization: Good vs. bad (depoliticisation occurring when the good is beyond
debate OR if good is permissible & bad is impermissable)
- Risks of depoliticised environmental discourse
- Tends to be business as usual, exclusionary
- Can enflame denialism [of CC] & undermine democracy
- Repoliticisation? Would entail
- Understanding that nature is open-ended, multifaceted, politics is always diverse,
affirming equality, acting from what we ‘can’ do perspective
Modernity & Environment
Modernity: Problem or Solution?
- Onset in 17C through capitalism, nation-state, liberal democracy
- Progress through human agency and reason - producing environmental degradation
Ecomodernism
What is it?
- Environmental harm & modernity linked by industrialisation
- Green modernity by greening the industry through technological innovation - green super
industrialisation (high stage of human development)
- This transition is not guaranteed (Beck - Reflexive Modernisation)
- Industrial society allocates goods & manages external threats but industrialisation has
produced risk society
- Risk society allocates bads & manages internal threats
- Environmental crisis may provoke anti-modern reaction
When?
- 1970s: legislative-bureaucratic approach to environmental harm → 1980s: rise of ecological
modernisation (Environmental degradation calculable - eg. cost-benefit analysis,
Environmental repair compatible with economic growth) → Onward: dominance of
ecological modernisation (Environmental policy, Science, Macroeconomics)
Why?
, - Environmental crisis framed as a win-win business opportunity, calls for no structural changes &
neutralises more radical philosophies
Green Keynesianism (Aronoff)
What is it?
- Link w/ modernity bc environmental harm is integral to capitalism
- Green capitalism via state (directs investments, coordinates production for social &
environmental public good)
- Assumptions of Keynesian economics
- Economy driven by consumptive demand, which should be artificially stimulated during
crisis via fiscal & monetary policy
- Keynesian economics assume that the state can manipulate cross-border flows of goods,
services, labour, capital & reallocation and coordinate internal investment
Conceptual roots:
- Collective action problem - market failure - tragedy of commons (markets cannot allocate
resources optimally bc asymmetric information, opportunitism, resources are hard to privatise
- Solution: by the State
- State as a resource coordinator (degree of control over productive apparatus, manages
resource use towards long term societal & environmental interests)
- State builds MARKETS to coordinate resource use (makes actors responsible for their
actions via pricing & privatisation, aligns individual incentives with sustainability goals -
> rejected as a ‘faux Green New Deal’)
Why
- Big economic tent accommodating political economic diversity, taps into renewed post 2008
interest in a state’s return to economy, doesn’t require structural change
Is Keynesianism still viable?
- State’s ability to shape movement of capital (main assumption of keynesianism) - no longer
effective bc
- Neoliberalism & international finance (requires a global sovereign to pull Keynesian
levers of globalized economy, politically unlikely)
Maybe not Keynesianism:
Neoliberalism
- Keynesian economics assume that the state can - manipulate cross-border flows of goods,
services, labour, capital & reallocate & coordinate internal investment
- Investment drives economy - keynesian tries to stimulate this by influencing factors that
capitalists weigh when deciding to invest
- Bretton Woods Agreement (1944)
- Fixed XR - currency stability - increased monetary & fiscal autonomy of the state -
FACILITATING KEYNESIAN POLICIES
- Bretton Woods DISMANTLED (1971)
- Floating XR - currency instability - decreased monetary & fiscal autonomy -
INHIBITING KEYNESIANISM
- Neoliberalism created global economies (addresses global factors of investment), Keynesianism
is domestic
- Mitchell (Carbon democracy) -link between energy source (carbon or oil) & politics
- Swyngedouw - depoliticisation risks & repoliticisation
- Aronoff - Green Keynsianism
- Beck - Reflexive modernisation
- Gilman - Eco-fascism
- Li & Shapiro - Environmental Authoritarianism
- Fraser - Eco-socialism
- Holleman - new imperialism & colonialism & shit like that
- Bullard - environmental racism
- McAdam & Felli - climate migration (from different perspectives)
- Plumwood - gender & migration
- Cunsulo & Ellis - environmental grief
- Jensen - Eco-guilt
- Carvalho et al - Climate inaction
- Scheuerman: Climate action
Power & Environment
Political Ecology:
- Power shapes environment through access, use, distribution, degradation
- Marginality: power differentials between humans manifest among environment & interactions w/
environment
- Ecology: how humans relate to surroundings
- Political economy: how political ECONOMIC power shapes the environment
- Implications:
- Environment - dynamic social construction
- Nature & society are interlinked
- Environmental disrepair as a social problem - historical contingency, economic &
political pressures (vs. biological, technological, etc.)
- Environment & our interactions w/ it shape power
- Eg. Mitchell, Carbon Democracy
- Dominant energy source - political activity & actors
- Coal & politics
- Coal workers empowered by reliance on coal, gave them labour &
political power
- Denser human population spread this across the world - mass politics
- Industrialisation - democracy
- Oil & Politics
- Industrially isolated & geographically remote production
- Fewer workers, fewer opportunities for worker disruption - translation of
labour power into political demands
- Democratic backsliding
Depoliticisation & Post-Politics
- Depoliticisation: removing of issue from political discourse, closing it off from debate &
deliberation - removes it from questions of power
, - Post-Politics
- Political formation that rejects ideological disagreement
- Universalizes specific political positions & demands
- Hidden normative power - ‘capitalism has won’
- Expert-led administration - discouraging heterodoxy & sidelining the demox
- End of history??
- Depoliticised Environments
- Larger post-political context & lack of emancipatory subject - make environmental
concerns vulnerable to depoliticisation
- Despite urgency - perceived to be a future concern
- Climate denialism
- Singular & uniform notions of nature & realm of necessity
- Discursive mechanisms
- Via scientization: Scientific problem, technological solution
- Via economization: Market predetermines politics, democratic deliberation unneccesary
- Via moralization: Good vs. bad (depoliticisation occurring when the good is beyond
debate OR if good is permissible & bad is impermissable)
- Risks of depoliticised environmental discourse
- Tends to be business as usual, exclusionary
- Can enflame denialism [of CC] & undermine democracy
- Repoliticisation? Would entail
- Understanding that nature is open-ended, multifaceted, politics is always diverse,
affirming equality, acting from what we ‘can’ do perspective
Modernity & Environment
Modernity: Problem or Solution?
- Onset in 17C through capitalism, nation-state, liberal democracy
- Progress through human agency and reason - producing environmental degradation
Ecomodernism
What is it?
- Environmental harm & modernity linked by industrialisation
- Green modernity by greening the industry through technological innovation - green super
industrialisation (high stage of human development)
- This transition is not guaranteed (Beck - Reflexive Modernisation)
- Industrial society allocates goods & manages external threats but industrialisation has
produced risk society
- Risk society allocates bads & manages internal threats
- Environmental crisis may provoke anti-modern reaction
When?
- 1970s: legislative-bureaucratic approach to environmental harm → 1980s: rise of ecological
modernisation (Environmental degradation calculable - eg. cost-benefit analysis,
Environmental repair compatible with economic growth) → Onward: dominance of
ecological modernisation (Environmental policy, Science, Macroeconomics)
Why?
, - Environmental crisis framed as a win-win business opportunity, calls for no structural changes &
neutralises more radical philosophies
Green Keynesianism (Aronoff)
What is it?
- Link w/ modernity bc environmental harm is integral to capitalism
- Green capitalism via state (directs investments, coordinates production for social &
environmental public good)
- Assumptions of Keynesian economics
- Economy driven by consumptive demand, which should be artificially stimulated during
crisis via fiscal & monetary policy
- Keynesian economics assume that the state can manipulate cross-border flows of goods,
services, labour, capital & reallocation and coordinate internal investment
Conceptual roots:
- Collective action problem - market failure - tragedy of commons (markets cannot allocate
resources optimally bc asymmetric information, opportunitism, resources are hard to privatise
- Solution: by the State
- State as a resource coordinator (degree of control over productive apparatus, manages
resource use towards long term societal & environmental interests)
- State builds MARKETS to coordinate resource use (makes actors responsible for their
actions via pricing & privatisation, aligns individual incentives with sustainability goals -
> rejected as a ‘faux Green New Deal’)
Why
- Big economic tent accommodating political economic diversity, taps into renewed post 2008
interest in a state’s return to economy, doesn’t require structural change
Is Keynesianism still viable?
- State’s ability to shape movement of capital (main assumption of keynesianism) - no longer
effective bc
- Neoliberalism & international finance (requires a global sovereign to pull Keynesian
levers of globalized economy, politically unlikely)
Maybe not Keynesianism:
Neoliberalism
- Keynesian economics assume that the state can - manipulate cross-border flows of goods,
services, labour, capital & reallocate & coordinate internal investment
- Investment drives economy - keynesian tries to stimulate this by influencing factors that
capitalists weigh when deciding to invest
- Bretton Woods Agreement (1944)
- Fixed XR - currency stability - increased monetary & fiscal autonomy of the state -
FACILITATING KEYNESIAN POLICIES
- Bretton Woods DISMANTLED (1971)
- Floating XR - currency instability - decreased monetary & fiscal autonomy -
INHIBITING KEYNESIANISM
- Neoliberalism created global economies (addresses global factors of investment), Keynesianism
is domestic
