Why tackling climate change needs a religious revolution

Does the climate crisis require a return to the era of 'embedded liberalism'? Or is a realist alternative required?

This post is by Dr Haro Karkour, Online Tutor for Queen Mary Online's MA in International Relations and MSc in International Public Policy. Haro's research focuses on International Relations (IR) Theory.

The current climate crisis cannot be resolved by liberal institutions that operate within a statist framework. The reason is simple: liberal institutions were designed to maintain advantage for some nations and not others, while the climate crisis is faced by the individual globally.

The climate crisis thus requires a revolution that would redefine humanity’s sense of purpose, akin to the religious revolutions of previous ages.

A return to ‘embedded liberalism’?

In light of the recent challenges to liberal institutions, scholars such as John Ikenberry, have called for a return to the era of ‘embedded liberalism’, namely to re-embed Western markets in social programmes of welfare and full employment.

Liberal institutions however have no mechanism by which these social programmes can become global. Consequently, liberal institutionalism fails to address an important hindrance to climate cooperation: the disagreement over economics.

The statist framework in which liberal institutionalism operates does not prioritise the individual on a global scale, and this fails to address the linkages between challenges such as migration and economic development, and climate change.

It is clear, from the latest climate talks in Bonn for instance, that the core disagreement over meeting climate goals, in fact are disagreements over climate assistance which many states fail to deliver upon.

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A realist alternative

The failure of liberal institutionalism to tackle the present climate crisis led realists, such as Stephen Walt, to call for a realist alternative. Walt’s argument here is that the climate crisis can only be addressed by great powers, who in turn need to convince their own people that it is in their vital security interest to cooperate with other nations.

In Walt’s words, ‘solving the problem depends more on their actions than on whatever Bolivia or Burundi or Brunei decide to do’, therefore, ‘all-inclusive climate summits involving the entire U.N. membership list are less important than minilateral forums like the G-7 or G-20’.

However, Walt’s realist alternative, like liberal institutionalism, glosses over an important fact: that for the climate challenge to be addressed the individual within smaller nations needs to be prioritised over the interests — and citizens — of great powers. Neither realists nor liberal institutionalists call for such prioritisation.

The role of nationalists

Nor do liberal institutions address the cultural challenge posed by nationalists, who feed on the psycho-social needs of the individual; that is, the need to create a sense of meaning and belonging. In turn, the spiritual void becomes filled by the likes of Trump and promises of the ‘New Right’, both of whom operate within the national framework.

To counter these, the climate response today requires a revolution akin to the religious revolutions of previous ages. Humanity needs to redefine its purpose to transcend nationalism and prioritise the individual globally.

Society’s purpose

The revolution begins in the realm of ideas: society will need to ask itself, what is our purpose? In times of crisis, society is always faced with this question. During the Second World War, for instance, British society redefined its purpose to defeat Nazism and consequently the problem of unemployment was suddenly resolved.

The recent pandemic brought a sudden change to economies, thus resolving the problem of homelessness in a matter of days and sending pay checks to people’s bank accounts to enable them to survive. The more urgent the crisis, it seems, the more creative society’s definition of its purpose.

There is no room for historical determinism, of course. Society can still choose to sleepwalk into extinction. The question remains, however: will the present climate crisis lead to a change in humanity’s sense of purpose to prioritise the individual over the nation?

No matter what the answer is, it is clear that only such a change, which is fundamentally in the spiritual realm, will enable us to tackle the present challenge.

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