US President Donald Trump is stunning the world with zigzag policy changes. His dictum “Drill, baby, drill” shows the US government is focused on boosting energy and wealth and abandoning net zero commitments to phase out greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
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By withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and removing environmental constraints on businesses that exploit energy resources, Trump is safeguarding the US as the global hegemonic oil and natural gas producer, ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia.
The development of fossil fuels in Alaska means that the US can export across the Pacific to Japan, South Korea and other Asian energy importers, competing directly with Middle Eastern oil and gas shipped via the Malacca Strait.
The geopolitics of climate change is ultimately about which governance model will pay and manage the transition to net zero. Geoff Mann’s and Joel Wainwright’s groundbreaking book, Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future, described four political models to deliver net zero. These are Climate Leviathan, Climate Mao, Climate Behemoth and Climate X.
Climate Leviathan envisages the present capitalist system trying, unsuccessfully, to overcome the problem of working together to achieve net zero. Climate Mao has the same objective but uses an anti-capitalist order. Climate Behemoth describes a global arrangement animated by a chauvinistic capitalist and nationalist politics that denies – until it can only denounce – the threat climate change poses.
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Climate X is a bottom-up movement that is non-capitalist and pursues global climate justice as the solution.