The rise and fall of the global climate polity

TY - CHAP

T1 - The rise and fall of the global climate polity

AU - Corry, Olaf

PY - 2013/11/1

Y1 - 2013/11/1

N2 - Introduction Not so long ago the idea that a global climate polity could exist would have seemed bizarre or simply nonsensical. ‘The climate’ was effectively just patterns of weather over time. Though there is a long history of attempts at affecting weather, these were generally limited to engineering local and temporary effects on rainfall, and historically many schemes ended in failure or even ridicule (Fleming 2012). Few if any people seriously entertained the idea that people, states, corporations and international organizations would mobilize and operate giant monitoring and regulatory systems in concerted attempts to change (or preserve) the chemical composition of the global atmosphere. This raises not only the question of how the idea of governing something like the climate so rapidly became a matter of course but also how sure we can be that it will remain so in, for example, another thirty years. Other objects today considered immutable or irrelevant may also become objects of governance of central importance while things we today regard as governable may disappear as targets of governance just as other objects of governance such as ‘Mesopotamia’ straddling modern-day Iraq or ‘Danelaw’ – a power structure in northern and eastern England in the ninth and tenth centuries – have come and gone. It is too early to write the definitive story of ‘the rise and fall’ of the global climate polity, but this chapter makes a start by considering the bigger picture of a climate polity, what one is and what its future prospects might be.

AB - Introduction Not so long ago the idea that a global climate polity could exist would have seemed bizarre or simply nonsensical. ‘The climate’ was effectively just patterns of weather over time. Though there is a long history of attempts at affecting weather, these were generally limited to engineering local and temporary effects on rainfall, and historically many schemes ended in failure or even ridicule (Fleming 2012). Few if any people seriously entertained the idea that people, states, corporations and international organizations would mobilize and operate giant monitoring and regulatory systems in concerted attempts to change (or preserve) the chemical composition of the global atmosphere. This raises not only the question of how the idea of governing something like the climate so rapidly became a matter of course but also how sure we can be that it will remain so in, for example, another thirty years. Other objects today considered immutable or irrelevant may also become objects of governance of central importance while things we today regard as governable may disappear as targets of governance just as other objects of governance such as ‘Mesopotamia’ straddling modern-day Iraq or ‘Danelaw’ – a power structure in northern and eastern England in the ninth and tenth centuries – have come and gone. It is too early to write the definitive story of ‘the rise and fall’ of the global climate polity, but this chapter makes a start by considering the bigger picture of a climate polity, what one is and what its future prospects might be.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84928090735&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1017/cbo9781107110069.018

DO - 10.1017/cbo9781107110069.018

M3 - Book chapter

AN - SCOPUS:84928090735

SN - 9781107046269

SP - 219

EP - 234

BT - Governing the Climate

PB - Cambridge University Press

CY - Cambridge

ER -