From organic to climate solidarity: challenges for climate change mitigation

Abstract

Climate change mitigation (CCM) requires a form of global solidarity that overcome the organic solidarity, with its reliance on indirect mutualism, developed within modern nation-states. The new global interdependence created by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions leads to the decoupling, at the global level, of the populations who should bear the major costs of CCM and those who most stand to benefit, who may be distant in space and time (i.e. future generations). This analysis argues that climate solidarity entails two crucial challenges to modern solidarity: the transition from hierarchical to a horizontal model of multi-actor and multi-level cooperation, and shifting from in-group to out-group solidarity with current and future generations facing the worst climate change consequences. The understanding of the development of horizontal multi-actor cooperation for out-group solidarity represents a major challenge for social sciences and humanities (SSH) research and the related policies that is crucial to reaching climate neutrality.