Climate science, the politics of climate change and futures of IR

Abstract

This article considers what is necessary politically to respond to the empirical challenge of climate change and to the present calls of climate science (a carbon-neutral world by 2050). Its basic argument is that, among an array of national and international actors, it remains the state that can drive a successful politics of climate change. Without the heavy-lifting of the state and the state’s ability as a national entity to motivate behavioural change, neither the daunting scale nor imminent time-horizon of climate mitigation and adaptation is possible. The article shows how this specific argument, far from pitching anew nationalism against internationalism, can bring the two presently polarized movements together. The article then suggests that if these arguments are essentially valid, the discipline of International Relations needs to focus much more on the climate challenge, re-engage with its traditions of thought on the state and help harbour a specific disposition or mindset in the research and teaching of the discipline for the next decades: a fierce optimism.