Are Safe Social Practices on the Horizon?

Abstract

There are many grounds for hope that the climate crisis can be mitigated if societies are willing to pay the costs and make the sacrifices. The chapter documents where this has happened in other areas: air and water in cities are cleaner today than after the industrial revolution, smallpox has been eradicated, there are many international agreements. But it also uncovers logical flaws and empirical weaknesses in Beck’s abstract theory that the anticipation of global climate catastrophe will emancipate humanity. In particular, he mistakes changed discourse for changed practices. The chapter then turns to the more concrete level, and assesses cases of foresight prevailing where the economy has been reconciled with the environment, such as through successful carbon taxes, feed-in tariffs, coal industries transformed into prosperous wind energy industries and other private sector solutions, mitigation by Nordic social democratic societies and by California, the Kigali Agreement, etc. Nevertheless global warming is worsening, so mitigation needs to increase and be scaled up.