Analyze

Climate Leviathan is largely a critical discussion of various ways of envisioning and organizing the Macro level including sovereignty, the nation-state, capitalisms, geopolitics, the world system, geo-engineering, etc. However, by rooting the discussion in “the political,” besides the obvious recognition of carbon emissions (and a few others) as toxic, the primary toxin discussed in this text is all the way down at the Nano level of ideology. The main problem isn’t fossil fuels, our dependency on them, or the corruption of the politicians in their pockets, it is in our incapacity to recognize how the tools we resort to (capitalism and the nation-state) are fully incapable of addressing the problem at hand. Indeed, they argue that addressing climate change without a critical theory of both capitalism and the state “would be like trying to model hurricanes without a theory of thermodynamics or an understanding of the effects of changing ocean temperatures on cyclone dynamics” (2018, 66).

Their “cure” to ideology is a Gramscian strain of absolute historicism. Take for example their discussion of progress. They quote Gramsci:

“‘…progress has been a democratic ideology.’ … [However] Progress has lost its democratic aspect because ‘the official ‘standard bearers’ of progress’ (the bourgeoisie) have ‘brought into being in the present destructive forces like crises and unemployment, etc., every bit as dangerous and terrifying as those of the past,’ and it is clear that these forces are as much a result of ‘progress’ as technology and scientific knowledge.” (2018, 94).

In this discussion, progress transforms from ideological tonic to ideological toxin based upon its associated deployments within a new historical context. Under the rule of monarchy, the ideology of progress enabled the establishment of liberal democracies. But under liberal capitalism, this ideology underwrote the “production of a separation in the social world between the political and the rest and a consequent neutralizing onslaught on the political that attempts to proceduralize and depoliticize domination, that is, the continual production of freedom for some and unfreedom for others” (2018, 83). These facts notwithstanding, the authors do not recommend an outright denial of progress: “A blanket rejection of progress confuses the idea and its standard bearers, who are now in fact part of the ‘natural order’ in crisis” (2018, 95). The same goes for the current stand-in for the ideology of progress, adaptation: “adaptation is becoming the “progress” of our time. Adaptation is to the ideology of Climate Leviathan what progress was to bourgeois liberalism in the nineteenth century” (2018, 95). Which, once again, does not mean we are to get rid of the concept of adaptation “as if a revolutionary social movement for climate justice can somehow decide against adaptation. The question, rather, is how—how to reshape a conception of the political in a very hot world.” (2018, 95).

What this discussion suggests is that it is that toxicity, as it pertains to ideology and social structure, is not a simple binary relation. To argue this would amount to “blanket rejection” of the ideology of progress as toxic to democracy. Rather, the authors’ example demonstrates how toxicity entails a triadic relation to a relation. It is how the ideology of progress relates to the historically evolving relationship between the dominant and the dominated that determines whether or not the ideology of progress is toxic to democracy or not.

The political and economic fallout that has emerged with the COVID-19 pandemic fits the criteria of events that Mann and Wainwright specify as likely to engender the planetary Leviathan: “Processes are more likely to drive the creation of Leviathan if [a] they present an existential threat; [b] they are large scale (global); and [c] they pose challenges for the existing political order” (2018., 142). However, the history enfolding before our eyes doesn’t look like the birth of a new global sovereignty. Given that nothing close to either a Leviathan or Climate X alternative to the nation-state presented itself, citizens are left with no choice than but to rely on adapting extant public institutions, infrastructures, and state directives. At the national level, the US government responded by blaming the symbol of global public health, the World Health Organization, among its other political rivals, China and Iran. This is in keeping with the “Western” world’s tactic of pointing the carbon-emission finger elsewhere as well:

“Unfortunately, in discussions of climate politics, China is usually considered only a problem, an amoral polluter. How often are we in North America or western Europe told our efforts to slow climate change are meaningless because whatever ‘good’ we do, ‘China’ will ultimately render it futile? Sometimes this is a product of ignorance, sometimes of racist Eurocentrism, sometimes both” (Wainwright and Mann 2018, 116).

Both the Chinese and Iranian governments have returned condemnations along with supporting conspiracies. Thus, rather than leviathan, we seem to be witnessing a Behemoth scenario in which “one or more of these competing powers will continue to compete with the United States” (Wainwright and Mann 2018, 143). And perhaps we should take heed the warning that “History would seem to suggest this will lead to war, and it may well” (2018, 143). Currently these Behemoth-like counter hegemonies are merely struggling to win a rhetorical war of self-righteousness and self-preservation. What is uncertain is whether or not these responses to COVID-19 are indicative of a schismogenetic pattern developing in the contemporary geopolitical order. As Wainwright and Mann comment:

“The implication is that the management of the planet would unfold in the context of a world system that is neither democratic (since the vast majority of nation-states and peoples would have no real involvement in the important decisions about the Earth’s management) nor clearly dominated by one hegemonic power. Planetary governance would unroll on a lumpy, conflictual geopolitical terrain upon which elites continue to seek “adaptations” that meet their needs—political stability, continued accumulation, and so on” (2018, 143).

The authors recognize and relate the critique of the Anthropocene to their critique of both capitalism and sovereignty. “One way or another, however reluctantly, the logic of capital in the Anthropocene points toward planetary sovereignty.” (2018, 122). Later on they remark that “the Anthropocene, the era that now puts all humans on the same geological age” ignores the fact that the “world’s peoples live in a multitude of geo-ecological times despite our planetary ‘simultaneity,’ and the forces that have helped shape those worlds are not reducible to ‘humanity’ in general, but to particular natural-historical social formations.” (2018, 174).

            Crucially, however, Mann and Wainwright do not disagree with the other central claim embedded in the concept of the Anthropocene, the appreciation of social impacts on what are otherwise considered natural or “non-human” systems. Indeed, they pull in Gramsci’s problematization of social and natural history to argue that “‘nature’ and ‘society’ are inseparable, active relations. And these relations are themselves inextricable from the processes through which we forge critical conceptions of the world” (2018, 91).

This picture of the Anthropocene closely aligns with perspective outlined by Elinoff and Vaughan in their discussion of Quotidian Anthropocenes (forthcoming), and reinforces both the analytic and political purchase of ethnographic investigations into the unique cultural and political struggles to respond to the particular configurations of anthropocenics that characterize discrete locales. Such investigations not only problematize top-down or one-size-fits-all policies of climate protection or adaptation, but they also appreciate the potential for keen political insight to develop “organically” (in Gramsci’s sense of the term) in the social formations springing up around local issues.

And, while recognizing a potential disciplinary bias, I believe these insights point to method for answering one of Mann and Wainwright’s questions: “A key question, then, is what the focus of a critical reconstruction of our conception of the world should be. What are the essential common senses we must undo to see the future for which we must struggle?” The focus that I would propose entails ethnographic engagements with place, but ones that are both and simultaneously multi-sited and multi-sighted (Marcus 1995).

Wainwright and Mann are astute macro-political theorists but they seem less reflexive and critical of the way in which they scale their politics.

What is obviously necessary is a means of governance that is not beholden to modern state sovereignty, at the same time that this necessity is denied by some of those very sovereign states. … The scale of the problems is so great, it seems impossible to confront them without the state, but it seems just as impossible that the state as currently constituted is going to get the job done. We face a situation in which there is, under current geopolitical and geoeconomic arrangements, no right answer” (2018, 119-120).

The experimental promise of Anthropology as Cultural Critique (Marcus and Fischer 1986) lay in the innovative solutions that were being generated in response to the problem of keeping the world system of political economy in the same analytical frame as the cultural and symbolic systems that were unique to the researcher’s object of study (see also Fortun 2003, 2009). In sum, multi-sited fieldwork, enabled through complex objects of study and creative research designs, presents the opportunity to perturb our commonsense politics of scale. And, at another level, collaborations across research projects enables further appreciation of “how to reshape a conception of the political in a very hot [polluted, disease-ridden, etc.] world” (Wainwright and Mann 2018, 95).

Climate Leviathan was published as a book by Verso in 2018.  It was preceded by an article-length version published in Antipode in 2012. The authors began to formulate their thinking  about Climate Leviathan in conversation after the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2009, feeling compelled to provide a political analysis of the meeting process and the lackluster position taken by the newly elected and supposedly progressive Obama administration. Both of the authors were involved in local environmental organizations in their hometowns and were expressing their hesitations about the political horizons of the IPCC. However, they did not feel as if they had things completely worked out. This led to a discussion of these horizons that turned into the Climate Leviathan article. In writing the article, the authors realized that the topic at hand far exceeded the scope of one article. They thus continued the collaboration and began writing the book.

Dominic Boyer and Cymene Howe discussed the book with the authors in episode 172 of their “Cultures of Energy” podcast on April 10, 2019. Listen to the episode here.

The book was also reviewed in The Nation and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

“Our accounts of each potential path for climate politics are not detailed forecasts of the empirical form they might take in any particular geography, but descriptions of the principal features we argue are likely to determine their general dynamics, and the political implications of those dynamics for attempts to construct a world of climate justice” (Mann and Wainwright 2018, 82).

“If capitalist Climate Leviathan stands ready to embrace carbon governance in an evolving Euro-American liberal hegemony, Climate Mao expresses the necessity of a just terror in the interests of the future of the collective, which is to say that it represents the necessity of a planetary sovereign but wields this power against capital” (Mann and Wainwright 2018, 106).

“Climate Behemoth, represented by the upper right of Figure 2.1. Behemoth opposes Leviathan’s drive for planetary sovereignty, which is itself not a bad thing in our view” (Mann and Wainwright 2018, 118).

“In the capitalist core—particularly where the fossil energy sector is large (the United States, Canada, Australia)—they have found their most willing allies among those segments of the proletariat that perceive climate change not only as a threat to their jobs and cheap energy, but also as a sophisticated means to empower elite experts and hinder the exercise of national(ist) sovereignty” (Mann and Wainwright 2018, 120).

“To put it in our terms, Behemoth hates Mao for its faith in secular revolution, Leviathan for its liberal pretension to rational world government, and both for their willingness to sacrifice “liberty” for lower carbon emissions” (Mann and Wainwright 2018, 123).

“To the extent that US hegemony will continue to require affordable fossil fuels, the emergence of Leviathan poses threat enough to energize Behemoth and thus to check Leviathan’s planetary potential—for now. But barring an act of coordinated political imagination of which it seems incapable, this situation is unlikely to last. Indeed, notwithstanding the Trump presidency, the United States could yet become the heart of Leviathan” (Mann and Wainwright 2018, 125).

“The situation changes dramatically when we shift to Working Group III, on mitigation. The future of mitigation is fundamentally a question of political economy, but the IPCC does not, or perhaps cannot, draw upon work that presents a critical model of capitalism. This causes a fundamental analytical problem. It would be like trying to model hurricanes without a theory of thermodynamics or an understanding of the effects of changing ocean temperatures on cyclone dynamics” (Mann and Wainwright 2018, 124).

“If Timothy Mitchell is right that “the political machinery that emerged to govern the age of fossil fuels may be incapable of addressing the events that will end it,” what will follow? This is a question—the question of the political—to which the prevailing conception of adaptation is wholly inadequate. We must, therefore, look elsewhere” (Mann and Wainwright 2018, 146).

In Climate Leviathan, Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright speculate about the future “in a serious way,” drawing on a wide range of theory to sketch four possible governance scenarios, experimenting with scenarios as a genre for critical political thought. The authors assume that the governments and societies of the world will fail to mobilize fast enough to mitigate climate change, resulting in numerous and massive social, political economic, and cultural disruptions. They then analyze contemporary geopolitical trends in order to generate four different modes of governance that might take hold, at a global level, in order to respond and manage that state of affairs.

The scenario they deem most likely, which they call “Climate Leviathan,” imagines the rise of a global sovereignty that addresses and manages climate change through some form of liberal capitalism. The emergence of this sovereignty, however, is contingent on Climate Leviathan winning out over two antagonistic ideologies and governance forms. One, “Climate Behemoth,” is described as a reactionary and national-capitalistic resistance to the Leviathan’s global hegemony and appeal to rational governance. “Climate Mao,” by contrast, is an anti-capitalist but autocratic counter-hegemony. Finally, the authors also pose “Climate X,” named after Walter Benjamin’s Thesis X (in Theses on the Concept of History) depicted as an anti-capitalist, anti-sovereign alternative to the former three.

The authors are both critical geographers of capitalism that focus on the intersection of sovereignty and economic and ecological crisis.

Geoff Mann is a Professor of Geography at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. He received his PhD in Geography from UC Berkley. Joel Wainwright is a Professor of Geography at Ohio State University. He received his PhD in Geography from University of Minnesota.

Cite As:

Wainwright, Joel, and Geoff Mann. 2018. Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future. London ; New York: Verso.

Verso considers itself a publisher of the New Left. They publish works of critical theory with influences from Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, and postmodernism as well as re-publish prominent and classic works that fall within these domains.

The COVID moment makes me think, among other things, of Gramsci’s critique of Rosa Luxemburg’s theory of the general strike. Gramsci argued, convincingly, that the general strike is no longer an effective means of disruption because of the level of development of the capitalist nation-state and world market. Well, COVID has disrupted everything more than any sort of social mobilization ever could. Except, perhaps, mobilizing for a war between nation-states, but even that is debatable. We all know that war is good for business and also the status quo.

I am wondering how the COVID crisis might be destabilizing formerly entrenched power relations, or at least rendering them more tenuous and ambiguous? On the one hand, it has certainly intensified certain forms of structural violence, such as the many LMI communities and people of color who are more susceptible to COVID complications because they have already endured years to decades of deadly levels of air pollution. On the other hand, the crisis also appears to be leveling out some of the more extreme asymmetrical power relations, like those between environmentalists and the oil and gas industry. For instance, the working conditions of both oil rigs and coal mines are uniquely susceptible to COVID outbreaks, which is prompting politicians to consider all their options as far as shutting down or reducing personnel and operations. There was also Virginia’s House Bill 528 that passed both the Senate and the House of Representatives and is currently awaiting the governor’s signature. Amid the COVID crisis and without much attention, a junior legislator pushed the bill through quietly, allowing greater state regulation of Dominion Energy’s monopoly over the region’s utilities. This victory is being interpreted as “a good start,” inspiring progressives in the state to act towards a more comprehensive set actions with “the imminent passage of the overarching Virginia Clean Economy Act.”

On another front, the COVID crisis is intersecting with Vladimir Putin’s price war, causing his plan to backfire to the degree that he and the leaders of other oil producing states are presented with very little means or options for raising the price of oil back to the pre-price war levels. The economic slow-down from quarantine mandates (along with the oil price war between Russia-Saudi Arabia) is also opening a new space for organizers along the gulf coast to fight against pipeline and refinery projects. Renewables, by contrast, are surviving COVID much better than fossil fuels and are on track to continue to outpace oil and gas development after the quarantines subside.

That being said, this depreciation of oil and gas prices isn’t necessarily a bloodless victory for environmentalists. Rates of natural gas flaring have increased significantly in 2020 and environmental watchdogs expect even more in response to the low prices of oil and natural gas. Furthermore, due to COVID-related labor shortages, many operators are having a hard time keeping these flares lit and yet continue to emit pure methane into the atmosphere, taking a far heavier toll on public health and the environment.

The cumulative impact of these developments has me questioning how the COVID crisis might be shaking the foundations of neoliberal hegemony. I am currently researching efforts to transition to renewable energy in Austin, Texas. Texas is unique in the energy world in many respects, none moreso than the state's level of committment to deregulation. However, this article in the Houston Chronicle discusses how Texas' deregulated electricity market complicates efforts to secure people’s access to electricity in a dramatic economic downturn (like COVID). In these situations, electric cooperatives and municipally owned utilities can simply run at a loss to ease the financial burden of electricity on their customers. They can then recover these losses by appealing to their regulators during their next rate case. The same does not go for retail energy providers, who have no mechanism to recover such losses. Thus, if left to their own devices, Texas’ recent state-wide moratorium on disconnecting people from the grid (due to job/income loss from COVID sanctions) would likely force small retail electricity providers out of business. This could then force other consumers to make the switch to more expensive providers that they may not be able to afford, causing a chain reaction of default and bankruptcy.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) was therein forced to come up with a new solution for electricity customers in the state's deregulated areas, which includes the majority of Texans (70%). What the PUCT decided upon is reminiscent of what authors Wainwright and Mann describe in their Climate Leviathan scenario (2018). The PUCT declared a state of emergency to establish its sovereignty and determine who shall pay for electricity, how much, and for how long, all in the name of keeping Texas’ the “deregulated” market alive.

To be more precise, the PUCT came up with an emergency fund that charges all ratepayers an extra .033 cents/kilowatt hour that will be used to compensate retail energy providers. Qualified rate payers would receive a 4cent/kilowatt hour credit on their bills that will go to the retail provider and keep them afloat. Most customers, however, pay more than that rate (almost double). These customers will be set up on payment deferment plans and will be prohibited from switching energy providers until this debt is paid in full. This effectively nullifies lower-to-moderate income families’ ability to switch providers to keep their cost of electricity as low as possible. Ironically, this feature was part of the fundamental rhetoric behind the deregulation of the Texas energy market back in the 1990s, a rhetoric that is embedded in the PUCT’s often praised Power To Choose tool.

Admittedly, this particular example is not one of revolutionary change, but one of containment and eventual re-integration into the status quo. It does, however, also show that the contemporary hegemony of neoliberalism is at least under stress. To the contrary of the expectations embedded in nearly every strategy of resistance, the political economic effect of quarantine is such that it is almost as if "the general strike" has been imposed upon us by the state in response to the threat of COVID-19. And as a result, free market ideologies are being challenged like never before. I am left wondering if and how different environmental/social justice groups are thinking about this disruption of traditional modes of production, distribution, and finance and rethinking their political strategies accordingly. Progressive movements springing up like The People’s Bail Out (PBO) suggest that many are aware of this moment of simultaneous need and opportunity.

Here is a quote for the PBO website:

“Policymakers and the administration have put forward plans that attempt to return the economy back to a status quo where safety and security are promised only to corporations and the wealthy few. Gambling trillions of tax dollars on stimulating the stock market can't fix the shortage of hospital beds, or the pollution in our skies. Only workers can. 

In this moment of crisis, we need to change the rules. Let’s pull together, as we've done in times past, to demand our government provides money and care to those who are hardest hit by this crisis.”