THE THESIS OF THIS BOOK

The issue of climate change represents the cutting edge of global environmental concern. It is generally presented as a bewilderingly complex phenomenon, rigorously understood only by a small group of climate science experts. The impact of climate change, on the contrary, is universal and will rapidly become more severe as the present century progresses. This is especially the case in poorer parts of the developing world. The reality of climate change is generally acknowledged to amount to an unfolding environmental catastrophe. Its principal cause is the burning of fossil fuels, in particular coal, over the last two and a half centuries. Since the 1980s the political discourse that has arisen in response to the manifold environmental problems associated with industrialisation is centred on the idea of sustainable development (SD).

I will argue throughout this book that SD, while it is typically presented as politically neutral in character, offers in fact a very specific, neoliberal framing of environmental issues. Seen through the SD lens, climate change can only be tackled through radicalisation rather than abandonment of the global neoliberal order. On the other hand, many thinkers and activists currently tackling climate change are convinced that an ideological paradigm shift is needed to get to grips with the challenge of climate change. As Foucault (2008) insisted in his 1978/9 lecture series at the Collège de France, neoliberalism is not merely a matter of an ideology, that is, some sort of false consciousness giving agents an erroneous picture of material reality. Much more than a delusional state of consciousness, neoliberalism has become consolidated over the last four decades as a set of rigorous procedures and disciplinary practices governing individuals and institutions both from the ‘inside’ of personal consciousness and from the ‘outside’ in the form of social mores and political common sense. All too often, climate change is presented as an unintended consequence of capitalist development. Against this, I will argue here that both the creation of and inability to combat climate change are inherent features of neoliberal governance.