Intergenerational Tyranny and Capitalist Markets
The 2015 Paris Agreement in The Perfect Moral Storm
Keywords:
Climate change, Climate agreements, climate justiceAbstract
As I have long been convinced by the significance of the perfect moral storm analysis, especially its intergenerational dimension (Fritsch 2018), I will not here discuss Gardiner’s apt use of it to argue that Paris failed and was insufficient from the beginning. Rather, I want to ask how complete Gardiner takes his explanation to be. Specifically, I will suggest that the diagnosis of insufficient action on climate change and environmental destabilization more broadly must take into account the role of capitalist markets, esp. neoliberal or “rentier-capitalist” (Christophers 2024) energy markets. Accordingly, possible solutions should not just propose new political institutions but consider their relation to economic structures.
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