The question of whether global capitalism can resolve the earth system crisis rests on the (im)possibility of 'absolute decoupling': whether or not economic growth can continue indefinitely as total environmental impacts shrink. Ecomodernists and other techno-optimists argue for the feasibility of absolute decoupling, whereas degrowth advocates show that it is likely to be neither feasible in principle nor in the timeframe needed to ward off ecological tipping points. While primarily supporting the degrowth perspective, I will suggest that the ecomodernists have a wildcard in their pocket that hasn't been systematically addressed by degrowth advocates. This is the 'Fourth Industrial Revolution', which refers to convergent innovations in biotechnology, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and other developments. However, I will argue that while these innovations may enable some degree of absolute decoupling, they will also intensify emerging risks in the domains of biosecurity, cybersecurity, and state securitization. Overall, these technologies will not only place unprecedented destructive power in the hands of non-state actors but will also empower and incentivize states to create a global security regime with unprecedented surveillance and force mobilization capacities. This reinforces the conclusion that mainstream environmental policies based on decoupling should be reconsidered and supplanted by alternative policy trajectories based on material-energetic degrowth, redistribution, and technological deceleration. Policy Implications• Policy makers should explore the evidence challenging mainstream assumptions about 'green growth' and consider the possibilities for a 'post-growth' transition.• Policy makers should recognize the potentially catastrophic risks posed by Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies, which will increase in severity if they are relied upon to decouple economic growth from growing resource consumption.• To manage the risks posed by Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies, citizens assemblies should be empowered to shape the pace and direction of innovation and deployment, rather than relying solely on traditional arms control and private sector initiatives.
An apocalyptic zeitgeist infuses global life, yet this is only minimally reflected in International Relations (IR) debates about the future of world order and implications of climate change. Instead, most approaches within these literatures follow what I call a "continuationist" bias, which assumes that past trends of economic growth and inter-capitalist competition will continue indefinitely into the future. I identify three key reasons for this assumption: 1) a lack of engagement with evidence that meeting the Paris Agreement targets is incompatible with continuous economic growth; 2) an underestimation of the possibility that failure to meet these targets will unleash irreversible tipping points in the earth system, and 3) limited consideration of the ways climate change will converge with economic stagnation, financial instability, and food system vulnerabilities to intensify systemic risks to the global economy in the near-term and especially later this century. I argue that IR scholars should therefore explore the potential for 'post-growth' world orders to stabilize the climate system, consider how world order may adapt to a three or four degree world if Paris Agreement targets are exceeded, and investigate the possible dynamics of global 'collapse' in case runaway climate change overwhelms collective adaptation capacities during this century.
Growing recognition of the Anthropocene era has led to a chorus of calls for Earth System Governance (ESG). Advocates argue that humanity’s newfound sociotechnical powers require institutional transformations at all scales of governance to wield these powers with wisdom and foresight. Critics, on the other hand, fear that these initiatives embody a technocratic impulse that aims to subject the planet to expert management without addressing the political-economic roots of the earth system crisis. This article proposes a more affirmative engagement with existing approaches to ESG while also building on these critiques. While advocates of ESG typically ignore the capitalistic roots of the earth system crisis and propose tepid reforms that risk authoritarian expressions, their critics also have yet to systematically consider the potential for more democratic and postcapitalist forms of ESG. In response, I propose an ecological Marxist approach based on a structural analysis of capitalism as the primary driver of the earth system crisis and an “ecosocialist” vision of ESG that subordinates the market to democratic planning at multiple scales. I argue that an ecological Marxist perspective is needed to foreground the structural political-economic constraints on earth system stability, though existing approaches to ESG can in turn inform ecosocialist strategies for global institutional design and democratization.
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