Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future

Red Menace

Politics, Society & Culture, Philosophy, News

4.9 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2022

⏱️ 117 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of Red Menace, Alyson and Breht discuss and analyze "Climate Leviathan" by authors Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright.

Book description: "Despite the science and the summits, leading capitalist states have not achieved anything close to an adequate level of carbon mitigation. There is now simply no way to prevent the planet breaching the threshold of two degrees Celsius set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. What are the likely political and economic outcomes of this? Where is the overheating world heading?

To further the struggle for climate justice, we need to have some idea how the existing global order is likely to adjust to a rapidly changing environment. Climate Leviathan provides a radical way of thinking about the intensifying challenges to the global order. Drawing on a wide range of political thought, Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann argue that rapid climate change will transform the world’s political economy and the fundamental political arrangements most people take for granted. The result will be a capitalist planetary sovereignty, a terrifying eventuality that makes the construction of viable, radical alternatives truly imperative."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everybody and welcome back to Red Menace.
0:18.9	So today's episode, Allison and I, are covering the text Climate Leviathan, a political
0:24.7	theory of our planetary future by Joel Wainwright and Jeff Mann.
0:30.0	This is a book that's really interesting that makes us think through important political
0:35.0	and philosophical thoughts regarding the climate crisis.
0:38.0	I've heard many interviews with one or both of the authors and various different left-wing
0:43.1	podcasts and of course you know that would be fun to have one of the authors on and talk
0:47.7	about this text but what Allison and I do on Red Menace here is to take the text to break
0:52.8	it down to kind of teach it and reflect on it in a way that's not always possible in the
0:57.3	systematic and rigorous way that we want with with with the guest on the line right.
1:01.7	Those are more organic combos you don't know where the guest is going to take things etc.
1:05.2	So you know if we do get an interview with these authors on Red Menace or Rev Left,
1:10.8	you know we'll definitely let you know but right now we're just tackling the text and if you want
1:14.7	to to find those interviews with the authors after listening to this you absolutely can just
1:19.7	type in climate Leviathan in your podcast app and it'll come up.
1:23.6	This is a this is an exciting book it's really thoughtful and insightful book even where there
1:28.8	are disagreements up front the book draws from two broad philosophical traditions what they call
1:34.8	a sort of Marx and Gromsche critique of political economy hegemony ideology etc.
1:40.8	And then a sort of Hobzean and Carl Schmidt line of thinking that that thinks through the notion
1:47.6	of sovereignty and it's really this this combination of analyzing capitalist political economy
1:54.0	as well as sovereignty and sort of fusing them together that makes this book sort of unique
1:59.5	and forms the starting point of the analysis that this book carries out.
	...

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