Hi everyone, Jessica and Stacy, first of all, thank you for sharing this. This is really great to see at Duck of Minerva!
If I may, I would like to briefly add my thoughts - and I will preface this by saying that I just submitted my dissertation to my committee for review, so I've had a lot of this bottled up for a while! :) The first thing to note is that I absolutely agree with the authors that “Climate change is arguably the most urgent problem facing humankind. It is not a single policy problem, but rather pervades all aspects of state and society – affecting everything from geopolitics to local planning. Yet, one is hard pressed to reach this conclusion given the current landscape of political science… Excellent work appears occasionally in premier journals on the variety of political questions that climate change raises. But given the centrality of politics in contributing and responding to the climate change problem, there is not enough of this work and — critically — much of it occurs outside the central discourses and journals of our discipline.” And yet, as someone who is just now finishing my dissertation on the politics of climate change - for a PhD in political science - after spending the better part of 5+ years working on this, I have come to the realization that this is symptomatic of a bigger issues/problems in our discipline - that is, the relative absence and/or marginalization of perspectives that emphasize the critique of capitalist political economy at the heart of our politics. That is, our discipline is failing to grapple with the legacy of Marxism. (For just one recent example of this, I will highlight my colleagues and comrades Kevin Funk and Sebastian Sclofsky’s 2017 piece “The Specter That Haunts Political Science: The Neglect and Misreading of Marx in International Relations and Comparative Politics”). Now, that is not to say that political scientists and IR scholars have not been aware of this - Peter Newell and Matthew Paterson, for example, as early as the late 1990s were among the most prominent to highlight the central role that capitalism is playing in organizing our international political economy and climate politics. However, to be blunt, at least with the release of their latest book (”Climate Capitalism”) they have all but abandoned Marxist critique: I apologize for the brief/paraphrasing, but IIRC they basically argue that capitalism is here to stay, for the foreseeable future at least, and thus it’s necessary to consider what needs to be done *within* the constraints of the capitalist system to make “progress” on this issue. (Again, please excuse the truncated review!) Suffice it to say, as someone just beginning to work on this issue, and as a “young person” who will ultimately likely see most of the worst that is yet to come, over the next 40+ years (ie far beyond the point that the IPCC tells us we need a “rapid transition” away from fossil fuels), this is *not* an acceptable response. If you go to the frontlines of the climate justice movement, or even just read their greatest texts (e.g. “This Changes Everything”), you will see that the frontline communities (especially in the Global South) take capitalism and Marxism very seriously. You don’t have to go very far, reading between the lines to find a critique of capitalism and its politics (including the capitalist nation-state system, UNFCCC, etc.). It’s right there at the core: “System Change, Not Climate Change!” Or to put it another way: “Ecosocialism or barbarism!” There’s a lot more to say about this, but please excuse my brevity (and I’ll also add that at the authors’ behest, I would be more than happy to write a more extended and detailed response!). But I would encourage us to think deeply and critically and reflexively about our own roles here! With warmest regards, -Reed On Thu, Aug 1, 2019 at 10:35 AM Jessica Green <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Gep-Ed colleagues, > > > > Just a minor correction: it’s in the Duck of Minerva! Thanks to Josh > Busby for agreeing to publish it. It might be a useful overview for grad > students (with lots of citations!). > > > > Regards, > > Jessica > > > > -- > > Jessica F. Green > > Associate Professor, Political Science > > Author, *Rethinking Private Authority > <https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10148.html>* > > [email protected] > > @greenprofgreen > > https://green.faculty.politics.utoronto.ca > > 416.978.6758 > > > > > > > > *From: *<[email protected]> on behalf of Stacy VanDeveer < > [email protected]> > *Reply-To: *"[email protected]" <[email protected]> > *Date: *Thursday, August 1, 2019 at 10:32 AM > *To: *Gep-Ed <[email protected]> > *Subject: *[gep-ed] PoliSci & Climate Change > > > > Gep-ed Colleagues, > > With the tireless leadership of Prof. Jessica Green, our co-authored piece > on Political Science & Climate Change > <https://duckofminerva.com/2019/08/changing-the-atmosphere-in-political-science-ten-key-political-questions-about-climate-change.html> > was published on the MonkeyCage today. > > --sv > > -- > > Stacy D. VanDeveer > > Professor & Graduate Program Director > > Global Governance and Human Security > > McCormack Graduate School of Policy & Global Studies > > www.global.umb.edu > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "gep-ed" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gep-ed/EEBA395B-498D-49B4-A0AE-8E7F06ADDC0D%40umb.edu > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gep-ed/EEBA395B-498D-49B4-A0AE-8E7F06ADDC0D%40umb.edu?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "gep-ed" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gep-ed/54C10E1F-139C-4BEF-B039-216F28252939%40utoronto.ca > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gep-ed/54C10E1F-139C-4BEF-B039-216F28252939%40utoronto.ca?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. 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