Climate change is impossible under an Imperialist framework – Turns Case. Countries won’t follow on and make independent efforts that worsen the climate.

Nonetheless there really is no “we” in fighting climate change in a Westphalian lexicon. Today’s countries: developing and developed, autocratic and democratic, rich importer and poor exporter, religious fundamentalist or secular, also face far too many internal contradictions to address climate change as one-coherent voice, in fact, it’s impossible. Societies begin to work at cross purposes, redundancy and contradiction becoming the result. For example, Australia wants green initiatives but is one of the world’s largest coal exporters. Germany seeks a low carbon society, but has allowed brown coal to retake much of their electricity grid to support jobs. Indonesia has great expectations of becoming a responsible player with the Paris accords, but at the same time not only exports thermal coal, but lets the Chinese build gigantic coal-fired plants that dot the Java landscape in the time being. What the Westphalian system does do however, is allow these same countries to default to do nothing, or take weakly conceived positions that firstly enable support for their economic activity, which 88% of the world’s economy is predicated on continued use ([and abuse] such as with government subsidies) of fossil fuels. This predicate to the carbon addiction as an economic driver fits the total bill: Fuel for mobility (planes, trains, and automobiles), heating (coal, diesel, and natural gas powered) and poly-vinyls (plastic bags, bottles, and Apple iPhones). The world runs on fossil fuels, and the Westphalian system, with its main pillar of the “exclusivity of sovereignty” abets all the countries in doing so. This complicity is universal and beyond question. The science behind climate change, leading to global warming, is incontrovertible. The process of burning fossil fuels like oil and coal release carbon dioxide which amplifies the impact of the greenhouse effect as populations, in particular in developing countries, grow. People didn’t cause the greenhouse effect by using fossil fuels: it’s a natural process in which gasses released in the atmosphere trap the sun’s heat and cause warming. Without this effect, the Earth would be much colder and, perhaps, not nearly as hospitable to live on. Nonetheless, oil, coal, and natural gas are simply too crucial to our existence to simply remove them and are here to stay. As BP’s Bernard Looney, chief executive of the energy giant’s upstream division, puts it, “[I]n almost every scenario – oil and gas together are forecast to represent greater than 40% of the energy mix in 2040”. Keep in mind that as world population densities grow, so do the overall numbers of use, even though actual or gross percentages used may decline. That is a real problem. There is no “knocking about the bushes” with this issue. The year 2017, was the hottest recorded year in human history since the Industrial Age began in the early 1850s, and with 2019 now recently ranked as the second hottest year in recorded history. As of this writing, 400 ppm of CO2 has already been recorded as average for 2017, with 2018 closely behind. These are all factual issues. The world cannot be allowed to burn carbon banks (the planets yet unused stores of oil, gas, and coal reserves that are still in the ground) unmitigated and without consequence. Yet, that is what is exactly continuing to happen, and all country’s economies are betting on it. For example, consider the much publicized economic joy a nation receives when a new deposit of oil is found. Renewables are an emerging technology, less than 10% of worlds energy usage at best, and far too costly for developing countries despite the public relations campaigns by vendors. Further, renewables are not able to provide the consistent baseload of power that are guaranteed with fossil fuels (Fig. 2.1). There is also no sense in rehashing all the technical climate change issues that have been passed on or ignored by respective politicians…everywhere. The problems with global warming and its causation are now well understood by everyone, including fossil-fuel companies and even world militaries. It is no longer disputable science, but indisputable reality. Bill McKibben’s 2012 seminal article “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” presciently displays the climate change problem in very good layspeak, his yardsticks (350 ppm, 2 degrees Celcius, 565 gigatons, etc.) and the repercussions of inaction are quite clear. Simply too much carbon burning overwhelms the planets natural capacity for CO2 absorption. While the science is indisputable, the economics not so much. As with pouring more and more sugar into a glass of hot water in that an overload eventually will not dissolve, a continuing buildup of CO2 expands in the atmosphere, distorting the earth’s natural absorption and cooling processes, and wreaking havoc with weather patterns. The science, again, is indisputable, yet the fossil fuel band plays on. The emotional appeals featuring polar bears, melting Alpine glaciers, submerged islands in the Pacific, or flooded New York City streets are well meaning, but the facts are already registered. It is politicians locked in their Westphalian systems of power and money refusing to act in unison. Action will also require wholesale changes in everyone’s energy consumption. Simply put, we’re not there yet. There is no sense in discussing renewables ad nauseum either, because their front-end costs, without large subsidies are simply too expensive for most of the developing world to power their grids. Coal is cheaper and plentiful, as is natural gas, which is also a fossil fuel, despite politically correct energy markets presenting it as a ‘transition energy’ source, between fossil fuels and renewables. Developing countries will use their Westphalian exclusivity to default every time, as they have before, and will continue to do so. To put this into perspective, consider global events: Ford Motor company is announcing record sales of SUVs in the US, Toyota is expanding into Africa, China is going to bring several hundred coal-fired plants online in the next 20 years, and in all Asia as part of its financing in its new “Asian Infrastructure Development Bank”, Indonesia is expanding huge airports to accommodate more traveler’s in its huge archipelago, Exxon discovers a huge oil field off Guyana’s coast, Brasil hopes that its new “pre-salt” deep sea oil strike developed with the Norwegian oil giant, Statoil will power its corrupt and weak economy ahead, BP has found new oil in the Atlantic off North Africa, Argentina seeks to develop shale oil in the west of its country, the Kurds in Northern Iraq hope to form a new nation financed with access to vast oil deposits, South Africa wants to turn its vast coal reserves into synthetic oil to reduce imports, Australia hopes to regain economic traction when the price of commodity resources (i.e., coal) allow it to begin profitable exporting again, Canada and its leader, Justin Trudeau, hopes to monetize the tarsands in Alberta for a more prosperous nation. Kazakhstan seeks to be the oil conduit between Europe and China. Saudi Arabia privatizes part of its behemoth Saudi Aramco to finance economic diversification, but still leaves the House of Saud firmly in power. Nigeria looks for better social harmony once oil prices rebound. It becomes all about fossil fuels. The US Permian Basin in Texas seeks new shale discoveries. Venezuela hopes to use its oil reserves to salvage its economy again once Maduro goes. Laos, Burma and Cambodia, after years of war and calamity seek exploration in their hinterlands for undiscovered oil and gas deposits. Trade deals such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), United States– Mexico–Canada Free Trade Agreement (USMCA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) mention little if anything about climate change, and even have clauses that allow corporations to sue the governments of the host countries if laws are later passed that impact their businesses reliance on fossil fuels, such as the Canadian corporation TransCanada suing the US over rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline under then-President Barrack Obama in 2014. Hopes, dreams, economies, investments and politics of so many Westphalian nations are pinned on oil and gas, which in turn becomes the linchpin of all Westphalian finance, as we will discuss later, even named inasmuch in the form of ‘sovereign bonds’. The fossilfuel list goes on and on. Does the reader really get the picture? This is a hopeless addiction.