Description
Drawing on critical political economy, this paper examines how, since 2018, the technocratic approach to climate governance in the UK has fallen into a deep crisis. Since 2018, there has been a major re-politicisation of climate governance after the rise of Extinction Rebellion. In response, the Conservative Party initially worked to secure the legitimacy of the technocratic framework by taking on the Climate Change Committee’s guidance for a 2050 net zero target and adopting a more transformative approach to climate governance. However, they have failed to translate this increased ambition into a coherent programme of accumulation by decarbonisation, leading to warnings by the Climate Change Committee that their policy packages are inadequate. In turn, the limits of their climate policy have fed into their rising illiberalism as they’ve ignored successful legal challenges that have highlighted the inadequacy of their policy, and increasing authoritarianism, as they’ve responded to ongoing pressure from the climate movement by weakening protest rights. I conclude by arguing that this deep crisis suggests that this system of technocratic climate governance has become exhausted.
