Description
We are living in times of existential threat. The worst scenarios for anthropomorphic climate change see humanity experiencing catastrophic casualties – and possibly extinction – as a consequence of its own emissions. It may be that Earth hits an environmental tipping point, beyond which its further deterioration as a life-support system is unavoidable. At the same time, the resurgent spectre of great-power war risks compressing the pace of climate change from decades to mere seconds: if states’ nuclear arsenals are employed in anger for the first time since 1945, especially if such a conflagration escalated to an all-out retaliatory exchange, other concerns about environmental degradation would be rendered moot. This roundtable will therefore consider whether ‘Earthpolitik’ or ‘Realpolitik’ is a more useful lens through which to view contemporary international politics, with a particular – but not exclusive – focus on calls to ‘green the military’. The implications of such a call are radical: that even the state’s shield against the potential predations of an anarchic system should itself be reformed – and potentially weakened – in hope of lessening future planetary danger, thus representing the subordination of realpolitik to a more expansive Earthpolitik.