Climate Trump and future of NetZero

By withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and effectively removing any environmental constraints to businesses exploiting energy resources, Trump is safeguarding the United States as the global hegemonic oil and gas producer, ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia.  The development of oil and gas resources in Alaska means that the United States can export across the Pacific to Japan, South Korea and other East Asia energy importers, competing directly with Middle East oil and gas which must be shipped via the Malacca Straits.  

The geopolitics of climate warming is ultimately about which governance model will pay and manage the transition to NetZero. Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright’s pathbreaking 2019 book, “Climate Leviathan:  A Political Theory of our Planetary Future”, saw four political models to deliver NetZero. These are “Climate Leviathan, Climate Mao, Climate Behemoth, and Climate X.”  Climate Leviathan envisages the present capitalist system that tries to overcome (unsuccessfully) the collective action problem of working together to achieve NetZero. Climate Mao has the same objective, but uses an anti-capitalist order. “Climate Behemoth describes a global arrangement animated by a chauvinistic capitalist and nationalist politics that denies—until it can only denounce—the threat climate change poses to national capitals.” Climate X is a bottom-up movement that is non-capitalist and pursues global climate justice to deliver NetZero.