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Climate geopolitics: Securing the global economy

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Abstract

Climate has become a matter of security deliberation in the last few years due to the gradually dawning realization that change is happening already and has the potential to severely disrupt states and economies in coming decades. What ‘security’ has been securing is now transforming the material circumstances that made carboniferous capitalism possible in the first place. Now security requires a reformulation of the basics of fossil-fueled capitalism to attempt to overcome the worst aspects of the metabolic rift that underlies modernity, a challenge that at least so far seems more than either state planners or security thinkers are capable of dealing with effectively despite attempts to use market innovations to transform energy systems. International political economy and security studies are thus inextricably linked once the material basis underlying the climate crisis is clearly engaged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, N2L 6C2, Ontario, Canada

    Simon Dalby

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  1. Simon Dalby
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This article was initially presented at the Workshop on Political Economy, State Transformation and the New Security Agenda at Queen Mary University of London, 7–8 March 2013.

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Dalby, S. Climate geopolitics: Securing the global economy. Int Polit 52, 426–444 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2015.3

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