Climate geopolitics: Securing the Global Economy

Simon Dalby | International Politics | 2015

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.

Citation: Dalby, Simon. “Climate geopolitics: Securing the Global Economy.” International Politics 52, no. 4  (2015): 426–444.