Thread by @paologerbaudo

While we wait for release of new IPCC report it is ever more apparent that to avert climate disaster we need massive state interventionism, the like of which we have not experienced for decades, and we are not culturally/psychologically prepared for. /thread

1/ For a long time climate policy discourse was framed either as changes in individual consumption patterns or local areas (do you remember transition towns?) or multilateralism and action at global level. "Think global act local" or "planetary solutions to planetary problems".

2/ Fact that changes in individual consumption patterns is only an illusion (for how it may give a little help) has already been demolished (at least in the activist milieu). But idea that only planetary solutions will deliver us from global problems is more stubborn.

3/ Obviously you need to have global target and coordination among governments. But we need to accept that political power is not planetary (I know obvious, but not for some), and completely coordinated international solution is not realistic. Each country has to have a plan.

4/ Having a plan includes both mitigation (reduce emission) and adaptation (what you do for change in climate that is already been locked in). Each country has idiosyncratic needs at both levels: presence of alternative energy sources (wind and/or sun), prevalence of threats etc.

5/ Plan for Greece cannot be the same for Canada and you cannot expect that the solution for Greece or Canada will just come from international summits where targets are agreed. Targets often look like numerical anxiety-reduction exercises. You need plans, national plans.

6/ Plans and planning are in fact making a comeback in climate policy. Think about Johnson's ban on non-electric cars from 2030 & Biden's 50% electric car target by same year. Regardless of whether these are credible or hypocritical, sufficient or insufficient planning is back.

7/ Mostly this resembles "indicative" rather than "mandatory" planning, with the state setting rules for market rather than intervening directly in production. Yet, this clearly goes against neoliberal blueprint of self-regulating market.

8/ This is why many free-market economists are appalled even by these moderate and insufficient measures. And you can be sure also many citizens will be. We come from decades when it was assumed state should not meddle in your investment/consumption decisions. Now it has to.

9/ This leads to question of psychological/political preparation to this. We have seen during the pandemic how anti-contagion control (lockdowns, masks, vaccination) were deeply resented by sections of the public. You can expect this in redoubled form for climate policy.

10/ Only solution is ensuring these forms of state control are *democratic* rather than *technocratic*. Not enough to tell the public "we need to do this because experts say this"; rather "we need to do this bc we have collectively decided this availing ourselves of best science"

11/ This speaks more generally to challenges of neo-statism I discuss in 'The Great Recoil'. State as strong only as society/democracy is. Real risk is a technocratic statism engendering popular "hesitancy" which in turn only feeds authoritarianism (ecofascism) down the road.

12/ All in all, we can expect climate policy to be gigantic testing ground for our transition away from free-market dogma and that new political antagonisms on uses of the state will emerge at this level. Only *democratic planning* can deliver us from opposite evils.