Multi-national politics often result in countries not cooperating with one another. One would expect that concerns such as the implementation of environmental policies in governments would especially be overlooked in the means of capitalism or socialism. However, such is not the case for Europe, as Who Rules the Earth? presents (Steinberg, 2015). Because of the Treaty of Rome, European nations were forced to work together. The treaty’s aim was “to approximate national economic policies, and to develop common policies” (175). Therefore economic harmony could be achieved by a system which monitors multinational ensuring the efficiency of the markets. Meaning, a lack of excess production of goods, specifically agriculture. Green parties, who were suspicious of centralized power, subsequently became very popular, especially in Germany. Their motto was “Neither Left nor Right, but Forward.” In 1986, the Green party scored 5.6% of the German vote (176). This garnering of popularity would influence the environmental laws standardized in the coming formation of the European Union in 1992. Steinberg explains that EU environmental laws became so rigorous throughout the entire continent because of a few reasons. One reason was because the EU’s policy required that all member-states and joining member-states must fully change domestic laws to adopt all of the EU’s policies (181). The amalgamation of a multitude of strict environmental policies did not come necessarily from the EU itself, but rather stemmed from many different applications of individual state practices and or laws. For instance, the rules pollution from automobiles and trucks came from ambitious standards formed in the Netherlands (181). This cultivation of these many EU laws — not just environmental, but also economic laws and others — is the result of a process that multiple individual nations contributed to. The EU works not just as a bureaucratic law enforcer, among other things, but also as an upholding symbol of multiple nation’s values, creating a whole; which is conducted in the means of bettering the entire union as a whole. I would assume that this process that Steinberg lays out Leigh Phillips would agree with, in the realm of implementing environmental laws amongst many acting nations.
Leigh Phillips states that he is pro-socialist, and pro the institutionalization of the creation of environmental policies through mass systems such as the state (Phillips, 2015). In a chapter called Locally-Woven Organic Carrot-Pants, Phillips slanders Naomi Klein’s fear of the “big-and-international,” and a lack of insight to how the “big-and-international” systems actually work (107). There are two other comments that define Klein’s view of environmental politics more articulately. Phillips says of Klein that “she most often argues that small scale local energy co-ops are absolutely the solution!” What Klein finds interesting about the rise of the renewable energy movement in Germany “is that it is the small-scale, decentralized, cooperatively-owned aspect of the transition that is fastest-spreading, that has people most excited” (107). While Klein might have sided with the early European Green parties of the 1980s which helped eventually form the EU’s strict energy-use policies, she does not agree with the mass “de-localized” version of her same initiative, which Phillips does. Phillips believes that what we should really be aiming for is the overall aggregate contribution a policy(ies) makes to the decarbonization of our economy — something a local scale project cannot do. He says “Size or scale should not be factors,” and that a country of a larger size should be able to be as democratic as one of smaller size (112). Phillips, perhaps then, would look to the Kyoto Protocol as a possible viable solution to the world’s carbon pollution issues.
Mike Hulme, in his book Why We Disagree About Climate Change (Hulme, 2009), describes climate first as the “outworking of a fully interconnected global physical system and, second, human modification of the global atmosphere was changing this system to yield new and warmer climates” (289). Hence, the Anthropocene Era. In order to promulgate the Kyoto Protocol, an active nation-state international restriction of carbons and other emissions, a few other treaties have had to been signed. The pioneering form of this global environmental governance was the Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, which came in Vienna, 1985. This treaty has operated as the framework through which ozone depleting material has been incrementally eliminated from the global industrial economy (290). Following this, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change came into existence in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit. Finally, five years later, the Kyoto Protocol was agreed upon five years later in 1997. The reason this was important because the protocol required industrialized nations to reduce aggregate greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 per cent by the period 2008-12 (290). The way that the Kyoto Protocol was formed can be categorized as a certain type of thought; vertical. This type of thought, coined by Steinberg, came from the realization of smaller-scale policies promulgated into larger-scale laws. How the EU’s strict pollution regulating laws have formed and how the Kyoto Protocol has been built were dependent on incrementalist processes that have had to rely on each other as stepping stones to garner a fuller structure. Steinberg quotes that, “As often as not, greater coordination has the effect of streamlining dozens of national policies into a smaller and more coherent set of guidelines” (Steinberg, 2015). Let it be shown further that Leigh Phillips would not have been able to clearly articulate his argument for how policies should be implemented, if Naomi Klein had not laid her argument out for him to dissect. Of course if a different person other than Klein had taken that same stance, Phillips would have been able to take the same stance. But someone or something had need to be there nonetheless in order for Phillips to state his stance. Furthermore, one can say that Klein’s views of local cooperative energy consumption can be harnessed and made institutionalized by Phillips, such as the way the EU harnesses its nation-state’s ideas and policies. All ideas here, Phillips, the Kyoto Protocol, the EU’s implementation of policies, rely on previous or other conflicting ideas in order to “streamline” policies or ideas into a “coherent set of guidelines.” It is Steinberg’s idea of thinking vertically that ultimately connects all three topics covered in this reflection.
Works Cited:
Hulme, Mike. Why We Disagree about Climate Change : Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Phillips, Leigh. Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-porn Addicts : A Defence of Growth, Progress, Industry and Stuff. Winchester, UK ; Washington, USA: Zero Books, 2015.
Steinberg, Paul F. Who Rules the Earth? : How Social Rules Shape Our Planet and Our Lives. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015.
www.flickr.com/photos/lcoutdoors/33136166982/in/album-72157681021811786/