In Who Rules the Earth by Paul Steinberg, the question of governments, their effects, how best to act on them, with them, and around them comes (predictably) to the center stage. One of the important messages I understood from the text specifically is the role of governments in global life and for the average citizen. On a global scale, “governments literally shape the contours of our world” (Steinberg 2015, 133). Though it might seem like distant regulations no effect on countries on the other side of the planet, the local decisions of one government can have a nearly immediate impact on others. Governments’ decisions about privatization among citizens and companies are one such example of local decisions affected other continents. In my previous post, I discuss this more extensively: see here. Their decisions about whether to use the market as a means of initiating change are also critical. The market has a huge potential in capitalism to incentivize profit-seeking corporations into working towards more sustainable methods of production while remaining economically viable (Steinberg 2015). The economics behind cap-and-trade is a good instance of this, where the government sells permits for substance output, and the market buys the permits, dispersing them so that money is produced by making less of the offensive material. This appeals to many more minds than a single-size regulation which seemingly has no economic benefit (Steinberg 2015). Intergovernmental actors also play an influential role in environmental action. Some, such as the EU, are successful examples of the vertical thinking I mentioned above. Though the problem with intergovernmental policies and treaties is that they lack raw enforcement, the EU is big enough that they have become an economic superpower in themselves. It is beneficial to join the EU and follow it’s regulations, and this level of control over membership has given the organization the power to push sustainable policies through governments (Steinberg 2015, 166-7). As a local citizen, it’s best to think of action through governments, small or large, as vertical. Thinking through the cliche of acting locally while considering globally is too narrow-minded, and won’t produce such an innovative response. Vertical thinking allows actors to create solutions that transcend local centrality and through all the levels of organization and government (Steinberg 2015, 163).
A personal application for the summary of this text applies directly to the fact that I’m now a more critical thinker of the dominant political forces on the planet. Especially, I’ve learned how to prioritize my thoughts when confronted with so many different ideas about how environmental policy, or any policies, should be attained. Understanding the value of intergovernmental organizations, when they don’t work, and especially the power of the market in the capitalist context makes environmental politics more concrete. I’ve always thought there was not a reasonable way to make capitalism work positively, however, it turns out that amidst the rampant evils of the market there remains some good to be found: in the power of manipulating the end goal so that it is economically incentivizing. Finally, in my future scholarly work, I feel the concept I’ll carry with me most is the globalized effect of our privatized actions. Decisions the United States makes will ripple through the other global governments, as they would through us. This includes instances as obvious as environmental policies and even something seemingly exclusively local such as how we manage our wildlands and wildlife conservation, as shown by the instance of the warbler’s habitat being affected by governments along its migration patterns.
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