Globalized ecological risks may have become an increasingly important component in the landscape of post-Cold War geopolitics but they are still not accorded the legitimacy of other foreign policy concerns, such as protecting sovereign borders from rogue states, migrants and transnational crime networks. In one of his final speeches as President, Bill Clinton declared that the risk of climate change would make the world a ‘very different place. There will be more extreme weather events. There will be more people displaced. It will become virtually impossible in some places to have a sustainable economy. This is a big deal.’

However, it is widely held that the Clinton administration made little progress over the ecological issues that have become important symbols of global politics since the Rio Earth summit in 1992. And this was an administration that seemed to have some ‘green’ credentials: Al Gore had written about the threat of climate change in Earth in the Balance. Bill Clinton, who argued that the divide between international and domestic politics was collapsing, was well versed in the language of ‘global responsibility’ for the biosphere, talking about the moral responsibility that consumers and citizens have for future generations. But the language of ecopolitical correctness failed to mask the disappointment that many environmentalists felt in 1997 when diplomats and politicians met in Kyoto to flesh out a protocol that could manage the risk of global climate changes.

Leaving aside debates over sinks and carbon trading, the protocol is potentially a step in the right direction, although the problems of creating a global regime is leading some states to argue that ‘going it alone’ is the only viable strategy for alternative modes of sustainable economic development. At the same time, the scope of the Kyoto protocol is seen by many scientists and environmentalists as an insufficient response to an issue that could have damaging implications for human and non-human existence around the planet: contra the neoliberal economists who argue that taking action is too costly, climate change could be catastrophic from the perspective of supposedly rational ‘cost-benefit’ analysis and free market economics: migration to the ‘safe’ zones could occur on a scale never seen before: we could witness humanitarian disasters that make the floods and famines of recent years seem relatively tame. 

There may well be accelerations in the climatic changes that exceed our ability to adapt to them, finding us unable to develop a technological ‘fix’: a common argument deployed by Promethean free marketers is that a growing global economy will have the financial resources to deal with global (un)natural disasters, arguing that the industries that are shaping the ‘informational’ economy of the 21^st century do not rely on the weather. And there are still powerful voices suggesting that the costs involved in creating a sustainable planet are too vast compared to the ecological ‘gains’ that would be made.

To be sure, the ‘uncertain’ risk of climate change may have been overstated. In August 2000, The Global Climate Change, one of the ‘front groups’ set up by the fossil fuel industry to play down fears of anthropogenic climate change, drew attention to the fact that one of the NASA scientists that had warned the world about global warming in the late 1980s now believed that he had placed too much emphasis on the burning of fossil fuels (www.globalclimate.org). But these perspectives are becoming increasingly marginal in the broader debate. As the sociologist Ulrich Beck has argued, the main question with issues such as climate change is ‘how to take decisions under conditions of manufactured uncertainty, where not only is the knowledge base incomplete, but more and better knowledge often means more uncertainty’ (Beck 1999, p.6).

The Clinton administration was reluctant to make any bold moves in this condition of uncertainty, preferring to deploy the rhetoric and symbols of ecopolitical correctness rather than make a concerted effort to push ecologically sustainable policy initiatives: Clinton learned quickly that ‘triangulation’ was more important than the ecological ‘vision thing.’ Tim Wirth, one of the main players on environmental policy in the administration, left shortly after the Kyoto negotiations to work for a body set up Ted Turner, irritated at the influence that economists such as Lawrence Summers were having on Clinton’s environmental policies. Gore, and other Democrat contenders for the presidency, had to balance their green views alongside the need to get organized labor on board for the race in 2000. One of the most significant policy steps the administration took was attempting to enlarge the space of the global economy by allowing China into the World Trade Organization, a move that was conditional on some ecologically destructive trade deals.

The presidency is constrained by the role of other bodies in the decision making process. Clinton had to deal with a Senate that was not willing to let the President dictate the global agenda. This was made more acute by the fact that Clinton’s agenda – a vague notion of smart growth - was not about defending the world from the phantom menace of communism but, rather, was about enlarging the space of the global economy, dealing with ‘Third Way’ issues of global welfare and keeping supposedly rogue states in check. But just as insurance companies mobilized against Hilary and co in the first term, the interests of the fossil fuel lobby were quick to mobilize opposition to the climate issue, weak as the policy objectives were. At the time of the Rio Earth Summit the job of industry ‘front groups’ was made easier by the fact that the Bush administration was sympathetic to their cause. Front groups such as the Global Climate Coalition (representing Exxon, Chrysler, and Shell, among others) articulated the view that not only was the science behind climate change too uncertain to warrant action, environmental policies could have dire implications for economic security of Americans. Jobs would be sent to developing countries where restrictions were not so tough: environmentalists were now replacing the communist threat. There was a spectre haunting America, the spectre of environmentalism.

So when Clinton tentatively began to outline his response to the risk of climate change, the interests of the fossil fuel economy swung into action, galvanizing support in the Senate, waging a huge media campaign against the administration. The media campaign tapped into one of the major political resources of the 1990s: the fear of Big Government interfering in the natural motions of the market. Groups such as the Global Climate Coalition and the Committee to Preserve Sovereignty tapped into the fear that the ‘cosmopolitan’ bureaucrats in Washington were devising regulatory policies that would make job insecurity even worse in the U.S. And the United Nations, they argued, would begin to run the U.S. economy: an editorial on the Global Climate Coalition website declared that ‘for the first time in history, the United States would allow a foreign body dominated by developing countries to restrict and control the economy of the United States. UN bureaucrats would decide where business would invest, where jobs will be developed. U.S. Sovereignty has been surrendered.’ 

The dominant narrative in these representations works something like this: the forces of rationality and progress are represented by those who support increased investment in military technology (the Son of Star Wars), deregulation and a rejection of the politics of ‘globalization’ and humanitarian intervention. Organizations interested in environmental issues are the destructive forces of liberalism, irrationalism and socialism, intent on stifling prosperity and consumer freedom through bureaucracy and regulation. The climate issue was placed firmly within the political imaginary of the Cold War: to be ‘for’ Kyoto was to be against those who had defended America against the ‘evil empire.’ 

Chuck Hagel, a senator who played an important role in constructing opposition to the Kyoto protocol, suggested that: ‘So are we really talking about subjecting our national security interests and our national defense to unknown environmental quests? I don’t think that is smart. I don’t think the American people want this body of policy makers to do that (Senate Speech October 3 1997). An ad by COMPASS declared that the ‘treaty cedes America’s leadership role in the world today. We would still be living with the nuclear nightmare if previous administrations had pursued arms control negotiations with the Soviets in the same way the climate change negotiations have been conducted by the Clinton administration. Stop this treaty process now.’ The ad is framed as a letter to the President: one of the thirteen signatures is from Dick Cheney.

So now Bush Jr. and Cheney have made it (with the help of the Supreme Court) to the White House on a platform that tapped into anxieties about big government intervening in the smooth motions of the economy and the ‘sovereignty’ issues that were undermining the unity, security and sovereignty of the United States. Bush made a considerable effort to present himself as someone who was not connected to the moral corruption of the Washington bureaucracy, a bureaucracy that’s liberalism, immorality and internationalism was weakening the vitality of the body politic. Bush presented himself as a man who, even when the most important political events were unfolding with dramatic speed, would rather spend time relaxing on the family ranch reading baseball magazines: he was a ‘real’ American who would go to Washington as an ‘outsider’ who could defend America from the dangers of the uncertain new world disorder. 

Bush declared on his website that he ‘opposes the Kyoto Protocol’ and he has now abandoned plans to cooperate with other states over the implementation of the Protocol, a move that may force other states to form alternative coalitions to cultivate a ‘global’ environmental agenda. He explained his actions in this way: ‘We will not do anything that harms our economy, because first things first are the people who live in America.’ Cheney, one of Bush’s many Cold Warriors, is well connected to the fossil fuel economy, having made his fortune from supplying it with machinery. Gale Norton was appointed interior secretary, someone who promotes a ‘wise use’ agenda that involves slashing environmental regulations. In the first 60 days of the administration massive cuts in energy efficiency programs were proposed and there has been an effort to open the Alaskan National Wildlife Artic Refuge for oil drilling.

At the same time, certain sectors of the environmental movement have been heralding the collapse of the united front posed by Exxon, Shell, and BP: BP now stands for Beyond Petroleum; there has been an exodus from organizations such as the Global Climate Coalition as companies work to refine their images as responsible corporations. The Coalition’s has replaced the plain web design of the 1990s with images of happy families enjoying the countryside, enjoying the compassionate conservatism of the new regime. Plans for sustainable development become vital components of corporate strategy; yet the huge investment in the fossil fuel economy does not change speed.

The Clinton years provoked a fight with organizations like the Global Climate Coalition. It was a stark example of the lengths that economic interests will go to keep irrational processes moving along. The next few years will see an administration at ‘one’ with corporations such as Exxon; the isolationist stance of the administration makes it appear unlikely that ‘soft’ geopolitical issues will be pushed onto a dynamic global agenda. But governments can no longer promise their citizens the protection of sovereignty, the security that can be afforded by territorial borders. In a period of deterritorialized risks, risks that traverse the borders of the state with the greatest of ease, politicians turn to risks that provide them with symbols of power, order and control. The repressive strategies and language circulating around the issue of migration in Europe and the United States is symptomatic of this practice: detention camps and intensified border patrols provide the illusion that something is being done to fight the multitude of risks that create a sense of insecurity and uncertainty. 

According to Zygmunt Bauman, governments can ‘unload at least part of the accumulated anxiety (and even profit from it electorally) by demonstrating their energy and determination in the war against foreign job-seekers and other alien, gate-crashers, intruders into once clean and quiet, orderly and familiar, native backyards.’ In terms of the vast budgets allocated to securing the developed world from external threats, military risks are still seen as the only legitimate source of insecurity, the logic of Cold War realpolitik having reanimated itself (with China as the evil empire) in the corridors of the Whitehouse, making the oval office into a set from a foreign policy Night of the Living Dead. 

As we saw with Tony Blair’s management of the petrol resistance, politicians are unwilling to put forward strong cases for ecologically sustainable development strategies. But democratic debate, debate not shaped by the spinning and misinformation campaigns of front groups and short term concerns of political parties, is needed around the planet if we are to create a less insecure future: the promises of security offered to us in the name of progress and rationality are wearing thin. 

This dialogue will need to explore the possibility of radically different ways of organizing the global modes of production and consumption that structure everyday life in ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ worlds; this task will require us to reject the ecologically destructive urban sprawl that shapes our lifeworlds, pushing us to imagine, as Richard Sennett and David Harvey have done, new built environments to live in, environments that create stronger bonds of human sociality through their rejection of sedative consumerism. With Bush Mark II in the control seat it looks like valuable time is going to be wasted on retro-Cold War rhetoric about the green menace.

Zygmunt Bauman, In Search of Politics, Cambridge: Polity, 1999

Ulrich Beck, World Risk Society, Cambridge: Polity, 1999

David Harvey, Spaces of Hope, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000

Timothy Luke, Capitalism, Democracy and Ecology: Departing from Marx, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999

Richard Sennet, The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life, London: Faber and Faber, 1996

Mark Lacy, International Relations, University of Sussex, England mark_lacy73@hotmail.com