Climate Politics, Populism, and the Meaning of Cosmopolitanism

• In Event: Untangling the Mess: The Promise and Peril of Eco-Progressive Politics

Abstract

We are now said to be living in a “populist moment,” and there is a vast literature in political theory and empirical political science that aims to investigate and contest the character of populism in this period. Yet until very recently, the relation of populism to environmental concerns in general and climate change action in particular has been viewed as peripheral. That is now beginning to change. In a study of the linkages between populists and climate change politics, Matthew Lockwood has argued that reaction to climate change policy has become integral to the ideology of right-wing populism in many countries, because it has become symbolic of the central populist antagonism between “the people” and a cosmopolitan elite (Lockwood 2018). By contrast, Amanda Machin has noted that many right-wing populists embrace local and national environmental concerns (Machin and Wagener 2019). On the left, we find growing, transnational climate justice organizing that has often been framed as a “people’s” movement and that some have labeled climate populism (Bosworth 2020a; 2020b). Climate justice has also been key to a new framework for more locally and nationally-centered climate change action, including the Green New Deal. Thus, it may be said that both some of the greatest dangers and some of the most hopeful possibilities for meaningful action to address runaway climate change are bound up in its relation to populism.

Critical theorist Simon Tormey has characterized populism as “democracy’s Pharmakon” (Tormey 2018). Drawing insight from Derrida, he argues that it can best be understood as both a cure and a poison for what ails liberal democratic societies; as such he offers one of the few interpretations of our populist moment that allows us to make sense, simultaneously, of both danger and possibility. In the larger project of which this paper is a part, I explore several dimensions of both danger and possibility in linking populism with climate politics. The particular dimension that is the focus of this paper is the meaning of cosmopolitanism.

Cosmopolitanism can convey many different meanings. As a first cut, it appears that cosmopolitanism can connote an affect or perceived affect of actors, or it can be reflected in the material lifestyle, choices, or opportunities available to actors. It can reflect a philosophical commitment to equal respect and universalism or a characterization of often-remote processes of global governance. When cosmopolitanism is attacked by populists discussing climate change on either the left or right, to what extent is it the association of climate leaders (activists, scientists, and policymakers) with a rootless, cosmopolitan elite that generates animosity and is therefore politically potent? To what extent is the resonance centered, instead, upon a perceived loss of nation-state sovereignty in the face of a global challenge? Cities and localities have become increasingly central to climate change proposals and action (Bulkeley 2021). Does this ‘relocalization’ address the critique of populists? Does such local action itself represent a form of non-cosmopolitan populism? I aim to unpack the meaning and resonance of cosmopolitanism in discourse at the intersection of climate action and populism, in order to gain greater purchase on these questions and to enable a deeper understanding and more effective navigation of both the dangers and possibilities that a climate populism might offer.

References:
Bosworth, Kai. 2020a. “Climate Populism & Its Limits.” Progressive International. April 12, 2020. https://progressive.international/blueprint/b0e56b61-d2b9-4f97-8e2e-a2e9f3edef50-kai-bosworth-climate-populism-its-limits/en.
———. 2020b. “The People’s Climate March: Environmental Populism as Political Genre.” Political Geography 83 (November): 102281. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102281.
Bulkeley, Harriet. 2021. “Climate Changed Urban Futures: Environmental Politics in the Anthropocene City.” Environmental Politics 30 (1). https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2021.1880713.
Lockwood, Matthew. 2018. “Right-Wing Populism and the Climate Change Agenda: Exploring the Linkages.” Environmental Politics 27 (4): 712–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2018.1458411.
Machin, Amanda, and Oliver Wagener. 2019. “The Nature of Green Populism?” Green European Journal, February. https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/the-nature-of-green-populism/.
Tormey, Simon. 2018. “Populism: Democracy’s Pharmakon?” Policy Studies 39 (3): 260–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2018.1475638.

Author

• John M. Meyer, Humboldt State University