COVID-19, Climate Change, Norm Crisis, and Size: Examining Relationships

• In Event: Pandemic Effects

Abstract

When COVID-19 reached pandemic stages, it introduced a new element to the global policy area of climate change, and to the liberal international order as an ideology in crisis. The decreases in carbon emissions that suggested an ironic positive outcome for the planet from the pandemic have proved too short-term to be beneficial, and renewable as well as fossil fuel energy sectors are experiencing economic downturn. The mixed response to pandemic-related restrictions by governments and citizens alike has stirred further the debates regarding individual rights versus collective well-being, and global health over economic recovery, all within the context of the prevalent liberal international order facing contesting norms. In addition, COVID-19 has signaled that possibility that certain types of agency may reside best within smaller entities, such as small sovereign countries and autonomous or semi-autonomous regions and localities within larger countries, all of which generally, through citizens’ adherence to strict government policies, have mitigated the incidence and effects of COVID-19 more effectively than their larger counterparts. This paper argues that understanding the potential for a more pluralistic future world order requires an examination of the relationships among the above trends. The countries selected for this examination are Finland, India, and the United States.
Key questions include: (1) Can the obstacles to achieving carbon neutrality be attributed to a breakdown in multilateralism associated with populist and other challenges to the international liberal order, or to the actual difficulty that fossil fuel-producing, fossil fuel-consuming countries have in transitioning to carbon neutrality, or to a combination of normative crisis and basic energy needs? (2) Is the normative component of the liberal international order that stresses multilateralism and integration easier to achieve among smaller sovereign states, and if so, can one attribute this to a stronger normative pull toward such cooperation, or to realization of the need for smaller sovereign states to cooperate in order to survive, or both? (3) Is the autonomy, especially in the area of carbon neutrality, witnessed in regions, states, and localities within large countries such as India and the United States a challenge to the liberal international order, to its opponents, or to both?
Finland, India, and the United States offer a representative cross-section of national and local responses to climate change, including their responses to COVID-19. Together they also offer a combination of countries with regional and global influence that embody regions and localities which have autonomously undertaken initiatives toward carbon neutrality. Finland shows considerable promise in achieving carbon neutrality by its declared target date of 2050 (also the target date for the European Union). Conversely, the policies of India and the United States continue to embody contradictions, as both enthusiastic innovators in renewable energy sources and leading producers and consumers of coal and other fossil fuels. COVID-19 has resulted in a decrease in production and consumption of fossil fuels; however, it has also resulted in a decline in employment opportunities in renewable energy sectors. This pattern raises the question of the most effective approach toward both economic recovery and carbon neutrality. The broader significance of examining the crisis in the liberal international order is to determine the nature of that order’s relationship to the persistence of global problems and their potential solutions. Despite normative confrontations, the liberal international order continues to dictate most global interactions and much foreign policy. Moreover, certain confrontations suggest not as much a desire to dismantle the order, but rather a claim that the order is not working. For example, Finland has emerged as a country whose social policies actually benefit individuals and currently enable their realization of what we call "the American Dream" more than is possible in the United States. This and other paradoxes point to the continued proliferation of small sovereign countries and increased local, state, and regional autonomy within larger countries signifies the need to identify the relationship among the liberal international order normative contestations to that order and size with respect to effective policy initiatives.

Author

• Nancy E. Wright, Pace University