Book Review: Climate Change and The Nation State by Anatol Lievin
Any realistic plan to mitigate against ecological harms requires distinct limits and borders
This interesting polemic is a mixed bag. I became aware of it after the author was cited in an article over at Unherd. Some of my favourite authors have contributed to that website (Michel Houellebecq, Paul Kingsnorth, John Gray etc) and the central idea to this book is similarly unorthodox. Lievin unfashionably posits the importance of the nation state in battling the existential threat of climate change.
The reasons for this are manifold; globalist, consumerist individualism doesn’t lend itself to a concerted unified effort in the same way as a homogenous national identity, i.e. the World War II home effort. The citizens are dependent on the nation state for their protection and ultimate survival.
Borders and limits are necessary if any kind of standards or examples are to be set for other nations to follow. A protective love for your local land and region, far from being the negative slur that “NIMBYism” frames it as then, is essential to any true form of conservation.
The author gives us a global state of the nations report, highlighting various battles for clean water, drought, wars over resources, ethnic strife etc. Many multicultural nations are already on the verge of civil war and struggling with the growing, distinct Islamic culture in their midst, as per Russia, Myanmar, China, India et al. Can the nations remain strong and reduce their impacts as they also suffer internal, localised competition for finite resources?
Lieven identifies threats coming from the huge, ever growing human population, climate induced migration (He references Garrett Hardin’s Lifeboat ethics) and atomised nations within nations as cultural, interest groups clash between their various enclaves.
Huge swathes of people (often the conservative voting majority) are villainised by divisive politics, often labeled as “deplorables” and are made unwelcome in the environmental movement. This schism often results in a left vs right divide on ecological concerns rather than the necessary united, all-hands-on-deck approach.
No region will ever need to tackle its own population problems if other nations continue to absorb the overflow. Think of the Catholic Philippines with its taboos over contraception and abortions; the displaced are treated abominably as they are exploited globally as cheap labour.
Many nations have done a good job in bringing down their Total Fertility Rate below replacement levels and one of those, England is already the most densely populated large country in Europe. Yet the UK, Finland etc are attributing 90% of their population growth to immigration.
In the context of climate change, the migratory routes invariably head towards the nations with the highest rates of consumption and as a double whammy, import culturally higher fertility rates.
All this as it has just been announced that a record one million people were given British visas in the last year. Brexit voters were expecting less population growth, less exacerbation of the housing crisis and the building on fields and green spaces, less congestion on the roads, less over subscription for NHS treatments etc and Boris Johnson buoyed them on with his 2016 assertion that “To add a city the size of Newcastle to the UK every year . . . let me put it this way, it’s too high to do without consent.” He even highlighted overpopulation as the greatest issue in the past.
Japan is praised for resisting immigration as a Ponzi scheme response to lowered fertility rates. Rather it should embrace its necessary degrowth as an overpopulated, high consuming nation. He also highlights the looming issue that is the rise of our dependence on Artificial Intelligence and automation in replacing many industries. This is set to open up issues of Universal Basic Income and increased free time.
There is a warning against the anarchy of revolution (which as per The Arab Spring rarely leads to improved outcomes) and that there are no social justice issues on a dead or dying planet is wisely highlighted. Human rights are of course rarely respected in chaotic zones of conflict. As such he wishes for identity politics to be put to one side. He contends that the rhetoric doesn’t gain a single new vote and instead just intensifies divisions at a time when a new wartime effort in cohesion is required.
Similarly he has contempt for the trifling concerns of growth based economists and all the various political issues that currently take priority over climate change. He insists that any rich elites must be made to pay their taxes to maintain the required trust in the nation and its institutions. Doing away with an “Us Vs Them” mentality is echoed at every stage as he advocates that our instinctually tribal species should quickly become unified under civic-nationalism.
That said his focus is a tad myopic as we have a myriad of predicaments beyond climate-change, many of them also ecological. The sixth great extinction, groundwater depletion, ever earlier overshoot of resources, vanishing fertile topsoil etc.
He is also often fixated on techno fixes as the answer. The Michael Moore/Jeff Gibbs film Planet Of The Humans alongside other critics show a lot of the limitations to this obsession with greenhouse gases alone. At times Lieven posits the naïve belief that destructive mining and factory made industrial products can be the answer rather than merely a small part of an urgent degrowth trend in human activity and numbers.
There are also some strange tangents to be found. He repeatedly calls Brexit a disaster but never explains why. Surely this book is calling for greater independence and self governance rather than submission to large, sprawling economic trading power?
He also suggests the breeding away of ethnicity as some kind of unifying solution. Not likely to happen anytime soon, nor would it be popular with already embattled and diminished tribes in the Amazon who assert their distinct right to exist. On which topic he does at least recognise that Europeans should be allowed to feel no less bonded to their homelands than any other indigenous culture.
In short I feel comprehensive reviews (such as this one) might be enough for many laymen but I still give Anatol Lieven extra credit for his bravery in tackling a neglected and unpopular issue.
