Introduction
What is a Classical Realist analysis of climate ethics and politics? This article seeks to identify the principled beliefs that comprise Classical Realism’s mode of ethical thought and to examine their implications for climate policy.Footnote 1 The aim is not to defend Realist ethics or to demonstrate that Realism satisfactorily explains international climate negotiations.Footnote 2 Instead, I argue that a Realist analysis is useful for two reasons: (1) Realism’s explicitly consequentialist mode of ethical reasoning raises questions concerning the feasibility constraints confronting state decision-makers that have received insufficient attention from normative theorists; and (2) the Realist tradition may contain unexplored resources for promoting more ambitious mitigation. Since many foreign policy decision-makers identify Realism as their primary theoretical reference-point and since Realist logics can justify a wide array of policies, advocates of more ambitious mitigation may benefit drawing on Realist logics when addressing some audiences.Footnote 3
Very few authors have directly considered Realist climate ethics (as opposed to Realist-inspired climate policy),Footnote 4 so the article begins by reviewing the distinct account of international ethics developed by Classical Realists. I focus on Hans Morgenthau because he outlines his ethical framework more extensively than other mid-century ‘progressive Realists’ such as Edward H. Carr or Reinhold Niebuhr.Footnote 5 Contrary to common belief, Morgenthau does not reject the Liberal normative project of minimising violence in political life; instead, he pursues Liberal values within constraints he believes are imposed by international politics.Footnote 6 Consequently, Morgenthau rejects the Kantian separation of politics and ethics that informs Liberal normative theory and argues that ethical reflection must proceed in conjunction with political analysis.Footnote 7 In addition to this consequentialist concern for counterproductive outcomes, Morgenthau also promotes politics’ role as a positive ‘regulative ideal’ capable of peacefully relating plural international values to group outcomes.Footnote 8 Finally, Classical Realism also recognises the potential for ideas and ethics to influence policymaking and conceptions of the ‘national interest’.
Many might question whether Classical Realist ethics, which developed as a reaction to the Cold War’s politics of enmity, can usefully inform climate analysis.Footnote 9 Indeed, many scholars have argued that non-state actors are supplanting states’ central role in climate governance.Footnote 10 While non-state actors are clearly playing an increasing role, what follows rests on the assumption that since states retain key roles intervening in energy markets, pricing emissions, funding innovation and (potentially) shaping the governance of solar geoengineering, they retain significant influence over climate governance. Indeed, despite Realist scholars’ inattention to climate politics, from the earliest days of international climate governance various policies have been justified in Realist terms – the Bush administration’s ‘no-regrets’ policy and the Obama administration’s advocacy of nationally determined mitigation pledges are both examples.Footnote 11 The ubiquity and diversity of ‘Realist’ approaches raise the question of whether more ambitious state policies might also be justified in Realist terms.
The departure point for my exploration of Classical Realism is the dilemma the hydrogen bomb posed for mid-century Realists. I argue this dilemma has significant parallels with climate change as, despite the radically different circumstances, in each case continuation of ‘politics as usual’ creates unacceptable systemic risks. In response to the threat of thermonuclear omnicide, Morgenthau identified principles that apply in situations where only collective action can avert potential catastrophe. Whereas Classical Realists had previously endorsed a narrow prudential ethic and accepted war as an inevitable aspect of international politics, Morgenthau now advocates an expanded conception of national interest.Footnote 12
Analogously, a Classical Realist ethic of climate statecraft may also reframe national interests to promote system-preservation alongside traditional security concerns. Since Classical Realism views safeguarding national security as an ethical duty, and since climate change poses a long-term existential threat, it is arguable that discharging this ethical duty now requires state decision-makers to pursue climate cooperation alongside conventional security. I situate this Classical Realist account of climate ethics within contemporary debates by comparing it with Cosmopolitan accounts of climate justice. Whereas Cosmopolitan ideal theory typically addresses individuals, assumes full compliance with the demands of justice, and identifies end-goals of institutional reform,Footnote 13 Morgenthau’s non-ideal theory takes up quite different questions: it addresses state decision-makers, assumes highly imperfect compliance, and is concerned with feasibility and transition rather than end-states.
The continuing relevance of non-ideal climate ethics is demonstrated by the ever-widening gap between ideal standards of climate justice and actual climate governance. Consider the Paris Agreement and accompanying decision text (the Agreement). Although the Agreement seems likely to be more effective than any previous climate treaty, even full implementation of all Paris pledges would fall far short of averting dangerous warming. The gap between rhetoric and ambition is perhaps best illustrated by the Agreement’s stated aspiration to limit warming to 1.5 °C. In reality, a global emissions budget consistent with 1.5 °C warming will be exhausted several years before the Agreements’ first ‘global stocktake’ of ‘nationally determined contributions’ (NDCs) in 2023.Footnote 14 Moreover, subsequent political developments, of which the election of the Trump administration is most dramatic, suggest that the Agreement might represent a high watermark of cooperation rather than a stepping-stone to a more ideal response. While proponents argue the Agreement is superior to any politically feasible alternative, this justification via the Realist ethic of the ‘lesser evil’ reflects a normative assessment that is far removed from philosophical accounts of climate justice.
My argument unfolds in five stages. The first two sections introduce a Realist analysis of global climate politics and illustrate the potential relevance of Realist logics by outlining the Agreement’s core Realist elements. Sections Three and Four introduce Realist and Cosmopolitan accounts of ethics and map them against Realism’s analysis of feasibility. The final section discusses domestic efforts to overcome resistance to mitigation from vested interests alongside three potential ‘lesser evils’ among more politically feasible policies: prioritisation of breakthrough energy research; mitigation agreements structured to accommodate great power interests; and solar geoengineering (SG).
Classical Realist analysis of climate politics
Before examining Classical Realist ethical thought, we must first review the causal beliefs and feasibility constraints that inform it. Realists view the state, acting in pursuit of the ‘national interest’, as the most significant international actor. Analysis attends most carefully to great powers as these poles structure international order. Classical Realists also view change in the distribution of power as particularly significant, since shifts in relative power can create divergent perceptions, destabilising ambitions and fears.Footnote 15 Finally, Classical Realists hold a distinctive understanding of human nature: people both fear for their security and desire prestige.Footnote 16 While Classical Realists anticipate that structural factors will influence states’ choices, they also recognise that leaders possess agency and that states’ perceptions of their interests vary over time. By recognising that national interests are to some extent historically contingent, Classical Realists differ from Structural Realists, who argue that the content of state interests derives from the security dilemma, and also from those radical Realists (such as Noam Chomsky)Footnote 17 who view the state as acting in defence of elite interests. Classical Realism’s concept of ‘national interest’ has been widely criticised for its indeterminacy. Even Morgenthau, while maintaining that the concept was analytically useful, acknowledged that it lacked clear definition.Footnote 18 Later I argue that this conceptual incoherence creates space for a progressive reinterpretation of Classical Realism.Footnote 19
The primary Realist conclusion concerning climate politics is that the logic of anarchy predisposes great powers to treat climate change as a lower-order issue. Indeed, John Mearsheimer explicitly avoids discussing climate change in order to maintain focus on ‘first-order’ security threats.Footnote 20 Realists may recognise climate change as a potential survival-threat and advocate mitigation measures that do not compromise relative power;Footnote 21 however, believing that the near-term security dilemma structures international politics they anticipate that great power competition will militate against costly forms of mitigation and against compensating developing countries for climate harms. Radical Realists who view the ‘national interest’ as an elite construct will offer an even bleaker analysis if mitigation conflicts with the interests of elite groups that dominate policymaking.Footnote 22
Realist pessimism turns upon a culturally contingent perception of risk and is highly contestable.Footnote 23 For example, many mitigation actions are costless and need not impact state security, domestic demands for climate action could overcome systemic influences, and understandings of ‘national interest’ might give greater weight to climate security. I explore some of these possibilities later. Nevertheless, Realism’s expectation that systemic forces will not pull states toward climate action suggests that national climate policies will primarily reflect domestic politics. This insight is confirmed by the experience of countries like Costa Rica, South Korea and the United Kingdom, whose domestic politics have been conducive to unusually ambitious climate policies, just as much as by the Trump administration’s apparent hostility and by Japan’s turn to fossil fuels and energy efficiency in the wake of the Fukushima disasters.Footnote 24 While a progressive Realist might argue that Japanese and US policies are inconsistent with each country’s ‘national interests’, these examples are consistent with Realism’s expectation that domestic politics will be the primary driver of national climate politics.
A second Realist assumption concerns relative gains among great powers: since great powers seek to maximise their relative power, mitigation measures that are cheap or that deliver valued co-benefits will be most feasible. Further, relative gains are guarded most jealously within rivalrous security relationships. Consider Sevasti-Eleni Vezirgiannidou’s analysis of US Congressional debates over ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Vezirgiannidou argues that US legislators were preoccupied with gains relative to China even though 1997 was a unipolar moment when Kyoto’s modest emission reduction targets were anticipated to deduct only 0.15 per cent from US growth.Footnote 25 Today, China is a potential peer competitor and delay has significantly increased the difficulty of averting dangerous warming.Footnote 26 Since China (29 per cent) and the United States (14 per cent) are together responsible for approximately 43 per cent of CO2 emissions and since these two states also contain a large proportion of global innovation capacity, any effective climate agreement requires both great powers’ participation.Footnote 27 Yet, in the context of order transition,Footnote 28 Realists anticipate that both will prioritise comparative gains over rapid decarbonisation if the two conflict. On the other hand, if it proves possible to decarbonise without surrendering relative gains, or if aggressive mitigation brings relative gains through economic co-benefits, then Realism anticipates competitive, accelerating mitigation. However, a Realist might observe that fossil fuels currently supply over 80 per cent of global energy, so perceptions that there is a connection between mitigation efforts and economic strength are likely to linger.Footnote 29
Great powers are also concerned for gains against regional rivals; thus ambitious international mitigation might align with China’s strategic interests if China anticipates threats to domestic agricultural production and water supply exceed those facing regional rivals like India and Japan. Given the potential for co-benefits, no-regrets mitigation measures, and international coordination, Realism does not rule out the possibility of some cooperation (for example, the 2015 ‘U.S.-China Joint Presidential Statement on Climate Change’ and Paris Agreement). China’s increasing attention to integrating climate mitigation into its environmental and development planning, coupled with its continued insistence on clear distinctions between the international mitigation obligations of developed and developing states is also consistent with Realist analysis. However, Realism suggests that an ambitious international response will be unlikely if mitigation carries significant economic or political costs.Footnote 30
These arguments might appear inconsistent with economic analysis, which suggests both that there is a compelling cost-benefit case for ambitious mitigation, and that the costs of decarbonisation can be relatively trivial. Consider the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report’s summary of economic research into mitigation costs:
Scenarios in which all countries of the world begin mitigation immediately, there is a single global carbon price, and all key technologies are available, have been used as a cost-effective benchmark for estimating macroeconomic mitigation costs. Under these assumptions, mitigation scenarios that reach atmospheric concentrations of about 450 ppm CO2eq by 2100 entail losses in global consumption – not including benefits of reduced climate change as well as co-benefits and adverse side-effects of mitigation – of 1% to 4% (median: 1.7%) in 2030, 2% to 6% (median: 3.4%) in 2050, and 3% to 11% (median: 4.8%) in 2100 relative to consumption in baseline scenarios that grows anywhere from 300% to more than 900% over the century.Footnote 31
These economic assessments assume immediate implementation of politically challenging economic policies (for example, a global carbon price) and widespread utilisation of politically unpopular technologies (carbon capture and sequestration, bioenergy, and nuclear power all play significant roles in the IPCC’s estimates of least-cost mitigation).Footnote 32 Consequently, Realist pessimism is sustained, not be the intrinsic costs of mitigation, but by analysis of the political barriers to economically ideal policy.
Cooperation challenges arise in both national and international politics owing to the uneven distribution of the costs and benefits of mitigation. Since mitigation costs are frontloaded and concentrated in specific sectors, established industrial polluters often create domestic political resistance to ideal economic policies. The uneven international distribution of costs creates further political resistance. Since nearly all emission growth and least-cost mitigation opportunities are now located in the developing world, implementation of international emissions pricing would result in first world capital being invested in developing world mitigation. Economically, this would be highly efficient. However, such a transfer of wealth is unlikely to receive lasting support from voters in affluent democracies. Of course, the actual costs of decarbonisation may fall rapidly with technological change or through the adoption of more economically efficient policies. However, Classical Realism’s method of grounding expectations in historical experience promotes continued pessimism.
Realism thus anticipates that great power rivals will struggle to achieve ambitious cooperation unless they anticipate disproportionate benefits – either by making relatively low contributions, or through comparative gains in avoided harms. International agreements will likely embody a level of ambition that reflects domestic concerns and the capacity to deliver emissions abatement as a co-benefit. Thus a Realist might interpret China’s comparatively ambitious NDCs and investments in wind, nuclear, solar and hydroelectricity as being largely motived by concerns for air quality, energy security, and economic competitiveness. China is drawn to renewable or easily stockpiled energy sources as it fears a naval blockade on oil imports and is also motivated by a ‘techno-nationalist’ desire to gain technological leadership and export dominance in clean energy technologies.Footnote 33
Ambitious mitigation is intrinsically challenging for reasons besides the standard cooperation challenges of supplying global public goods: political will formation and policy design is complicated by the delay of roughly one decade between emission of carbon dioxide and its peak warming impact, and by the fact that local warming reflects aggregate global emissions rather than local policies.Footnote 34 As a result, climate policies are often shaped by a variety of non-climate-related political factors that drive up the real-world costs of mitigation. The long lifespan of energy infrastructure (typically forty to seventy years) creates further inertia. Moreover, since the benefits of adaptation spending accrue locally, while the benefits of mitigation are predominantly international, self-interested actors can be expected to choose a suboptimal global allocation of resources, skewed toward adaptation.
Classical Realism points to domestic politics, particularly within middle powers, as a potential solution. Here, Classical Realist assumptions about human nature suggest possible grounds for both hope, if mitigation can be linked to national prestige, or for scepticism, since short-term material self-interest might seem inconsistent with ambitious mitigation. The EU’s relatively ambitious climate policies and engaged political discourse might seem to support the more optimistic case. Yet implementation of the EU’s ambitious 2030 emissions commitments has proceeded extremely cautiously in order to avoid rancorous internal division, and even the UK’s post-Brexit climate leadership is now unclear.Footnote 35 Evidence that no major industrialised state is on track to meet its Paris Agreement commitments (let alone emissions neutrality),Footnote 36 and that even the EU’s ambitious mitigation pledges fall far short of ‘climate justice’ supports the pessimistic conclusion that mitigation will proceed much too slowly to avoid dangerous warming.Footnote 37 While some high-ambition states do boast near zero-carbon electricity (for example, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, France) these achievements are largely attributable to historical selection of hydroelectricity or nuclear power (or geothermal in Iceland), not climate policy.Footnote 38
In summary, despite the existential threat posed by climate change and the theoretical potential to mitigate much of this threat at minimal cost, Realists anticipate that ambitious global mitigation will be unlikely for so long as domestic mitigation is politically difficult or economically costly. Realists, ever attuned to the recurrence of tragic dilemmas, may increasingly view climate change as another part of the perennial, irresolvable security dilemma. Something of this tragic disposition is captured in Ted Nordhaus’s observation in Foreign Affairs that climate change is ‘now a permanent condition of the human present and future, one that we will manage more or less successfully but that we will never solve’.Footnote 39
A Realist analysis of Paris
It is arguable that the Paris Agreement consolidates a Realist turn in climate policy that was already apparent in the Copenhagen Accord of 2009.Footnote 40 Whereas the Kyoto Protocol only set binding mitigation targets for developed states, the Agreement establishes a universal bottom-up process of NDCs that simultaneously satisfies China’s demand for developing world ‘headroom’ and the Obama administration’s insistence on equivalent treatment of developed and developing states. While negotiators understood that developing county commitments would be very different from those of developed countries, the Agreement relaxes the equity-based CBDR distinction between the responsibilities of developed and developing states that has been central to UNFCCC negotiations since 1992. Finally, whereas the Kyoto Protocol was undermined by the US’s non-participation,Footnote 41 the Paris Agreement was pre-emptively stripped of all elements – such as binding emissions targets or specific commitments of financial support – whose adoption would require congressional ratification.Footnote 42 Despite the Trump administration’s subsequent commitment to withdraw, a Realist might argue that the Paris Agreement’s structure reflects the progressive realism of the Obama Whitehouse.
The Obama administration’s rhetoric supports this analysis. At the Durban negotiations of 2011, US Climate envoy Todd Stern famously warned ‘if equity’s in, we’re out’.Footnote 43 After Paris, Stern commended the ‘socialized realism’ demonstrated in the Agreement’s acquiescence to great power demands.Footnote 44 For example, while a group of least developed and island states demanded inclusion of a liability clause, the Agreement only recognises possible expansion of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage and clarifies that this ‘does not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation’.Footnote 45 Likewise India’s call for measurement, reporting, and verification of specific finance pledges was rejected.Footnote 46
Enforcement mechanisms and binding national mitigation targets, which were pushed by the European Union, were also rejected by both China and the United States. Parties must formulate and submit NDCs (targets) for periodic international review, and the Agreement sets collective targets for financing mitigation and adaptation. However, no individual country is legally required to meet these targets.Footnote 47 The non-coercive, transparency-enhancing NDC process and the emissions trading scheme envisaged by Article 6, might equally be rationalised via neoliberal institutionalist reasoning: with sufficient domestic support this design may secure higher ambition than would an enforceable agreement.Footnote 48 However, this soft-law regime is also consistent with Realism’s tragic sensibility and scepticism concerning international law.
While the Paris Agreement embodies many promising impulses, the net result falls far short of the Agreement’s stated goals. A report commissioned by the UNFCCC found that were states’ initial pledges (NDCs) fully implemented to 2030, this would only bridge about 22 per cent of the gap between the business-as-usual reference scenario and 2 °C scenarios.Footnote 49 After a promising three-year period in which global emissions were nearly stable, in 2017 global GHG emissions increased again. Thus the decadal average increase in the 2010s, although well below the 2000s (3 per cent), remains roughly equal to that in the 1990s (1.1 per cent).Footnote 50 Temperature rises exceeding 3 °C by 2100 seem increasingly likelyFootnote 51 and, unless climate sensitivity is less than the IPCC’s median estimates,Footnote 52 plausible emissions pathways that avoid 2 °C warming now rely on heroic assumptions of massive negative emissions after 2050.Footnote 53 As Glen Peters observes, Article 4 of the Paris Agreement explicitly calls for geoengineering through ‘carbon dioxide removal’ where it stipulates the need for ‘balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century’.Footnote 54
The Paris Agreement’s generally positive reception – despite it confirming a trajectory toward dangerous warming – might seem puzzling. However, at least two justifications are commonly offered. One suggests the Agreement boosts the mitigation efforts of civil society, businesses, cities and regions, as reflected, for example, in the Lima-Paris Action Agenda. A second justifies Paris as a lesser evil. For example, Daniel Bodansky explains that ‘given current political realities’ Paris ‘produced as much as could reasonably have been expected’.Footnote 55 Likewise, President Obama lauded the Agreement for establishing ‘the architecture, for us to continually tackle this problem in an effective way’.Footnote 56 While arguments premised in political feasibility have also been used to justify earlier agreements, some consistent critics of Kyoto’s design have expressed qualified support for the Paris Agreement.Footnote 57 Indeed, Bodansky’s argument that the Paris Agreement accommodates the diversity of international interests and lays the groundwork for future negotiations mirrors a justification he offered in 1993 for the UNFCCC’s ‘failure to set binding targets’Footnote 58 and his subsequent critique of Kyoto’s binding commitments: ‘states willing to accept Kyoto-style emissions targets represent less than 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions’.Footnote 59 Given this understanding of Realist causal beliefs and climate politics, what follows investigates this Realist mode of ethical thought.
Classical Realist ethics
Morgenthau advises statespeople to view national survival as an ethical imperative, to prudently appraise consequences and to orient policymaking around the pursuit of the ‘national interest’. While we can classify this approach as (unreflectively-anthropocentric) communitarian act-consequentialism, recent scholarship has explicated broader ethical commitments. Michael Williams argues that Morgenthau’s conception of politics as a distinct sphere derives from commitments to pluralism and to politics as a positive process through which conflicting value commitments can be peacefully negotiated.Footnote 60 Morgenthau also embraces a ‘moral cosmopolitanism’, which demands that all humans be treated as ends in themselves.Footnote 61 Morgenthau’s underlying ethical commitment, doubtless informed by his experience as a Jewish-German émigré, is to enable individual morality. However, his belief that only a secure state can provide necessary preconditions for individual pursuit of an ethical life grounds his commitment to minimising violence and enmity in both domestic and international politics. Classical Realism thus primarily diverges from Liberal Internationalism and Cosmopolitanism in its pessimistic understanding of feasibility-constraints. Realists see an anarchic international system in which states prudently pursue their national interests without recourse to the moralistic politics of enmity as the brightest feasible future.
Classical Realism also views order as a prerequisite to justice and anticipates that states will adopt self-serving standards of justice.Footnote 62 Here Realism echoes Hobbes’s understanding of justice’s ‘inconstant signification’ that varies with the ‘interest of the speaker’.Footnote 63 Wary that appeals to justice will promote conflict, Hobbes seeks to tame the idea by defining justice as ‘legality’ or compliance with the sovereign’s will.Footnote 64 ‘Justice’ is thus problematic internationally as there is no sovereign.Footnote 65 Classical Realists resist claims of a potential harmony of interests among states and eschew ‘demonological interpretations’ of international politics, as they anticipate that negotiation over conflicting ‘interests’ will be more respectful of pluralism if it is free of sanctimony.Footnote 66
Mindful that rejection of ideal standards can easily collapse into amoral realpolitik, Morgenthau outlines several ethical tenets: first, since there can be no international ethical consensus, Realism holds prudence, ‘considering the consequences of seemingly moral action’, as ‘the supreme virtue in politics’. Moderation, prudence, and pursuit of the ‘lesser evil’ form a modus vivendi with which to approximate unknowable transcendental ideals.Footnote 67 Second, ‘national survival’ should be considered an independent ‘moral principle’ because only stable national communities can foster conditions enabling pursuit of an ethical life. Third, Morgenthau distinguishes between the ethical responsibilities of state decision-makers and those of citizens; while individuals may sacrifice themselves for justice and principle, a state leader’s obligation to secure the national community overrides private moral concerns. Moreover, political choices must be informed by a ‘sharp distinction between the desirable and the possible’.Footnote 68
After the Second World War, the novel potential for thermonuclear war and civilisational collapse prompts Morgenthau to recognise that it would be ‘rational’ to create international institutions tasked with governing nuclear weapons; but he believes such ‘limited world government’ is practically unachievable.Footnote 69 Although still pessimistic, he shifts from ridiculing internationalism in the 1950s to embracing ‘a principle of political organization transcending the nation-state’.Footnote 70 Niebuhr’s essay, ‘The Hydrogen Bomb’ reveals an equally dramatic shift wherein he hopes the bomb might ‘make for peace, because it proves that we must achieve an organized society in global terms or perish’.Footnote 71
Climate change parallels the threat of thermonuclear holocaust in that pursuit of narrow national interests is again creating a systemic risk of catastrophe. However, whereas thermonuclear war poses an imminent threat and arises through deliberate policy choices, climate harms build over decades and are an inadvertent, negative externality of peaceful economic activity. Although recognising that ‘politics as usual’ can create morally unacceptable systemic risks, Morgenthau saw no feasible option that was preferable to the Realist modus vivendi of pursuing the lesser evil. He despairingly advocated prudent pursuit of expanded national interests and reforms that might partially mitigate the logic of anarchy – all the while believing these would likely be inadequate.
Where Realism is commonly framed as a response to ‘utopian’ Liberal internationalism, Alison McQueen reads Morgenthau’s critique of American Liberalism as part of a wider rejection of secular ideologies that exploit the apocalyptic imaginary. She writes that Morgenthau saw Nazism as the most extreme instance of a phenomenon, also apparent in American Liberal Internationalism and Soviet Communism, ‘of an apocalyptic political religion whose aim is world transformation and domination’.Footnote 72 Early in his career Morgenthau rejected Liberal assertions concerning the moral supremacy of the United States because he feared the destructive politics of enmity and anticipated that moralisation of international politics would be used to justify unnecessary conflict.Footnote 73 However, McQueen notes that the essay ‘Death in a Nuclear Age’ marks a turning point. Whereas Morgenthau had previously stressed the inevitability of discord to counter Liberal demands that Soviet evil be eliminated, this essay mobilises the apocalyptic imaginary against hawkish sentiment. Morgenthau now dwells on thermonuclear horrors to counter complacent acceptance of the inevitability of nuclear conflict.Footnote 74
Yet, Morgenthau’s belief that states must invariably pursue national interests suggested a possible solution: an expanded conception of the national interest. Morgenthau concludes: ‘[w]hat is historically conditioned in the idea of the national interest can be overcome only through the promotion in concert of the national interest of a number of nations.’Footnote 75 Here Morgenthau exploits the concept of national interest’s imprecision to articulate a more progressive policy in Realist terms. His key move is a discursive reframing of the ‘national interest’ to take account of both cooperative system-preservation and competitive security concerns.
Today, the risk of climate catastrophe poses a similar challenge and scepticism over the prospects for international cooperation again implies a need for deliberate efforts to expand national conceptions of self-interest (the Paris Agreement’s ‘global stocktake’ process and periodic revision of NDCs are possible examples). Henry Shue offered an analogous critique of conventional Realist analysis in a 1996 paper on the environment and international order, arguing, ‘National interests need to be shaped from the beginning by a commitment to a just international order, rather than our belatedly attempting to promote equity only in whatever residual space remains after national interests [narrowly defined] are all granted maximal scope.’Footnote 76 While Shue’s critique of ‘amorally constructed national interests’ contradicts Morgenthau’s views on the morality of self-preservation, both scholars view incorporation of shared concerns within national interest as the key to averting systemic crisis and injustice.
Since Classical Realism promotes a consequentialist modus vivendi of the ‘lesser evil’ rather than an analytically derived ideal, it is necessarily less precise than is ideal normative theory. However, Realist ethical analysis’s claim to continuing relevance arises because it addresses issues that are often ignored by contemporary normative literature. Foremost is the question of how to choose among the imperfect set of policies that are feasible in a context where an overwhelming majority of people, states, and other collective actors are not acting as ideal theories of climate justice insist they should.
Classical Realism, Cosmopolitanism, and non-ideal theory
Cosmopolitan accounts of climate justice respond to a fundamental inequity: while climate change’s worst impacts generally befall the planet’s most vulnerable people, these harms are generated by the most affluent.Footnote 77 The view that global warming has forged a global community of fate and generates international obligations of justice informs many NGOs’ and developing states’ demands for repayment of a ‘climate debt’ arising from the West’s historic GHG emissions.Footnote 78 A Realist might accept this analysis, and still insist that it would be nigh impossible for Western leaders to implement ideal policy. Since Classical Realism is concerned with national decision-makers’ choices among the limited set of feasible transition pathways,Footnote 79 Realism views ideal theory as offering insufficient information to guide policy. Most significantly, it differs from Cosmopolitan ideal theory in its treatment of feasibility and desirability.Footnote 80
Normative theorists typically argue that identifying an ideal outcome is valuable since it allows policymakers to select the best approximation of the ‘ideal’ from a set of feasible measures.Footnote 81 As John Rawls argues, ‘ideal theory … is a necessary complement to non-ideal theory without which the desire for change lacks an aim’.Footnote 82 How does feasibility figure in this assessment? Normative theorists distinguish between ‘soft constraints’ – economic, cultural, and institutional barriers that could theoretically be overcome – and ‘hard constraints’ that make justice physically impossible.Footnote 83 If a course of action is physically possible, but infeasible due to soft constraints, ideal normative theory provides a social critique that seeks to promote incremental movement toward justice.
Since Realism’s task is policy-guidance rather than social critique, its central work is ranking alternative climate policies. ‘Soft constraints’ blocking cosmopolitan climate justice include powerful business interests resisting aggressive mitigation, public opposition to climate policies with near-term costs, a lack of deployment-ready low carbon technologies to replace fossil fuels in transport and industry (which together account for over two fifths of global emissions), and an anarchic international system that confounds international collective action. Anticipating that these feasibility constraints are unlikely to be quickly overcome, Realist ethical analysis seeks to assess the feasibility and desirability of alternative policies from the perspective of an expanded national interest.
If ideal theory prescribes ambitious mitigation action and compensation of vulnerable persons, financed by those communities that are responsible, capable, and have benefited from past emissions, Realism responds that a mix of soft and hard constraints means any feasible policy will likely be imperfect along the dimensions of both ambition and distributional justice. Mindful of the slow pace of political will-formation and the time-critical nature of the challenge, Classical Realism also anticipates trade-offs between means and outcomes, so it seeks a comprehensive ethical assessment of the processes and outcomes of different policy responses. For example, Realist ethics views ambitious mitigation as more desirable than distributive justice if trade-offs between the two cannot be avoided. This is because Realists’ desire to promote order and security means they will also prioritise minimising future climate harms. Realist ethics might thus endorse an agreement (like Paris) that imposes an unjust share of mitigation costs on developing countries if this injustice increases ambition.
Contrasting Realist and Cosmopolitan ethics
Steve Vanderheiden identifies the ideal allocation of climate-related ‘burdens’ as the ‘primary question of climate ethics’, and it is true that mainstream normative analysis has parsed how burdens should be distributed – on the basis of historical responsibility, present-day emissions, capacity to assist or benefit received from past emissions.Footnote 84 Further questions surround the procedural justice of negotiations and the background conditions of injustice (for example, colonialism, unjust terms of trade) that existing international institutions embody.Footnote 85 Realists will reject this account, as they will view minimising climate burdens as the primary ethical goal.
While the climate justice literature encompasses complex debates, something close to a consensus has emerged in support of at least three key claims.Footnote 86 First, the rich world has a duty to compensate vulnerable persons for climate harms. Henry Shue argues this consensus has arisen because the most plausible equitable principles guiding allocation of responsibility (ability to pay, contribution to the problem, provision of a guaranteed minimum) all ‘converge on the same practical conclusion’ that ‘wealthy industrialized states’ should bear climate costs.Footnote 87 A Realist might respond that voluntary forfeiture of national wealth is not only politically infeasible, but that if fully discharged this duty to compensate would require international transfer of hundreds of billion dollars annually and that this could bring unintended adverse consequences: corruption and limited state capacity would likely prevent international compensation from assisting intended beneficiaries;Footnote 88 increasing wealth would likely increase developing world emissions (fro example, through greater equity in food or energy access); if economic disruption in the West slowed the pace of energy research this could set back global decarbonisation.Footnote 89
The second widely supported duty concerns achieving equitable emissions. Most cosmopolitan theorists argue that all individuals have a responsibility, premised in the duty to avoid causing harm, to rapidly reduce their GHG emissions to a level, which, if applied globally, would prevent future climate harms. Arguably, zero emissions is the most defensible goal. However, one estimate suggests that in order to stabilise atmospheric concentrations at 450 to 550 ppm CO2-e (a less demanding target than most justice theorists accept) global average per capita CO2 emissions will have to decline to 2–3 tonnes per capita average.Footnote 90 Most theorists endorse rapid convergence on approximately equal emission entitlements, although other schemes are possible.Footnote 91 For industrialised countries like the United States (15.6 tonnes CO2/cap in 2016), Germany (9.47 tonnes), and even China (7.43 tonnes) this standard is very demanding.Footnote 92
Realist ethics would counsel states against making equitable emissions a near-term goal if it is so demanding that it impairs national security or produces adverse unintended consequences. Does this reasoning apply here? Although scholars and activists have proposed many scenarios through which to achieve a low carbon global energy system, meta-analysis shows these scenarios generally lack detailed strategies for industrial and transportation sectors, require historically unprecedented improvements in energy intensity and are premised on the persistence of highly unequal international patterns of energy use, which are themselves incompatible with justice.Footnote 93 Given the absence of low carbon infrastructure, achieving equitable emissions immediately would be radically disruptive and would require severe rationing of electricity, manufactured products, air travel, private motorised transport and emissions-intensive foods. Such measures may undermine domestic political stability.
A third Cosmopolitan duty concerns just distribution. This claim, which asserts that abstract standards of justice should guide the distribution of costs and benefits, can be contrasted with a Realist conception, which requires distribution to promote effectiveness (for example, Realism advocates maximising ambition through consistency with powerful states’ interests).Footnote 94 Cosmopolitans commonly believe that justice is a prerequisite for effectiveness since ‘to be effective the regulatory framework of any global climate policy must be accepted by all national parties, and to be acceptable to all it must offer terms that are fair to each’.Footnote 95 However, from the Realist perspective, to impose ethical standards that differ from those accepted by great powers is to load extra handicaps on an already intractable problem.
Classical Realism’s different focus means it generally complements rather than critiques Cosmopolitan climate justice – for example, since Realism addresses state decision-makers it is silent on individual responsibilities. Moreover, were all people to comply with their ideal obligations, all non-technical feasibility constraints would vanish, and Realism’s ethical analysis would converge with ideal theory. However, given the vast disparity between current policies and ideal climate justice, and the diverse, potentially inconsistent set of possible mitigation strategies, Realists would question whether ideal theory can usefully guide policy. Realism suggests that Cosmopolitan prescriptions could not easily be implemented, and even limited steps toward such transformative change would have unpredictable consequences – positive and negative – which mean ideal theory provides an imperfect guide to averting future climate harms.
Classical Realist climate policy
Realism advises state decision-makers who are faced with a serious systemic threat like climate change to select feasible policies that advance a conception of national interest that has been broadened to take account of both traditional security concerns and system preservation. While recognising that ambitious international mitigation would be rationally desirable, Realist analysis anticipates that ambitious global action will be unlikely until technological innovation unambiguously decouples relative power, wealth, and greenhouse gas emissions. If effective mitigation is infeasible, a Realist should critically assess ‘lesser evils’ – measures whose lower cost or greater feasibility enhances leaders’ flexibility to pursue them despite limited support.
Before turning to these specific policy measures, it is important to observe that while Realism is primarily concerned with foreign policy, it also has implications for the state’s relationship with domestic interest groups. Consider Realist balance-of-power theory. Although usually discussed with reference to external alliances, Realist balancing also encompasses internal efforts to develop new strategies that increase economic and military strength. Thus, Mark Taylor’s analysis of how national innovation rates increase in the context of external competition and threats might be read as a contribution to Realist analysis.Footnote 96
In order to explain why external threats correlate with higher national innovation rates, Taylor begins with the observation that technological change of all kinds has distributive effects. Those who lose out from innovation are often established industries that wield considerable political influence. These vested interests will typically pressure governments to slow the pace of change (through regulatory measures, taxes, subsidies, etc.). However, if external threats prompt a need for ‘internal balancing’ this creates political pressure in the opposite direction. If governing elites believe innovation will enhance national military or economic security, systemic forces will push them to resist lobbying by incumbent industries.
The Realist idea of internal balancing thus has parallels in climate policy. Both internal balancing and climate mitigation typically depend on governments’ capacity to advance an innovation and reform agenda against the wishes of powerful domestic lobbies. Consider an example such as Angela Merkel’s acquiescence to auto-industry lobbying, which led her government to water down the EU’s emission standards.Footnote 97 In the past, the Realist idea of ‘internal balancing’ has suggested that governments should drive domestic reform as a way of enhancing national security. If the ‘national interest’ is understood to also encompass climate security, mitigation-linked policy should gain similar status to military security. In this case overcoming sectional resistance can also be justified by the logic of raison d'état. Of course, where there is a conflict between mitigation and security interests, Realists will likely prioritise security. But Realist logic suggests that states should not allow sectional interests to block economically optimal mitigation measures (for example, carbon pricing) simply because of their distributional consequences. Realism’s view that state leaders should advance the ‘national interest’ in both their internal and external actions would inform each of the specific policy responses that follow.
Breakthrough energy research
Classical Realists, such as Morgenthau, were sceptical about the capacity of technological advances to resolve the recurring dilemmas of political life. It is thus ironic that as early as 1993 Realist thinkers were already pointing to accelerated low carbon research and development (R&D) as a promising avenue through which affluent states might pursue climate action.Footnote 98 Arguably, a research-focused climate response should not be viewed as a lesser evil, as economic analyses identify technology policy as an essential part of any efficient global decarbonisation strategy.Footnote 99 Further, the IPCC has noted that development of ‘new technologies is crucial for the ability to Realistically implement stringent carbon policies’Footnote 100 and some climate justice theorists, such as Henry Shue, have called on capable states to drive technological transition.Footnote 101 Since state investments have driven recent advances in low carbon technologies (solar photovoltaic efficiency, perovskite solar cells, storage technologies, advanced nuclear fusion and fission)Footnote 102 it seems that a weak version of this strategy is already being implemented. However, economic analysis suggests investments should be somewhere between three and ten times greater in order to limit warming to 2°C above preindustrial levels.Footnote 103 Nevertheless, even a more aggressive ‘economically ideal’ innovation-led strategy would be unjust if it were accompanied by an otherwise inadequate or inequitable global response.
Realism suggests that the most feasible climate mitigation strategies will be those that align with states’ narrowly conceived self-interests. In this context, interstate rivalry’s positive impact on national innovation rates through the dynamic of internal balancing is potentially a cause for optimism.Footnote 104 As noted earlier, China’s ambitions to deploy, export, and gain technological leadership in wind, solar, and nuclear power illustrate this dynamic.Footnote 105 However, since a researching state cannot capture all the positive externalities of energy research, no self-interested state is likely to shoulder the low carbon innovation burden alone. While some urge the United States to fund breakthrough research unilaterally,Footnote 106 Realists anticipate unilateral efforts will be inadequate. It is true that states will support some forms of innovation, motivated by the rents that accrue to patent holders.Footnote 107 However, feasibility constraints similar to those that block ambitious mitigation also stifle innovation on a scale recommended by economists like Sir Nicholas Stern or Ross GarnautFootnote 108 – these constraints include limited political support, long timeframes, and the likelihood that benefits of innovation will not be captured locally.
Nevertheless, both domestic and international politics are much more conducive to energy research than to direct mitigation. Game-theoretical analysis suggests that international low carbon research cooperation is considerably more feasible than is mitigation because the costs of energy research are lower, and the near-term national benefits arising from state-funded research are greater.Footnote 109 States could also design an international treaty so that contributors to a coordinated research effort capture many benefits for themselves.Footnote 110 If most financial benefits of new technologies flow to contributing states while the positive externality of averted climate change benefits the entire global community, then a research treaty might simultaneously advance the interests of both powerful states and vulnerable people.Footnote 111 Such a research-led strategy would take decades to succeed and rising emissions during this period would harm both state interests and vulnerable populations. However, a Realist would support this imperfect strategy if there is no more feasible path to ambitious mitigation.
The twenty-state pre-Paris ‘Mission Innovation’ (MI) pledge to double spending on clean energy research, which was engineered by President Obama and Bill Gates, is an instructive example. MI’s ongoing success will turn upon its receiving lasting domestic political support across major participating states, and this seems improbable since the election of the Trump administration. Nevertheless, MI exemplifies Morgenthau’s ambition for the ‘promotion in concert’ of multiple states’ ‘national interest’. Realism, cognisant of state leaders’ limited policy discretion, might direct their ethical attention to areas such as innovation where cooperative action is comparatively feasible and can reduce systemic risks.
Solar geoengineering
SG refers to a set of techniques that counteract global warming by increasing the Earth’s reflectivity and thus reducing absorption of solar energy. Although there are multiple possible SG techniques, dispersal of aerosols in the stratosphere has dominated discussion because it could cheaply negate warming on a global basis using existing technologies.Footnote 112 The 1991 eruption of Mt Pinatubo demonstrated the potential for stratospheric sulphates to reduce global temperatures, but it also made clear that SG could disrupt weather patterns and have potential adverse implications for agriculture and species distribution.Footnote 113 While there are also less disruptive and more easily reversed techniques, such as ocean cloud brightening, all forms of SG have complex impacts and none address ocean acidification. Despite these flaws, might a Realist ethical analysis endorse SG as a lesser evil?
Economists typically argue that geoengineering’s role in an optimal economic response to climate change would be minimal, as aggressive early mitigation would produce greater benefits.Footnote 114 Ethicists have also identified objections creating a ‘presumptive argument’ against SG, including difficulty gaining consent from affected communities, moral hazards, and ‘ontological impoverishment’ through the loss of a distinct natural world.Footnote 115 This literature is correct to identify SG as undesirable. However, from a Classical Realist perspective it errs by comparing SG against an ideal response rather than against feasible alternatives.
Realist ethical analysis might instead focus on: (1) SG’s security consequences given the potential for international disagreement and conflict over its deployment;Footnote 116 and (2) whether SG would raise national welfare (perhaps also taking some account of global human welfare) under any elevated future atmospheric CO2 concentration. Answering these questions will require further research. While early implementation of SG might minimise the risks of run-away climate change (for example, melting permafrost in Canada, Russia and Greenland releasing trapped methane), Realism also counsels prudence. SG’s differential impacts on regional weather patterns has the potential to provoke international tension and coalition-building.Footnote 117 Consequently, Classical Realist analysis would likely suggest that research and implementation should be subject to multilateral oversight, at minimum involving cooperation of all great powers.Footnote 118
A Realist analysis would thus likely support multilateral research and experimentation to assess SG’s potential and, if politically feasible and environmentally valuable, to bring SG technologies to a deployment-ready state. However, Realist arguments can also be made against SG; since Realism counsels against hubris and worries over misperception of state intentions, a Realist would approach SG with considerable caution. Thus the Realist mode of reasoning offers resources through which opponents of SG might avoid it being framed as a ‘Realist’ inevitability.
Structuring mitigation agreements
While Realists anticipate that only an economically inconsequential global agreement, such as the Paris Agreement, will be politically feasible this does not imply that the UNFCCC process has achieved nothing. UNFCCC negotiations keep climate change on domestic political agendas, require states to measure and report national emissions, to set NDCs and to assist developing states. Recognition that these efforts are inadequate does not imply that they should be abandoned. Instead, Realist consequentialism suggests that since maximising ambition is of paramount importance, great power interests rather than ideal standards of justice should guide regime design.
Realists view international agreements as epiphenomenal in that they are only effective when imposed by great powers. Consequently, Realists anticipate agreements and organisations will fail or fade into irrelevancy if parties insist on a thick interpretation of equity norms (like CBDR). In the Realist view, to the extent that the Paris Agreement relaxes the equity norms and has minimal implications for Sino-US rivalry, these should be viewed as desirable features that boost the Agreements’ anticipated effectiveness.
Realist ethical reasoning supports ‘unjust’ distributions of costs and benefits if this injustice significantly enhances the prospects for effective international cooperation. While it would be unjust to design an international agreement so that powerful states capture an increased share of the resulting cooperative surplus, Realist ethics endorse unjust means if they significantly reduce future harms. For example, the Waxman-Markey Bill presented to the US Congress would have applied carbon equalisation measures at the border, equalising the embodied cost of carbon in imported and domestic products. While this has been criticised as an ‘unjust’ abrogation of US’ leadership responsibilities,Footnote 119 Realism judges measures against their consequences, which would include their effectiveness in lifting states’ mitigation ambition. Were the EU (or China) to impose similar taxes, as President Macron has repeatedly proposed,Footnote 120 a Realist ethical assessment would again hinge on these measures’ impact on global emissions. The paramount importance and innate difficulty of achieving international mitigation suggests cooperation to secure essential global public goods might be considered an independent normative goal.Footnote 121
Conclusion
The Realist concept of a generalised ‘national interest’ that purports to transcend the interests of dominant social classes is usually said to derive its content from the context of anarchy – security is a public good that can only be provided by the state.Footnote 122 A safe climate is also a shared national interest, yet the causal dynamics and spatiality of climate change mean that no state acting alone can provide ‘climate security’. Moreover, climate harms arise as an unintended consequence of the routine functioning of the international economy and political system. Consequently, Realist logics might appear irrelevant to climate politics. However, I have argued that Realists’ experience with previous existential threats might contain lessons for climate policy. In response to the earlier systemic threat of thermonuclear omnicide, Morgenthau argued that state leaders might escape the logic of anarchy through collective pursuit of expanded interests. The policies he despairingly recommended mirror the climate policies discussed in this article: prudent pursuit of collective national interests (a research-led multilateral response or mitigation agreements structured around great power interests) and self-help measures in the case of failure (adaptation or collectively governed SG).
Classical Realism’s analysis of the feasibility constraints challenging state decision-makers raises important ethical questions that are seldom considered by political theorists.Footnote 123 While I have focused on dilemmas surrounding mitigation policies, Realist ethics also raise wider questions. Consider evidence that the first-term Obama administration responded to perceived political constraints by minimising public reference to climate change in an effort to protect funding for actual climate programs.Footnote 124 Is such strategic downplaying of climate policies ethical? Realist ethics answer yes, as it engages with the harsh realities of limited public engagement, powerful corporate opposition to climate action, and seeks to guide leaders along a perilous political tightrope toward minimising climate threats. However, this example also illustrates how Realism’s preoccupation with feasibility can risk collapse into cynical realpolitik. Careful reflection on Realist ethics is therefore essential for those who wish to advocate ambitious, feasible policy while countering Realism’s status quo bias.
If feasibility constraints continue to obstruct climate justice, the Paris Agreement’s weakening of CBDR may by only the first of many ‘lesser evils’ justified by Realist logic. For example, it is possible that as our failure to achieve the 1.5 °C aspiration established by the Paris Agreement becomes apparent, this aspirational target may be seized upon by advocates of preemptive geoengineering. Given that there are strong Realist arguments against SG, opponents might usefully canvas Realist logics as well as more idealistic arguments. Today, the implicit Realist arguments that continue to influence policymakers are rarely directly engaged and Classical Realism’s integration of positive and normative analysis is not utilised in discussion of climate ethics. Cosmopolitan climate justice theorists, who have been entirely correct in diagnosing climate-linked injustices, may view Classical Realism as too disconnected from ideal standards to qualify as a normative argument. However, if climate negotiations continue to be influenced by Realist logic, then it may be valuable to develop and scrutinise the Realist mode of ethical thought.
Acknowledgements
This manuscript benefited from feedback gained in seminars at Fudan, Macquarie and La Trobe Universities. I especially thank Leigh Boucher, Daniel Bray, Rasmus Karlsson, Stephanie Lawson, Terry Macdonald, the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their responses to earlier drafts.
