Heikki Patomäki Professor of World Politics Department of Political and Economic Studies University of Helsinki

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1 Heikki Patomäki Professor of World Politics Department of Political and Economic Studies University of Helsinki

2 » Reflexive self-regulation consciously aiming at planetary homeostasis there is no automatic homeostasis in the scale of from tens to hundreds of years if there is to be homeostasis, it must now be created by means of conscious, future-oriented interventions into the ways in which our socio-economic systems work and are co-shaping the climate of the planet» While constrained by natural processes and social structures, the planetary future does not just happen but becomes increasingly something that various actors including we, whoever this we may be make of it. reflexive self-regulation occurs through increased knowledge about the way natural and social systems work and bring about effects, not only now, but also in the future» In this presentation, I focus on the social-systemic and political moments of determination of the future of Earth s climate.

3 » Both individual state-actions and world markets are often poor in preventing unnecessary, unneeded and unwanted worldwide developments from happening global governance is needed» In the absence of proper collective countervailing responses, many processes tend to be self-reinforcing.» Whenever there are good reasons to steer global developments towards more agreeable and needed directions, the question becomes how?.» Many possible and at least prima facie plausible institutional responses for every identified global problem institutional design matters.

4 » The prevailing paradigm of politico-economic governance frames and sets conditions for climate governance.» Private property and markets is the solution to the problem of externalities that has been advocated by the Chicago School of economics, associated with the neoliberal ideas of global governance. the system of emissions trading is premised on privatization of (aspects of) Earth s atmosphere, encouraging profit-seeking and money-making belief in the market mechanism is associated with reliance on economic growth analogy between possessive individuals and sovereign states» This is not the only solution; alternatives include e.g. global taxes or direct regulations.» Climate-relevant processes can also be steered through education, public investments and/or phasing-out of unneeded substances and practices.

5 » Each way of responding to a global problem involves institutional rearrangements; institutions have multiple effects, often mirrored by a multiplicity of motivations among those responsible for the selection of institutions.» From a normative perspective, global institutions may manifest different values and serve a variety of purposes; are these values and purposes shared, universal or legitimate in some other sense? determines actual or potential political support for a reform proposal» Institutional arrangements may also be liable to collective action problems or corruption.» Moreover, institutional arrangements reinforce, reshape or undermine prevailing understandings and discourses, which in turn affect trust and expectations among actors and condition institutional possibilities institutions may also be unsuccessful if there is no culture to keep up a sense of virtues relevant to the purpose of the institution

6 » Shift from the Bretton Woods system towards neoliberal governance in the 1970s and 1980s the Washington consensus» The key structural condition explaining the shift: discrepancy between (i) the limited reach of territorial states and (ii) an open liberal world economy the origins of neoliberalization lie in the struggles over income distribution, competitiveness and power in the context of this discrepancy» Economic liberalism involves positive feedback loops through the realization of its preferred institutional arrangements which, in turn, tend to reinforce its potential force the dynamics of this selfreinforcing process have the power to support and institutionalize the original choice or choices.» In a reciprocal process, actors may thereby lock themselves in particular epistemic positions that then become constitutive of their habitus, i.e. mode of being and agency (the taken-for-granted background).

7 . PROBLEMS FROM A NEOCLASSICAL PERSPECTIVE: + Many economists favour taxes because carbon trading can be costly and liable to corruption. + Carbon taxes can offer a cost-effective means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and a permanent incentive to find ways (new technologies etc) of reducing emissions still more.. PROBLEMS FROM A A NORMATIVE PERSPECTIVE: + It outsources our moral obligation to reduce excessive greenhouse gas emissions. if the rich can pay themselves off this obligation and thus buy the right to pollute legally, we tend to undermine the sense of shared sacrifice necessary to future global cooperation on the environment + Pollution as a bad: the ethico-political perspective is compatible with: a combination of bans, caps, regulations and taxes

8 AND FROM A GLOBAL-KEYNESIAN POLITICAL ECONOMY PERSPECTIVE: the atmosphere is a common and climate stability is best seen as a common good + the main difference between emission trading and taxes: taxes bring about public revenues taxes often opposed simply because they dislike either all taxes or at least anything that impose higher costs on industry / privately owned means of production + moreover, global taxes and funds would be critically important in creating the resources needed for global economic and developmental policies public investments the funds now available to, say, the United Nations or even the Bretton Woods institutions are minuscule + what is more, capitalist market economy is premised on significant and steady growth in the market-demand for goods and services; global taxes and their revenues could be used to steer and regulate economic activities across the planet the basic idea is to shape the direction, composition, distribution and speed of economic growth towards more sustainable growth i.e. global-keynesianism at the service of green planetary cause

9 The holomovement of global political economy Social contexts are generated (i) by the habitus of actors and (ii) by the cognitive and ethico-political schemes and collective learning embedded in them and in social institutions the result is analogical to a field, determining the coordinates and direction of effortless action Holomovement refers to the developing whole that enfolds or carries the meaning or content of the complex and subtle inner structures generating the concrete causal processes and their effects through which its forms and parts are determined Human learning can result in changes of habitus and institutions and the way they organize social space and time.

10 » The inner code of the whole evolves and creates bursts of concrete geo-historical processes such as financial crises and major oscillations around a changing growth trend through which its forms and parts are transformed and metamorphosed.» The further the process of neoliberalisation continues also after the epic recession that started in the more likely it is that the next turning point is a regressive saddle point (rather than jump point) by mid-2010s, some counter-learning may have already taken place, but we have not yet reached a break point» Accumulation of relatively small ( quantitative ) changes in specific areas may lead to ruptures and transformations ( qualitative changes ) in others; issues and processes are linked.» Politics matters, also in a number of subfields, such as academic fields; and a lot depends also on timing.

11 Climate change is not a separate technical question:» As different processes are connected and interwoven, the movement towards global Keynesianism and attempts to respond to global environmental and other problems can be linked in various ways breakthrough in any one area of governance is likely to become a model to be followed in others» Processes are in relations of mutual dependency, collective learning towards higher forms of reflexivity, may well contribute to the end of the dominance of the market utopia for instance, it may be that global warming requires global Keynesian responses, such as a democratically organised global greenhouse gas tax and world public investments, rather than a cap-and-trade system premised on the market» On the other hand, it is likely that more adequate responses to global warming are dependent on global political economy learning and changes that are only partly linked to, or coupled with, the processes of global warming.

12 » Different institutional responses will lead to altered politicoeconomic developments through technological change, social and political conflicts (often revolving around justice), redistributional effects, moral (un)learning, and (un)development of virtues of practices.» Each institutional response has characteristic effects on natural systems, directly and indirectly, not least via the evolvement of social habitus, structures and mechanisms.» Global Keynesianism is an approach which frames questions of public economic policy and politics more generally in a world-system context and in terms of global common good.» The establishment of adequate global institutions would be a step in the long march of mankind toward its unity and better control of its own fate (Robert Triffin 1968)