Identity, Ethics, Security and Order

Abstract

Climate change impacts present a series of escalating political ramifications for states and the broader array of actors who comprise the contemporary world. Responding to impacts such as rising atmospheric temperatures and sea levels, loss of agriculturally productive land, redistributions of water resources, increased storms and severe fires all demand new forms of action from political actors and organisations. These changes impose new responsibilities upon political, economic and social actors, including those who remain reluctant to accept new levels of authority and collective action. The Copenhagen Summit 2009 demonstrated the extent to which government leaders continue to clutch at historically based concepts of sovereign authority, prosperity, harmony, order and international influence. States continue to hope that their interdependent geophysical systems will prove amenable to independent management. Indeed, the limited outcomes of the Copenhagen Climate Summit suggest that states regard their political independence as more important than addressing global climate change.