Abstract
Norbert Elias distinguished between functional, institutional, and habitual dimensions of social processes, in which changes do not necessarily occur simultaneously. The paper draws on this analytical distinction in order to conduct a differentiated analysis of the current climate crisis. On the functional level, it is shown that climate change requires the commitment of the entire international community. On the institutional level, the disappointing outcome of international climate change negotiations illustrates the absence of a functioning global governance architecture, and the lack of capacity to solve one of the world’s most urgent and severe problems. On the habitual level, however, climate change has increasingly become an issue of global concern, of which the emergence of a new “global public” as a peripheral development of the Copenhagen Summit (COP 15) in December 2009 is only one of the most visible signs.
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