Introduction to Climate Fixes versus System Change: What’s the Problem?

Abstract

The slogan ‘System Change Not Climate Change’ has sharpened public debate about the societal changes that are necessary to avoid climate disaster in ways creating an environmentally sustainable, socially just future. The demand for ‘system change’ directs attention at profit-driven, high-carbon production systems which cause climate change, other environmental harms, resource plunder and social injustices, along with policies which perpetuate them. Protest has generated low-carbon, socially just alternatives, but these have often lacked an effective social agency for replacing harmful high-carbon systems. Meanwhile neoliberal techno-market fixes have emphasized market-based incentives for techno-solutions. This policy framework underlies the UN Climate Convention and the European Union, whose false solutions have maintained system continuity, contrary to their environmental pretensions. Such fixes have sometimes provoked public controversy, as an extra opportunity to promote alternatives. This book presents a big picture of their strategies and potential, as steps towards system change.