Climate denialism and Žižek's fear of the future

November 25, 2009 by William Shaw
Filed under: William Shaw 


Slavoj Žižek by Hendrik Speck

If there is a star philosophy turn, it’s  Slavoj Žižek. Last night he spoke at the RSA to a packed Great Room and justified his star status with constantly dazzling performance, which will be online here soon. As Nigel Warburton, the event’s chair, remarked, what’s thrilling about listening to him talk publicly is the way he develops ideas in mid-sentence. Asides suddenly become new ideas, and even his asides seem to have asides.

One of his asides was a meditation on who would be the figures of the current era who would still be having statues built to them in 100 years time.

Žižek suggested Lee Kuan Yew, the reforming but authoritarian leader of Singapore,  who turned the island city-state into one of the wealthiest economies in the world. And who more importantly provided the model for Deng Xiaoping’s modernisation of Communist China.

Why? Here he took an easy kick at Fukuyama’s idea that liberal captitalist democracy was the last word in history, pointing out that the winners in capitalism’s latest race appear to be not the liberal capitalist states, but the authoritarian ones like China. And (I’m writing from memory here) his real fear is that this is the successful model that we’re all heading towards. More authoritarian capitalist states, not fewer.

Every now and again I try and take on a climate denialist. It’s a fairly stupid, self-destructive thing to do, and leads to really, really, really silly arguments about whose scientists have bigger graphs, and talk of hockey sticks and mad petitions, but occasionally I think it’s worth doing to discover if you have any common ground at all, and to try and understand how the thinking behind this weird group of misfits with such extraordinary political power.

One thing that’s obvious. Denialists like James Delingpole and Nigel Lawson really aren’t interested in science. You can’t be interested in science if your method is to seek out the few dozen science names who put up serious arguments against the thousands and thousands who stand behind the conclusions of the 2007 IPCC report.

What denialists are really afraid of is the self-righteous authoritarianism that global warming brings. They are fundamentally libertarians. We may think they’re delusional libertarians, but what really concerns them is a fear of a future that actually looks much like Žižek’s.

Anthony Giddens in The Politics of Climate Change sees it as inevitable that the green-left’s dream of grass roots localisation is not up to the task of reform. Likewise he sees that broad international agreements of the kind that COP15 seek are too easy to fracture. That leaves nation states as the main actors in climate change – and the levers they have are inevitably based around carbon taxes. In Gidden’s world, (though he wouldn’t put it like this) the state will inevitably meddle in our lives more not less in the future.

Žižek’s fears, Gidden’s rationalism, and denialists’ libertarianism all find their way to the same place. So is there an alternative? One that will calm the fears of the less-mad denialists? Does climate change inevitably lead to a more authoritarian state?

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5 Comments on Climate denialism and Žižek's fear of the future

  1. ai on Wed, 25th Nov 2009 8:32 pm

    2. The “green-left’s dream of grassroots localisation” need not be abandoned; it simply needs to be supplemented by institutional innovation at other levels as well, including the national, the regional, and the transnational. Elinor Ostrom helps us think about the interaction of these levels.

    Judging from his writings, Zizek doesn’t seem to fear authoritarian solutions so much as he fears anything that will prop up global capitalism. Zizek’s fear (of capitalism run amok) seems to me to be diametrically opposed to that of the libertarians (fear of capitalism squashed). Zizek worries a lot about how ecology (or Buddhism, or multiculturalism, et al) can serve as fuel for the further growth of global capitalism. His worries are worth taking to heart, but they are a little overwrought (as I’ve tried to argue here). But it’s nice to see him put his star power to discussing ecological realities.

  2. William Shaw on Fri, 27th Nov 2009 2:44 pm

    3. Thanks for an incredibly thoughtful comment. Yes, you’re absolutely right that they’re different fears, Zizek’s and the libertarians… that’s a good point, but they do look remarkably similar.

    However what is interesting is that how many environmentalists have accepted their role as authoritarians unthinkingly, and that is partly what the libertarian denialists are challenging. And in that, actually, though have no sympathy with the libertarian/denialist project, I do think they have a point.

  3. Chris Southall on Fri, 27th Nov 2009 5:17 pm

    4. Nice piece! I am thinking that as long as the underlying problems with society are not solved – too many people, education that destroys creativity, erosion of natural spirituality and morality etc society will become more authoritarian in order to survive!!

  4. EL on Sun, 29th Nov 2009 7:15 am

    5. I get the sense listening to Zizek that he is fostering a kind of naive and absolutist faith in the enlightenment project of being outside of discourse and ideology. I too sometimes take on denialists for the effort of seeking common ground and trying to learn more about the roots of their discontent, and I can always find some interest in their claims and arguments. They claim a fear of authoritarianism, as you describe (and this is sometimes based on personal experience of an absolutist state … at home or abroad), but they are not libertarian in seeking a post-structuralist anarchy of a society free of absolutes. In many cases, they simply have a minority view that is not fully incorporated or at home in the secular and scientific project of science. Their different and unique sense of authoritarianism comes from a difference source, the Bible, and it is the terrifying and seemingly rational worldview of global warming philosophy that is the biggest offense to them. In this sense, Zizek may be more of an ecologist than he is aware (as he has strong commitments to secular reason, a world beyond mystification) that is his stock and trade. It might be interesting to note that there is some recent movement on this historical (and naively described) divide between secular rationalists and christian conservative communities, and evangelicals speaking out on behalf of stewardship, conservation, and global warming. Science itself has always had an ambivalent relationship to religion (at a minimum among the personal commitments of practitioners and certain discussions of “scientific inspiration”). And my hope, rather than speak of a higher order faith in perception and insight (a kind of consciousness outside of consciousness), I tend to look for common cause in human consensus and the negotiation that takes place in language, discourse, conversation and slippery arguments between people of widely divergent social, historically grounded, and internally conflicted worldviews and practices. Ideology is all we have … I hope people who listen to Zizek don’t forget this!

  5. William Shaw on Sun, 29th Nov 2009 9:19 am

    6. “They claim a fear of authoritarianism… but they are not libertarian in seeking a post-structuralist anarchy of a society free of absolutes. In many cases, they simply have a minority view that is not fully incorporated or at home in the secular and scientific project of science. Their different and unique sense of authoritarianism comes from a difference source, the Bible, and it is the terrifying and seemingly rational worldview of global warming philosophy that is the biggest offense to them.”

    Absolutely; there is nothing particularly liberal about this kind of bullying. Great insight. In the UK I’m not sure there is a Christian thread running through denialism though. If anything they often see themselves as radical anti Christian, and certainly anti Moslem humanists.

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