best international relations books on climate change

America’s future direction on climate change could thus help to define its international relationships for decades to come - not merely through soft, symbolic power, such as joining climate agreements, but through the hard, shared interest of economic and material cooperation. American leadership on decarbonization could lay foundations for new partnerships with countries that are emerging as centers of economic and political power. Instead, the greatest benefit of climate action to American national interest will come from promoting decarbonization of the global energy supply. And in practice, American climate action will only have limited leverage over how peaceful or violent the future world will be.

These visions of the future might make good ammunition for Hollywood, but they provide a far too narrow, distant, and pessimistic frame for climate change as a U.S. economy and international treaties, and soldiers get pulled into resource wars to protect American interests and allies. Global crises over energy supplies threaten the U.S. A warming climate produces greater resource scarcity, leading to more frequent wars and mass displacement of people. The imagined scenario goes something like this: The world fails to halt climate change in the coming decades and remains dependent on fossil fuels. response to climate change lie not in what Americans might imagine about tomorrow’s world politics but in the global political relationships at stake today. The geopolitical reasons for a strong U.S. But while thrillers must thrill and generals must fret, fears about the national security threats that climate change could present remain too vague to act on. Climate change has provided bottomless inspiration for aspiring paperback novelists. In the melting Arctic, governments feud over seabed minerals. In the African Sahel, farmers feud over cropland. In the Himalayas and the Middle East, countries feud over water.

Best international relations books on climate change