Californian statespersons are “planetary realists”—brokering subnational green agreements with China where the US cannot
Fascinating editorial from Noema, pointing to how subnational actors - in this case, the American state of California - are acting on the basis of “planetary realism”, and striking environmental deals where the nation state’s they’re in can’t do so. An except below:
The impending threat of climate calamity is forging a new breed of subnational statespersons from California guided by a political philosophy that could be called “planetary realism.”
Their view departs from the old “realist” school of foreign policy that regards nation-states as the principal actors on the world stage engaged in an endless struggle against others in pursuit of securing their own national interests.
Reality these days dictates that this new realism supplants the old when it comes to the convergence of critical common challenges that are beyond the scope of remedy by any one nation or bloc of nations. As the Earth’s biosphere cascades toward unlivable conditions, the security of each depends inextricably on the other.
The new breed of statespersons seeks cooperation across borders at any level because they cannot effectively meet the threat to their own jurisdiction and constituencies without addressing it everywhere else. In this way, as the Berggruen Institute’s Jonathan Blake has put it, “translocalism circumnavigates geopolitics” when vital interests inconveniently transcend boundaries, not least when there is strategic conflict at the top, as in the case of the U.S. and China.
…A prime example of subnational planetary diplomacy was on display last week when California Governor Gavin Newsom toured China’s provinces where clean energy development and climate mitigation are most advanced. He met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and others to update already extant environmental cooperation agreements with his state and initiate new ones.
For China’s part, it recognizes that the Pacific-facing Golden State with a population of 40 million is nearly a nation unto itself. As the fifth-largest economy in the world, the state’s public policies that shape its huge market set standards for the entire United States, especially when it comes to auto emission controls, electric vehicle mandates and de-carbonizing technologies.
The U.S. and China may well survive the decoupling of their economies from each other. But, as Gov. Newsom understands, the world will not survive the decoupling of climate cooperation by the two largest greenhouse gas emitters on the planet. “Divorce is not an option,” he declared in Beijing.
Despite all other tensions between these two incommensurate political systems, what the governor called the “fundamental and foundational” climate summons must bind the two together in partnership despite rivalry in other realms.
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