The environmental consequences of decoupling

This book chapter appeared in  Mobo Gao, Justin O’Connor, Baohui Xie and Jack Butcher (eds.), The Great Decoupling: A New Global Order/Disorder?, (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), pp. 143-160. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-8426-7_8.

Abstract

If the environment has demonstrated one thing with brutal clarity, it is that we—the human—race are all in this together. Unfortunately, this does not mean that political leaders around the world have suddenly recognised the interdependent, mutually constitutive nature of human existence; nor have they inaugurated a new era of enlightened cooperation. On the contrary, while the geophysical boundaries that delimit individual and collective human possibilities are becoming ever more apparent, the contemporary international order is distinguished by an entirely futile and counterproductive effort to decouple and privilege the national over the transnational. Exploring some of these contradictions by considering what might be described as the geopolitics of climate change, I argue that environmental policies are still not accorded the importance they merit and remain a subordinate part of wider strategic considerations. This is not a possibility that is confined to the great powers like the US and China, however. On the contrary, middle powers like Australia risk becoming collateral damage, with a declining capacity and will to address its own, increasingly visible environmental problems.

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