Hans A. Baer - Climate Change and Capitalism in Australia: An Eco-Socialist Vision for the Future

Hans A. Baer

First published 2022

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

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2022 Hans A. Baer

The right of Hans A. Baer to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Baer, Hans A., 1944 author.

Title: Climate change and capitalism in Australia : an eco-socialist vision for the future / Hans A. Baer.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Subjects: LCSH: Climatic changesPolitical aspectsAustralia. | Climatic changesEconomic aspectsAustralia. | CapitalismAustralia. | Environmental policyAustralia. | EnvironmentalismAustralia. | Environmental justiceAustralia.

Classification: LCC QC903.2.A8 B34 2022 (print) | LCC QC903.2.A8 (ebook) | DDC 363.738/7460994dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021017063

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021017064

ISBN: 978-1-032-06489-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-06488-8 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-20253-0 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202530

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by Apex CoVantage, LLC

As a health and ecological anthropologist, I started working on climate change issues starting around 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, not far from where I was at the time situated as an academic at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Shortly after immigrating to Australia in January 2006 to start up a continuing academic position at the University of Melbourne, I have been working on climate-change-related issues full steam and have published, sometimes alone and sometimes with others, numerous articles, book chapters, and books that touch upon climate change and sustainability issues in one way or the other. Since 2008, at some level I have acted as a climate justice activist, seeking to engage in praxis or the merger of theory and social action. I have attended numerous climate rallies and climate action conferences in the larger society and also climate-change-related seminars, lectures, and panel discussions on climate-change-related issues, particularly at the University of Melbourne but also at other Australian universities. People in these settings almost uniformly accept the findings of climate science that anthropogenic climate change is already having devastating impacts on human populations and non-human species around the world, including Australia. They generally are not climate deniers or skeptics who one might find in the more conservative corridors of corporate and political life or the larger society. Nevertheless, while there may be a recognition that specific practices or activities, such as fossil fuel production and utilization, consumption, or meat eating, contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and thereby climate change, I have found that there is often a reluctance to situate these drivers under a larger driver, namely capitalism, a world system that has diffused to virtually every inhabitable corner of the world. I am not entirely sure why this is the case, but I suspect that it often is that people generally are deeply embedded in the system, and coming to terms with this might require drastic social and behavioral changes.