(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Political scientist Nils Gilman is vice president of the Berggruen Institute, which is based in Los Angeles, where his co-author Jonathan S. Blake directs the think tank's program on planetary thinking. The adjective 'planetary' still sounds a little foreign, and the concept of 'a planetary policy' makes us pause. Why not simply 'global' – or 'international politics'?
The planetary, Blake and Gilman explain in the introduction to their ambitious book, has always been the human condition, but it is only in recent times that we have built up a planetary consciousness – planetary sapience. Somewhere along the way, the planetary awareness means that we are more aware that we live on a planet, and what that entails. But it also means that the planet, through human observations, reflection, communication systems and sensors, itself becomes conscious, and via human civilization gets a management system – which communicates knowledge and exercises power. It does not mean that this management system is optimal – or is designed for the planet's own good. On the contrary. Today, we rule the globe as a patchwork of mistrustful nation-states, which pursue their own interests, while we lose, or completely lack, a view of the earth as a whole.
A meeting between two traditions of thought
Schematically described, the book is a meeting between international political science and geoscientific theory. The natural sciences describe the earth as a self-regulating system. That humanity has become a (usually problematic) part of the Earth system was long seen as speculative and sensational hypotheses, but is today considered a reality – often summarized with the term 'anthropocene'. The origins of this conflation of human destiny and planetary evolution were first deeply considered by the Russian chemist Vladimir Vernadsky and his thinking about what he called the biosphere – the interaction of biological, chemical and physical Earth processes – and the noosphere ('sphere of consciousness'), which comes with man . The question is whether this awareness really creates unity, since despite all our communication we are more haunted by divisions than ever.
In addition, the authors mention theories such as Gaia-the hypothesis of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, who see the earth as a self-stabilizing organism. In addition, there are a number of concrete findings and facts that show how dependent we are on the planet, and how intertwined we are with other organisms – from the microbiome in the intestines and body of other organisms' photosynthesis, which keeps the atmosphere in balance. Here, symbiosis is a reality. But the question is whether it can be translated into politics.
The nation state as a problem
In contrast to all these hyper-complex and ancient earth processes, Blake and Gilman set the nation-state's short and in some ways random history. We have taken it easy nation statetaken for granted as political dimensions and sources of identity, but they show how new and in many ways constructed and random this political entity is. Many other forms of governance have existed in the past, and a number of other forms are conceivable. Equally, we are stuck in a political mindset where the nation-state is inevitable, and where national sovereignty is regarded as inviolable and sacred, both in political practice and as an idea.
It is true that there are endless subnational and supranational bodies, but sovereignty still follows the borders – and within these borders, the states have primarily one goal: to make the national economy work, to ensure growth and thus also the prosperity of the nation's inhabitants. A globe covered with countries in different colours, portrayed as 'ethnic containers', is by far a nationalist construction, which has created competition and blinded us to planetary conditions such as the pandemic, the climate crisis and natural crises. If the nation states oppose climate measures, or health measures, that is their own business. If they exterminate their forests and animals, that is also their business. So what can be done?
Planetary Institutions
Blake and Gilman's proposal is that we build real planetary institutions that also have authority. These differ from the international ones, of the type of UN bodies, which are mostly advisory. Planetary institutions must have both expert knowledge and political power to solve specific problems that the nation-state is too limited to handle. Since the problem areas are specific, the authors advocate a pronounced expert authority in this context: Perhaps epidemiologists and climate scientists should actually be given more political power, instead of being left as powerless whistleblowers and humble advisors who are overridden by economic considerations and other considerations of power. The authors highlight here EU as an experiment in supranational authority-building and discusses what we can learn from the European Union, for better or for worse, in the attempt to create planetary institutions with actual executive power.
They show how new and in many ways constructed and random the 'nation state' is.
How should this be done? Firstly, the principle must be that problems – including planetary ones – must always be solved as locally as possible, but that what remains must be left to the planetary ones. The point of this 'subsidiary' arrangement is thus to avoid a despotic world government that interferes in everything, while the criterion for power – that one actually has the power to solve one's tasks – becomes what will legitimize the planetary institutions. The planetary institutions do what no one else can do. The principle is therefore that the superior power should only be used where local or national bodies fall short.
The planetary institutions
In this spirit, an institution for the protection of the atmosphere and one to deal with possible pandemics, and both must, firstly, gather knowledge and, secondly, have a supranational authority within their area. The planetary institutions will make demands and exercise sanctions, while local and national bodies must work out the practical priorities and procedure. We can also think of other institutions that protect the earth from asteroid impacts – or monitor them nitrogen cycleone in agriculture – and as readers we can add others, where obvious candidates would be a strong institution that protects forests, seas and the seabed, or that provides for strict regulation of toxic emissions in agriculture and industry.
The authors are quite clear that there is something utopian about proposing a new political architecture for our planet, but as they say: "All alternatives – above all including 'doing nothing' seem completely unrealistic", given the world situation. One alternative is that a strong world power, "probably based in Beijing", takes over the governance, another is that we continue to wallow in what – in the jargon of political science – is a leaderless and thus structurally powerless 'anarchy' of states.
Proposing what the authors call a "new architecture" for the world's political power structure is ambitious, to say the least. As a counterweight to Blake and Gilman's utopian views, and what could be experienced as an extra-political ecological idealism, the book is full of caveats. The authors openly admit that they lack some of the most important answers we long for as readers: What kind of power and sanctions can the planetary institutions conceivably wield in practice? And how is it to be achieved?
Many of the unanswered questions are not weaknesses in the book's argument, but rather point to world politics' own shortcomings and pressing problems. And they invite us to think about planetary politics as a project that is still in its infancy.
Planetary policy objectives
What planetary politics should and must primarily be about, as they state repeatedly, is firstly the habitability of the earth, and the flourishing of all species ("multispecies flourishing"). The latter is examined less, and we can wonder where the discussion of the most direct consequences of such an ideal, such as e.g. the harmful effects of food production on biodiversity, the world population's escalating meat consumption or the rights and intrinsic value of other species. Having said that, one of the references is Bruno Latour, who has spoken of "a parliament of things" where non-human entities can assert their rights via human advocates.
In our political language, all living things, yes, even all rock and ore and undersea minerals, are still regarded as the nation-state's resources and economic property. Sovereignty still means that domestically there is total ownership, where the state externally exercises a sovereign rejection of all interference on behalf of the planet.
With planetary institutions, the planetary politics, mentality and identity will follow, the authors venture to assume.
Blake and Gilman show in their penetrating repetitions that the unresolved and new question of the habitability of the world and the flourishing of all species opens up a political landscape that feels almost refreshingly unfamiliar. The meeting between the geosciences and politics has only just begun to unfold.
