Jacob Lucas Samoraj
Abstract
My research is about America, its global role and the impact of American foreign policy as a force of good in the world. According to Friends of the Earth (2018: 2), ''the world’s richest 10% produce 50% of carbon emissions, compared to the poorest 50% of humanity who are responsible for just 10% of emissions. While climate change affects us all, it is the poorest and those who have contributed the least, who are often on the frontlines of climate impacts and are some of the most vulnerable.'' So America, the United Kingdom and other great powers need to show responsibility offering something more ambitious than what has been introduced so far. We need a national, or even, a global effort similar to the creation of the welfare state in the United Kingdom that followed the devastation of World War II. In a crisis, usually, it is the people who force governments to act to reconstruct society more reasonably. Once America directs the vastness of its great power on an ideal it can achieve success. The Manhattan Project from 1939 to 1946 is a historical case study when six thousand scientists and engineers from leading universities and industrial research labs were at work on the development of nuclear weapons. But these weapons proved deadly to civilisation. If America could mobilise a comparable initiative on directing its energy to the cause of healing the Earth while reframing climate change problem in an incentive-compatible way this could lead to a possible success (Keohane, 2014: 25). It accounts to finding a smart and simple method or at least building a movement. If humans could have developed weapons to annihilate the Earth, equally they can reverse this logic by engaging in an activity focused on the preservation of planetary ecosystems. Climate change seems to be one challenge where America could become a champion of change. ''American inventiveness has made us a technological leader in the past. America put humans on the moon, cured diseases, and ushered in the digital age.'' (Gore, E. 2019). Norm-centred constructivism offers a challenge for Realism. If the nature of international political reality is socially constructed, human beings have in their power to construct a better world thanks to norms. Modern diplomatic practices: discussion, persuasion, negotiations, plus agenda setting, coordination and policy pressure can be understood properly and applied adequately in the context of forward-deployed climate diplomacy. It could serve as a first-step for Earth's healing. Renewal of Earth could become possible only when ripe time action is undertaken in the form of immediate policies. And such change must start with America. As Kennedy stated in 1963, “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past are certain to miss the future.” As Brzezinski (2012: 185) noted, "Americans must place greater emphasis on other dimensions of national power such as innovation at home, creative education to offer equal start to every child, the ability to balance intelligently force and diplomacy, the quality of political leadership, and the attraction of democratic life-style." The quality of leadership is what has been particularly missing, therefore we have to demand action from our leaders. Skocpol (2013) has powerfully argued that efforts need to be made to construct a broad grassroots coalition to press for climate change legislation: “The only way to counter right-wing elite and popular forces is to build a broad popular movement to tackle climate change.'' (Ibid.). When it comes to solving climate change ''members of the American public have a strong aversion to what they see as pollution of the natural world and about their local environments.'' (Keohane, 2014: 24). However, they do not feel the urge of responsibility for a global issue such as climate. Sometimes, politicizing along the lines of climate change heats up. But there seems to be no coherent strategy, nor a far-sighted plan, nor a policy that would satisfy all. In the absence of unity, leadership and coordination at policy levels, there will be no thoughtful national dialogue nor planning while global civilisation may be getting closer to “crossing the Rubicon.” The current situation of indecision of policymakers puts children and younger generations ready to lead boldly on the global stage. They are the primary although unofficial decision-makers. But this stage must have a larger spotlight and a wider audience to have a real impact. Climate change is the type of challenge that America ought to be energised and eager to solve in an accountable and transparent method. This is because the current system is unjust to children. A robust, effective and energetic climate diplomacy usually rests on the will of the people, offers an impetus start and carries on consequentially and consistently through while making critical decision points and displaying a preference for working with allies, listening to people and rejecting the delay in policy implementation to keep the momentum going. America and the world need to change laws and policies through collective political action on a large scale. American decision-makers must remember that ''great challenges are great opportunities, and it is each generation's responsibility to meet those challenges with the same combination of energy, faith and devotion that President Kennedy and his contemporaries displayed decades ago.'' (Schlossberg, 2017). Leaders can solve climate change when they invest in innovation technology and implement policies informed by science. Science is extremely important since it may already have all the answers and solutions. ''There is a critical role that climate change science, broadly defined, can play in developing knowledge and tools to assist decision makers as they act to respond to climate change.'' (NRC, 2010: 1). Above all, global leaders need to show a pioneering spirit and realistic optimism based on the idea the climate change can be solved. Equally, solving it could be treated as an opportunity for civilizational advancement. Leaders will need to take actions that are energetic, flexible and robust (The National Research Council, 2010: 5). They will need to learn from new knowledge and expertise and adjust future actions accordingly to save civilisation. The problems of the world cannot be solved by sceptics and cynics, whose horizons are limited. If leaders are only reactive, not far-sighted or sagacious that might leave them more vulnerable. Current actions just to limit the magnitude and scale of climate change alongside with actions to mitigate/adapt to the impact of climate change are probably not sufficient to comprehensively address this problem. It does not work with leaders who pay attention only to the next election and have short-span political horizons. Nordhaus'es (2013) metaphor of leaders entering a Climate Casino is valid. Pursuing economic growth at the expense of suffering planet is a short-sighted strategy since ''it is producing unintended but perilous changes in the climate and earth system.'' (Ibid.). Such a policy will lead to unforeseeable and dangerous consequences (Ibid.: 3). Leaders who choose to be denialists are rolling the dice in a game of Russian roulette. Soon they will have to accept a basic fact that Gaia is ailing. As early as in the turn to the 20th Century, Aldo Leopold, a pioneer in the development of modern environmental ethics and in the movement for wilderness conservation, suggested a living Earth in his biocentric or holistic ethics regarding land. He argued that ''It is at least not impossible to regard the earth's parts—soil, mountains, rivers, atmosphere etc,—as organs or parts of organs of a coordinated whole, each part with its definite function. And if we could see this whole, as a whole, through a great period, we might perceive not only organs with coordinated functions but possibly also that process of consumption as a replacement which in biology we call metabolism or growth. In a such case, we would have all the visible attributes of a living organism, which we do not realize to be such because it is too big. (Harding, 2003: 44). Another influence for the Gaia theory and the environmental movement, in general, came as a side effect of the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the USA. During the 1960s, the first humans in space could see how the Earth looked like as a whole. The photograph 'Earthrise' taken by astronaut William Anders in 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission became an early symbol for the global ecology movement that crossed borders. At that time, the world understood how small and vulnerable we are as members of a particular species in a particular environment at a particular moment. It was international recognition and agreement on the unity of the globe. Humanity needs a similar global movement so that everybody is convinced about climate change including our decision-makers to make change happen.