ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches the foundations of Western political philosophy leading to economic growth and to the concomitant explosion of global warming emissions, as well as possible solutions to the problems these developments present. Modern industrialization is based on institutional development. First, absolutist sovereign power was reduced, allowing for decentralized actions. Next, democracy developed, once again legitimizing absolutism on any subject. These institutional developments paved the way to the Industrial Revolution, and to an extreme spurt in Western economic growth following WWII, becoming global around 1970. In the last half century, this Institutionalist approach has been overtaken by a Planning & Control mode of governance based on increasingly operationalized and broadened democratic welfare theory. This new strand of governance has not yet proven to be effective in the climate policy domain, where it competes with the older Institutionalist approach. Majority support for climate policy comes from the liberal domain, broadly defined, but is less likely from authoritarian and libertarian political philosophies. Vastly improved Planning & Control and new Institutionalist policy may both be able to command majorities, linking to the two main strands of liberal political philosophy. Both may also suffer from current trends toward economic inequality and economic and political power concentration, which are linked to populism and more autocratic government. Stringent and detailed democratic controls on technologies or a broader redesign of institutions, including constitutional innovation, both could generate effective climate policy.
