Strategies for Rapid Climate Mitigation : Wartime mobilisation as a model for action?

Drawing upon episodes of wartime mobilisations, this book lays out contingency climate action strategies based upon the relative optimism provided by rapid deployment of demonstrated and proven sustainable energy technologies that could effectively abate further emissions. While the book makes use of these historical lessons as blueprint for climate strategies, it also critically examines the appropriateness, limitations and challenges of the contingency plan.

To keep the global average temperature from rising further than 2°C, emissions must peak soon and then fall steeply. This book examines how such rapid mitigation can proceed – in the scale and speed required for effective climate action – using an analogy provided by the mobilisation for a war that encompassed nations, the Second World War.

examines the wartime-climate analogy by drawing lessons from wartime mobilisations to develop contingency plans for a scenario where governments implement stringent mitigation programs as an ‘insurance policy’ where we pay for future benefits. Readers are provided a picture of how these programs could look, how they would work, what could trigger them, and the challenges in execution. The book analyses in detail one plausible approach to a crucial issue – an approach built upon knowledge of climate science and on proven and demonstrated mitigation measures. The book is meshed with a social and political analysis that draws upon narratives of mobilisations during the war to meet a transnational threat, while also addressing the shortcomings of the analogy and its strategies.

The book will be of great interest to scholars, students, and practitioners of public policy, climate policy, energy policy, international relations, and strategic studies.