Vanhala’s observation on the utility of reading Governing the End alongside Oceans Rise, Empires Fall is worth elaborating. Two foundational questions today are (i) why is the world facing a planetary climate catastrophe, and (ii) what can states do about it? My book attempts to explain (partially) the first part while Vanhala’s addresses the second. Bluntly put, I argue that the international system is structurally incapable of solving climate change because geopolitical competition dominates major state behavior. Vanhala’s book explains how the international system tries to govern the consequences of climate catastrophe.
It could be suggested that Vanhala’s book falsifies my argumentative claims: she documents how states, from the smallest island states to the largest and wealthiest, do recognize the deleterious consequences of climate change. And they have organized themselves to respond, creating initiatives like the Warsaw International Mechanism on loss and damage, building it into international agreements, and finally establishing a loss and damage funding mechanism. Global climate governance may be difficult, but there is a serious and sustained effort on the part of the world’s states to meet the moment and respond. In its predominant concern with great power competition, my book arguably neglects the agency of smaller states and “middle powers” while not engaging sufficiently with global governance institutions, agreements, laws, norms, and aspirations.
Yet, though different in their level of analysis and methodologies, our arguments are more complementary than contentious. My argument is a structural one that explains the marginalization of global climate change as a policy priority among states, especially the most powerful and wealthy. It is a problem added to the existing agenda rather than a problem that should redefine the agenda since the very stability of the planet is at stake. Vanhala’s meso-level ethnographic work traces how the damaging materialities of global climate change, and the global injustices involved in its unfolding, are recognized yet elided, slow-walked, and addressed only superficially. Both works are skeptical about the capacity of the existing state system and global governance mechanisms to confront the entrenched power of wealth states, fossil fuel interests, and a modernity organized around energy-intensive ways of life.
There are arguments that geopolitical competition could hasten the adoption of clean energy. The first is the self-interest of states in reducing their geopolitical dependence upon fossil-fuel-producing states, and the exposure of the external energy supply lines to disruption and blockage. Domestic renewable power, from wind, solar, geothermal and otherwise, is energy sovereignty and independence.
The second is the revolution in military affairs associated with the advent of battery-powered drone warfare and portable energy systems for fighters. These render large and expensive hydrocarbon-fueled systems—everything from aircraft carriers and battleships to cruise missiles, fighter aircraft, and battle tanks, and their logistical supply infrastructure—vulnerable to attack and destruction. Ukraine’s effective use of cheap drones against expensive Russian missiles—so-called “plastic on gold” encounters—and against its oil and gas infrastructure underscores the point and chokepoint vulnerability of hydrocarbon energy systems.
The third is the desire of aspirational world powers, like China, to project an image of ecological modernity to the world and to exercise influence through the provision of clean energy technologies to developing states. There is considerable evidence that China’s leadership is seeking to take advantage of the US’s denialism about climate change to position itself as a responsible world power in the international system.
The fourth is the demonstration effect of the enduring chaos and instability driven by geopolitical adventurism in major fossil-fuel regions. The United States snatched President Maduro of Venezuela in January 2026 as part of a scheme to bring that country’s oil under indirect US control. It followed this by launching a war in March alongside Israel against Iran with the goal of regime change. This risky action, and Iran’s responsive attacks against hydrocarbon infrastructures across the Middle East and Caucasus, and blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, have brought oil and natural gas supply chains in the region to a halt. Prices, predictably, have sharply spiked. This prompted UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband to declare that the latest conflict in the Middle East was “yet another reminder that the only route to energy security and sovereignty for the UK is to get off our dependence on fossil fuel markets, whose prices we do not control, and onto clean homegrown power we do” (Guardian, March 5, 2026). Perhaps in the manifest folly of the petro-wars of our time are some seeds of hope.
