Social theory and climate change in the interregnum

Rapidly accelerating economic inequality and climate change have produced social and biophysical feedbacks threatening to cascade into catastrophe. Both problems require fundamental alterations in ways of life and thereby pose normative questions about justice and fairness. The scope, complexity, and seriousness of the problems require major collective actions and policy changes. Social theory mediates between science and public life, and provides “big pictures” needed to rethink, deliberate and debate the directions of needed holistic sociopolitical changes. Addressing the biophysical big picture, Earth Systems Scientists (ESS) formulate planetary boundaries for atmospheric carbon dioxide to avoid a “Hothouse Earth Pathway” and preserve a “safe operating space for humanity.” This paper explores ESS arguments about stabilizing the climate pathway in light of social theory debates over sociopolitical changes needed to diminish the drivers of climate change and other global environmental problems, made more problematic by the nearly worldwide wave of illiberal, antiscience ethnonationalism.