Climate change and its effect on welfare states

This chapter considers the consequences of climate change on the functioning of welfare states. It explores this complex topic through an exploration of it in relation to the changing governance of welfare, making use of Jessop’s framework for its consideration, and examining how each of the four dimensions proposed by Jessop would be affected by climate change. Jessop’s examination for the changing governance of welfare suggested it should be analysed across four dimensions; economic (where a shift from Keynesianism to Schumpterianism was suggested); scale (with a shift from national to postnational as the dominant scale); welfare orientation (involving a shift from welfare to workfare); and the mode of governance (with a shift from state to regime). Later work updated Jessop’s framework to suggest a more extractive form of capitalism and welfare had emerged in the years since Jessop’s work, and which can be fruitfully applied to explore the tensions implicit in climate change, especially those identified by Giddens , and which help explain both the laggardly movement of governments to address the climate crisis, as well the likely consequences for welfare states of this lack of adaptation. The chapter suggests that, unless we are prepared to radically revisit the current, extractive form of the governance of welfare, the consequences for the welfare state and the environment are likely to be dire. Welfare states are increasingly likely to be utilised as a source of capital extraction rather than service provision for those most in need, while the decreased capacity of the services to address ever-more difficult circumstances is likely to be used to justify their increased privatisation. Instead, we need a new international settlement similar in scope to those of the 1940s, and which is based on addressing the climate crisis through a more equitable distribution of economic opportunities in ways which support the development of a new green economy.