The Environment— Protecting the Global Commons 417that capital must necessarily capture the state, which will then place corporate (com-
mercial) interests above those of the state’s citizens, its weakest and poorest. Thus, a
Marxist critique of the current period would hold that the United States— epicenter of
global capitalism— gutted regulations governing health care, food safety, worker
safety, and environmental protection in the wake of the global financial crisis. The
hammer blow of environmental harm (among others) then fell hardest on the poorest
in the United States, its trading partners, and neighboring countries.
Both realists and radicals clearly recognize that controversies over natu ral resources
and resource scarcity may lead to vio lence and even war. Drawing on Malthusian logic,
po liti cal scientist Thomas Homer- Dixon, as part of the Toronto Group, modeled how
the degradation of renewable natu ral resources may lead to vio lence: as resources such
as freshwater or arable land decline in quality or quantity, individuals and groups
will compete for these vital resources, resulting in violent conflict.^10 Many years later,
he added that climate change may also lead to insecurity and vio lence. This view is
consistent with the popu lar wisdom expressed by President Obama: “the long- term
threat of climate change, which, if left unchecked, could result in violent conflict.”^11
Yet the empirical evidence does not yet confirm the link. The very complexity of the
model(s) with multiple intervening variables makes them difficult to test. And so far,
scholars have not found a relationship between climate change and conflict.^12 Even
lacking the empirical evidence, realists legitimately point to the pos si ble security
threat.
Liberals have typically seen environmental issues as appropriate for the international
agenda in the twenty- first century. Their broadened view of security, coupled with the
credence they give to the notion of an interdependent international system— perhaps
even one so interconnected as to be called an international society— make environ-
mental issues ripe for international action. Because liberal theory can accommodate a
greater variety of dif er ent international actors, including nongovernmental actors from
global civil society, they see environmental and human rights issues as legitimate, if not
key, international issues of the twenty- first century. Unlike realists and radicals, who
fear de pen dency on other countries because it may diminish state power and therefore
limit state action, liberals welcome interdependence and have faith in the technological
ingenuity of individuals to be able to solve many of the natu ral- resource dilemmas.
Constructivists, too, are comfortable with environmental issues as an arena for inter-
national action because environmental issues bring out salient discourse on environ-
mentalism and sustainability. Constructivists are interested in how po liti cal and
scientific elites define the prob lems and how these definitions change over time as new
ideas become rooted in their belief sets. Constructivists also realize that environmen-
tal issues challenge the core concepts of sovereignty. One of the major intellectual tasks
for constructivists has been to uncover the roots and practices of sovereignty.^13