The most challenging issue is that, if serious mitigation efforts are to be
engaged in, the timescale in question is so tight, a peak in emissions within the next
decade, followed by a rapid decrease, that serious engagement with the most
powerful actors to hand must be in order. The merits of an internationalist
perspective, as set out in the previous chapter, are obvious here. Indeed Anthony
Giddens suggests that rather than awaiting a universal multi-lateral settlement, we
should resurrect the idea of coalitions of the willing and look to a vanguard of what
Lawler would term “good states”.^37
What I have briefly attempted to illustrate in this section is that the
humanitarian “politics of humanity” approach contains useful conceptual tools for
thinking about the problem of climate change, an application of the approach that
merits further academic research. What I was unable to provide was a powerful
argument for why a humanitarian perspective is very likely to prompt the drastic
and urgent action that may be required. However, one thing that is clear is that
should we fail to create a “politics of humanity” commensurate with the problem,
we will have to look to humanitarianism, and to the resources of human solidarity it
suggests, to pick up the pieces. It may be that, in a strange way, what might seem to
be preventive action to mitigate climate change is in fact closer to a last resort
occasion for rescue. Should this moment pass, acts of rescue, in a basic, visceral
sense, threaten to be more than ever a core subject matter of international politics.
Conclusion
This chapter has briefly concluded the analysis of this thesis, by suggesting that
while humanitarianism cannot afford the luxury of self-congratulation, a broader
understanding of the endeavour as a “politics of humanity” contains some hopeful
hints to the possibility of greater human solidarity. It has also brought out that while
37
This recalls the roots of classical internationalism in the Concert politics of the nineteenth
century, as studied by Cartsen Holbraad. Giddens, The Politics of Climate Change , 226.
Holbraad, The Concert of Europe: A Study in German and British International Theory 1815-
1914.