CIRS Environmental Studies: A New Political Strategy for the Struggle to Limit Climate Change
About the Lecture:
In a lecture based on his latest book, Climate
Change and the Nation State: The Realist Case,
Anatol Lieven sets out a new political strategy to
mobilise support for the effort to limit climate
change. He argues that while international
agreements and movements are valuable, in the
end their purpose is to get states to act, because
(as the pandemic response demonstrated) only
states can take the measures and mobilise the
resources required. For this to happen, states and
their populations have to be convinced that climate
change is not just a threat to humanity in general,
but a danger to the vital interests and the long term
survival of their own nations.
About the Speaker:
Anatol Lieven is a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, where he teaches classes on
international relations, foreign policy, and nationalism. He is affiliated with several academic
institutions and think-tanks, including King’s College London, the New America Foundation in Washington DC and the Valdai discussion club in Russia. His latest book, Climate Change and the Nation State, was published in March 2020 by Penguin in the UK and Oxford University Press in the USA. His previous book, Pakistan: A Hard Country was published by Penguin and OUP in 2012.