Survival Governance: Energy and Climate in the Chinese Century

Abstract

The climate and energy crisis requires a strong state to change the direction, speed, scale, and financing of innovation in world capitalism in order to create a bio-digital energy paradigm. Four states are possible contenders for catalyzing this survival governance: China, the European Union, India, and the United States. China is an improbable leader, but less improbable than the other three. No US president can close down the fossil fuel industry in time. The US state, worried about the slippage of its technological superiority, is turning to regulatory mechanisms like intellectual property to slow China’s technological development. China will have to manage the risk of a United States bent on military primacy. China is urbanizing innovation on a historically unprecedented scale. Lying at the heart of the bio-digital energy paradigm is a global city-based network of innovation. China, more than the other three states, is scaling technology innovation through the building of experimental cities such as eco-cities, hydrogen cities, forest cities, and sponge cities. The Belt and Road Initiative will take this innovation well outside of China’s borders. China could help to place cities into a new relationship with their surrounding ecosystems. Drawing on more than 250 interviews, carried out in 17 countries, including the world’s four largest carbon emitters, the book shows how cities and their networks represent the best chance for growing climate survival governance for the 21st century.