The Shortcomings of Rationalist claims: Carbon Taxation and Political-Economy Approaches to Climate Change

Abstract

As the devastating impacts of climate change continue to loom across the world, it comes to a surprise then why responses by nation-states have been too slow and lacking for a supposed destructive, debilitating and critical-to-survival threat. This then negates the rationalist perspectives of the states which assume that playing games of survival are what nation-states do on a day-to-day basis. To that end, this paper proposes an alternative explanation, which uses a political-economy approach to conclude disconnect between the zero-sum understandings of political-security perspectives within a liberal-capitalistic world order that thrives of positive-sum narratives. This paper shall exclusively use the case of a possible universal carbon taxation and the typologies thereof to conclude how a political-economy approach should be appropriate for a political-security end with regards to climate change.