Eco-social Convergence in Europe: Notes Toward a Renewed Internationalism in Times of War

The article posits that climate mobilizations can contribute to a renewal of internationalism. The argument develops in three steps: (1) the failure of market-based, UN-led global climate governance (or ecological transition “from above”) is assessed; (2) the rise of a class-based alternative to it, as exemplified by the myriad activist campaigns and industrial disputes fought under the radical “just transition” banner both before (2018–19) and after (2021–22) the COVID pandemic (or ecological transition “from below”) is described and analyzed; (3) the current exhaustion of the “expansive” terrain of eco-social convergence (predicated on a large consensus that some transitional policies were in fact needed, and urgently so) is acknowledged as a new “war regime” that has materialized worldwide. As things stand, the desirable horizon of a sustainable transformation of productive systems is no longer shared by most European elites. Deprived of its specific hegemonic terrain — the one that guaranteed mass participation in 2019 — climate justice is still a resource for rethinking internationalism in Europe, but no longer a mass movement to politically impose it. This scenario can be reversed, but only insofar as climate justice is not conceived as separate from social and anti-war struggles.