Against the planetary: carbon fetishism and the politics of false solutions

Why does climate action so often take socially regressive and ecologically destructive forms? Building on Stuart Hall, we argue that regressive climate change solutions are enabled by an articulation between planetary-scale carbon fetishism and capitalist class interests. We term this global but uneven formation planetary climate politics. Planetary climate politics reduces the climate crisis to atmospheric CO2 management and a corresponding assignment of responsibility across states. This abstract planetary conception of the problem occludes political-economic context at multiple scales and separates climate politics from the politics of any actual social milieu. This leaves even ‘progressive’ climate advocates undiscriminating about possible solutions, enabling alliances with dominant classes around ‘false solutions.’ Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in coastal Bangladesh and the U.S. state of Louisiana, we illuminate the baneful consequences of planetary climate politics at sites of both adaptation and mitigation. More broadly we make the case for critical ethnographies of the climate crisis to challenge planetary carbon fetishism, differentiate emancipatory and regressive pathways of climate action and help the climate movement articulate with struggles for social and environmental justice.