What if all, or most, of these high level actors (i.e. governments, corporations, NGO's etc.) decided it was in everybody's best interest to pursue a particular agenda? In other words, there's no power shift per say, but they all become focused on a single goal. As I alluded to previously, climate change is an exponential threat to everybody.
It's a good question, and I guess that's the dream of climate change activism. But perhaps that shows us how difficult it is to get all these different organizations moving, and moving at the same pace. There's always going to be some who, at the very least, are going to be interested in slowing that movement down. In relation to climate change, that's big petrochemical or fossil fuel states (OPEC, the USA, Australia, Russia, China, Norway) and major industries based around fossil fuels (oil and gas companies but also airlines, car manufacturers, etc). Many of these actors may ultimately be 'draggable' on such a path, but they will do a lot to make the movement slower so they have time to adapt.
So in relation to the idea that a transformed world of capitalist-authoritarian governments and NGOs are going to emerge from this crisis, I'd raise the following major objections:
* Given how slow these actors are in moving on such a clear threat to existence as climate change, why would they all be moving in such an aligned way on covid-19, particularly because there will be some major casualties along the way?
* Why wouldn't lower-level actors (smaller countries, less powerful businesses or organizations) offer alternative models that appeal to the many people who want to maintain their freedom, in order to grow and consolidate their own power?
The last time there was anything close to a 'big-reset' was in 1945-1965, during which time European imperial projects were largely destroyed and the new structure of global capitalism produced. But this was at a time when global power was much more concentrated than it is now, and was in the aftermath of a thirty year period (1914-1944) that had seen two global wars with a depression in the middle. Even if we add the 2008 crash to covid-19, these just aren't at that scale and I don't see any
serious pretense that they are (there is always hyperbole). Plus we shouldn't forget that during that last reset, there was a huge split in between capitalist/communist visions of the future, and even though capitalism won-out, this was probably at the cost of very significant diluting of the power that had been imagined in 1945 when the UN, World Bank and other institutions were created.
I think it's right be suspicious of those who look to profit from what's happening, but as things stand I struggle to see where the impetus, power and authority to radically change global governance based on the last 9 months will come from.
www.gov.uk
