6 February 2023, 7pm (GMT-5), Woodside Hall, Carleton University and online
A planetary challenge such as climate change suggests the logic of an international collaborative response. The climate diplomacy that emerged at Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ was founded on the notion that its technocratic internationalism, underpinned by climate expertise, offered a politically neutral alternative to liberalism. These origins encouraged the expectation that climate diplomacy would neatly follow scientific advances, and produce multilateral solutions to the climate problem. That this process has proven to be more complicated warrants further inspection. In the wake of the conclusion of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment cycle, this paper reflects on this organisation’s turn towards the humanities and social sciences in its efforts to inform the climate diplomacy of the early twenty-first century.