Climate Change and the Nation State The Case for Nationalism in a Warming World

Lieven reminds us that nationalism is the most important force in motivating people to care about the wellbeing of future generations. The support of nationalism is therefore vital to legitimizing the sacrifices necessary to limit climate change and surviving and the effects of it (some of which are
now inevitable). This will require greatly strengthened social and national solidarity across lines of class and race. Throughout, Lieven draws on historical examples to show how nationalism has helped enable past movements to implement progressive social reform.

Lieven strongly supports plans for a "Green New Deal" in the USA and Europe. In order to implement and maintain such changes, however, it will be necessary to create dominant national consensuses like those that enabled and sustained the original New Deal and welfare states in Europe. Lieven
criticizes sections of the environmentalist left for hindering this by their hostility to national interests, their utopian political naivet, their advancement of divisive cultural agendas, and their commitment to open borders.

Radical and timely, Climate Change and the Nation State is an essential contribution to the debate on how to deal with a climatic crisis that if unchecked will threaten the survival of Western democracies and every organized human society.