Realist take on Climate Change Strikes

Leaving my own opinions on the climate change strike out of the picture, I began to put myself in the mindset of a realist and shape my view of the world to prioritize nationalism, power balance, and resource strategy at the top of the list. When reflecting on the properties of realism that we discussed in class on Monday, and comparing these ideas with the mass movement of protests that occured in the last several days, I came to the conclusion that realist would likely condemn the strikes as ineffectual and naive. While this sounds controversial and maybe ironic (to call climate strikes naive), I think that realists would argue that climate strikes really don't do much to change the reality underlying the problem.

Whether or not a specific realist agrees with the general concept of the climate strikes, the cynicism and harshly straightforward take on world politics by realists prevents them from seeing the concrete value of these events. For example, a realist, who may be concerned with oil coercion or power dynamics between contries in conflict or hegemonic adversaries, likely would assert that the nature of the current world economy and therefore hierarchy of power depends way too much on practices that harm the envrionment such as the utilization of fossil fuels to allow groups of citizens to have as immediate of an effect as they are hoping/protesting for.

I think that the climate strikes wouldn't be characterized by realists as anything else than idealism. A realists take on the climate situation would likely be to suggest envoronmentalism in the lense of practices which would give a nation or group a tangible edge in power dynamics. An example of this may be to suggest that a country invests heavily in highly efficient renewable energy, or something of the sorts, in order to push itself ahead of its contemporaries in the long run.

In some senses, the realist perspective is like a dip into cold water, you don't want to stay in too long for fear of freezing up in the inherent cynicism and harsh take on reality, but once in a while it is important to approach things from a place free of disillusionment and refresh your perspective.