Efficient Global Warming: Contradictions in Liberal Democratic Responses to Global Environmental Problems

As liberal democracies, what can the United States, Europe, and Japan be expected to embrace as “democratic” solutions to global environmental problems such as climate change? It is our argument that contradictions in liberal democratic politics lead these states to advocate solutions that are nature-ascommodity oriented and that idealize the notion of “managed nature.” In the case of climate change, we specifically argue that liberal democracies can be expected to pursue a policy regime of “efficient global warming.”