EU and Brazil in the International Circuits of Disavowal of the Climate Crisis

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter analyzes EU-Brazil relations and joint initiatives to tackle the climate crisis, particularly the optimism surrounding green hydrogen as a possible new source of “sustainable connectivity” between them, through the prism of the psychoanalytical concept of disavowal. The chapter makes a distinction between climate denial, when climate change is deliberately denied, and climate disavowal, when climate change is acknowledged, but ineffective responses to mitigate it keep being repeated, in spite of contrary evidence and recurring failures. It argues that mainstream responses to climate change, centered on the conference of the parties (COP), which include net-zero pledges, carbon markets, and natural or artificial carbon sinks, constitute an international circuit of disavowal, in which the EU and Brazil are also caught up. This chapter presents some of the “solutions” being advanced to tackle climate change, presents the ample and readily available evidence that they do not work fast enough or on a scale needed to keep global warming below 1.5 °C, and investigates some of the reasons why they keep being offered despite all the evidence. It proposes that while climate denialism is obviously very dangerous, climate disavowal, which is in operation in the international climate regime, and in EU-Brazil relations and initiatives, including cooperation on green hydrogen, is much more insidious and constitutes a relation of cruel optimism, i.e., “when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing” (Berlant, 2011, p. 1). It may not work to mitigate the climate crisis, but it works in other spheres: it allows capitalist accumulation to continue unabated; it presents new market niches, new investment opportunities, and new activities in which one can feel useful, productive, creative, and virtuous. There are many benefits, material, symbolic, and psychic, being distributed by this international circuit of disavowal, which explains its durability and expansion despite, or because of, all the evidence that shows that we are heading for catastrophe.