Essay: Cosmopolitanism

Exercise 2.5
On a chilly Friday morning in 2016, June 24th at 7:20 GMT to be precise, the United Kingdom woke up to a 51.9% leave vote. Brexit was official. After a long, controversial campaign, the tight race resulted in England’s decision to leave the European Union, with negotiations now in their final stages. Campaign strategies were walking on the edge of legality, with the “Vote Leave” campaign just recently receiving a £61.000 fine for breaking campaign rules. In the centre of this campaign were the infamous “Boris buses”, with the slogan “We send £350.000 to the EU a day, let’s fund our NHS instead” printed in big white writing on the red double-decker, and “Let’s take back control” printed in smaller writing nearer the ground, buses disputed by politicians claiming that these were either underestimations or outright lies. While the main focus has been on the bigger writing, the economic benefits of voting stay leave, and the legality and legitimacy of various claims, when we turn our focus away from the legal and economic issues of Brexit, and instead focus on the environmental implications, we will realize further, worldwide implications that will develop with Brexit, and further questions will be raised. What is the United Kingdom taking back control of? When overlooking the phrase “Let’s take back control” and the environmental impact of Brexit in discussions of the campaigns credibility and the referendums future impact, we are neglecting our responsibility of holding Britain accountable for their actions. When favouring the “imposed community”, a uniform, independent UK over the “imposed community” that is the EU, Britain may in fact be taking back control of many political decisions, but in the taking back control, one forgets what control England will be giving up when negotiations conclude (Beck 2011). As argued by the Labour party’s Brexit spokesperson Matthew Pennycook, Brexit will allow Tories  to “to water down the UK’s leadership on climate change”, and with that England would be giving up control of the future, not only of the British Isles but of the entire planet Earth, neglecting their responsibility not only for themselves but for the entire world population (Tapper). Through the lens of Brexit, and by employing the work of James Tapper, Kwame Anthony Appiah and Ulrich Beck, I will attempt to bring into focus the environmental context, conflict and implication that is manifest in not only in the United Kingdom but in the modern 21st century society as a whole.
In the article “Cosmopolitanism is imagined community of global risks”, Ulrich Beck proposes a distinction between cosmopolitanism as a more active and voluntary affair of the elite and cosmopolitization as something more mundane that unfolds behind the national façade. He adds that there are three crises, ecological, economic and terrorist, where “the imagined community of cosmopolitanism becomes essential to survival”, yet the inevitably risk of this interdependent community, he claims, is renationalization (Beck, 1349). This risk of renationalization is exactly what has evolved from risk to reality in Britain. Before talks of Brexit, Britain a prime example of cosmopolitization. Walking through the streets of London, you would hear at least ten different languages in ten minutes and pass restaurants serving Chinese dumplings, French foie gras, Greek salad, Indian daal, Italian pizza, Japanese sushi, Spanish tapas and Turkish baklava. And these are only the outward noticeable features of England’s melting pot of culture. Over the past 20 years, migration to the UK has more than doubled and with the influx in cultures from all around the world, Brits were the perfect picture of  Kwame Anthony Appiah’s cosmopolitan patriots, who he explains as “[entertain] the possibility of a world in which everyone is a rooted cosmopolitan, attached to a home of one’s own, with its own cultural particularities, but taking pleasure from the presence of other, different places that are home to other, different people” (618). And Britain did and does in fact take pleasure in their presence. Appreciating the steady increase in GDP over the past decade cannot be done without appreciating the increase in the labour force caused by immigration. Appreciating England cannot be done without appreciating the harmony within which Jewish mothers, Polish fathers, Turkish daughters and Caribbean cousins chatting away on the same underground exemplify the diversity and multiplicity of voices that is so characteristic for England. Appreciating England cannot be done without appreciating pints during a pub crawl, the royal babies and a cuppa in the morning, afternoon and evening – and anywhere in between.
While Britain in many ways seemed to be thriving in its cosmopolitan patriotism, and seemed to illustrate the fact that Appiah’s ideal was in fact not just a dream but a realistic aspiration, the 2016 referendum made it very clear that not everyone appreciated these aspects of which many typically associate Britain, illustrating that Appiah’s ideal may in fact have some shortcomings. Appiah ignores the risks of cosmopolitization that Beck cautions. While Beck agrees with Appiah on the many positive aspects of a more cosmopolitan society, he claims cosmopolitanism to be “something active, a task, a conscious and voluntary choice, clearly the affair of an elite” adding that cosmopolitization “simultaneously produces unwanted and unobserved side effects that are not intended as “cosmopolitan” in the normative sense” (Beck 1348). One of these side effects became very clear on September 29th 2008 when the stock market crashed because the US Congress rejected a bill, yet the effects of this rejection and following crash didn’t stay within United States. In fact, it might have affected other countries even more; the United Kingdom was greatly affected. While the UK has seen economic growth over the past 20 years, if one zooms in on the past 10 years, it becomes very clear, that the economy saw a huge setback as a result of the international interdependency; and with a GDP that is still nearly 350 billion pounds lower than what it was before the great recession, it seems reasonable that some Brits are growing increasingly frustrated with the negative economic impact – such as the still lacking jobs – and needing something to blame. In this vulnerable state of a necessity to allocate blame, the interdependency and cosmopolitization became obvious targets – and as Beck said, the allocation of blame towards the interdependency and thereby renationalization is not particular for Britain but “can at present be observed in Europe as well as in many other parts of the globe” (1348).
Yet in the renationalization, Britain and the many other countries seem to have put on blinders that shield off the necessity of cosmopolitization – and the beauty of being a nation of striving cosmopolitan patriots. Beck claims that there are three crises – ecological, economic and terrorist – where “the imagined community of cosmopolitanism becomes essential to survival” (1349). When shifting the lens from the economic impact of Brexit to one such lens with a focus on the ecological and environmental impact, it becomes clear that renationalization is not the solution to all of Britain’s problems. At present, the United Kingdom’s government has a 25 year environment plan with goals to achieve clean air by among others halving the health effects of air pollution by 2030, achieve clean water by among others ensuring that the proportion water to supporting environmental standards increases drastically by 2021, achieve richer plants and wildlife by among others increasing woodland coverage to 12% by 2060, use resources more efficiently by among others doubling resource productivity by 2050, adapt to climate change and minimize its effects, minimize waste and so on. To say the least, Britain has a clear plan of cosmopolitan survival – and is not only implementing necessary environmental policies, but going above and beyond to be a forerunner and role model in climate change policy. Even so, the Labour party’s Matthew Pennycook’s concerns that the Tories will use Brexit to “water down the UK’s leadership on climate change” is a good ground for the concern that Britain might in fact neglect responsibility, and the fact that “about 55% of the UK’s planned carbon reductions are tied to regulations derived from the EU and would have been enforced by the European commission” further highlights the impact that leave will inevitably have on Britain’s environmental leadership – and how taking back control as the Boris buses claim Brexit to be doing might actually mean giving up control of Britain’s, and the world’s, future (Tapper).
At the recent United Nations Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, taking back control was at the core of all discussions, with the UN calling on governments all around the world to increase efforts to address and minimize the effects of climate change. And just like Beck, the head of UN Environment Erik Solheim emphasized that tackling climate change necessitated a worldwide interdependency and that “working together across nations, organizations and communities is the only way that we can tackle this enormous task” (Solheim). At the conference, it seemed that most nations were willing to come together and work harder than ever to combat the environmental crisis and achieve the sustainable development goals by 2030, particularly 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 . Whether this willingness to undertake global crises came from the necessity Beck links to cosmopolitization or the pure goodness of cosmopolitan patriots ultimately doesn’t seem to matter as long as the goals are achieved so to avoid annihilation. Yet it does matter when former cosmopolitan patriots make a U-turn and leave behind the cosmopolitan ideals for the patriotic sense of community. One such vital U-turn was that which happened on June 1st 2017 when Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris agreement, putting America First and denying climate change. The United States’ backing out of the Paris convention accentuated how the UN, like a fully cosmopolitan world, is more so an ideal than a reality. And when the organization that is supposed to hold nations accountable in their unity, the organization that might well be the only ones holding Britain accountable for persistence with their environmental goals after Brexit, is an idealistic institution rather than a realistic one, who is to hold an era of climate change denying politicians accountable for their actions, actions that will inevitably have a huge impact on the well-being and prosperity of future generations?
Because climate change deniers and fake news are in fact not confined to the United States as many Europeans like to think. The Boris busses are a prime example of fake news – and how we accept everything said in the media and in politics, never delving deeper into the accuracy of claims made. Claiming that Britain sends £350m  to the European Union in a week is simply not true; Boris Johnson himself admitted it after the referendum. In 1984, Margaret Thatcher won a rebate that reduced Britain’s payments to the EU to about £250m weekly – and this number ignores the weekly EU spending on the UK which is nearly £100m. Further claiming that the money would go straight to the National Health Service (if the number was accurate) also ignores the legislation costs of Brexit and changing policies to provide the NHS with more money. Yet this fake-news campaign went seemingly unnoticed until after the referendum, forcing the societally conscious to consider what else might have been omitted or lied about in the Brexit campaign, and to consider how Brits and Europeans may be as gullible to fact deniers and fake news as the Americans. This should be especially hard for renationalized patriots as Appiah claims they “are surely also the first to suffer their country’s shame; patriots suffer when their country elects the wrong leaders or when those leaders prevaricate, bluster, pantomime, or betray “our” principles” (622). So why do the patriots not become cosmopolitans in order to not feel the shame and try to make a difference? Maybe the realization of denial of facts only leads to further denial and patriotism, leaving the nations and world as a whole worse off in the areas of necessity as described by Beck.
Beck’s necessity of cosmopolitization in some areas are the necessities that make up the cosmopolitan in Appiah’s ideal cosmopolitan patriot. As Appiah states, one can love one’s country and be proud of it without harming anyone, but to continue advantaging everyone and not just one’s own nation, one must stay accountable – and hold one’s nation accountable in the cosmopolitization that the environmental crisis necessitates. And this is where Britain failed. Both the government its citizens and the citizens its government. Few drew attention to the outright lying in campaigning, and with a percentage of only 71.8% turnout, although higher than usual, one can only begin to imagine what the future may hold – not only for Britain, but for the world as a whole, because as Beck highlights, while “there are elite decision makers who take on or allay risks … there is [also] collateral damage, that is, those who bear the burden—the “unseen side effects”—of those distant decisions” (1352). As one of the great decision makers, and one of the countries that leaves a bigger footprint in various areas of the environmental crisis, Britain is neglecting the collateral damage that will inevitably become even more evident without a union such as the EU to hold them accountable. The question is not if there will be a slacking on environmental policies in the United Kingdom after Brexit, but what toll the unaccountability will take on the world-society.
This toll could be minimized by moving towards Appiah’s median ideal of cosmopolitan patriotism. Although there will be obstacles along the way to obtain this ideal, and even more difficulties in maintaining it, the struggles in negotiating a favourable Brexit, the inevitably decline in the US-economy following the tariffs on China and the seemingly close run between Macron and Le Pen are only a few, obvious examples that should provide incentive to work towards a more cosmopolitan patriotic world – which is in fact a necessity. We might be able to wait a few extra pay checks before getting a new iPhone as a result of the Chinese tariffs. We may accept the longer lines in European airports when traveling with a British passport which will now also require a visa, but the world will not wait. The climate is changing by the second, and everyone, especially influential nations like the United Kingdom, needs to be held accountable, whether through an institution like the European Union or by individual citizens in elections and referendums, boycotts and strikes, petitions and protests, the responsibility to leave a prosperous earth behind for the next generations cannot be neglected in order to regain our patriotic pride. And would the patriotic pride not grow if the grass was green again during British summers? If Christmas was accompanied by snow? If we could once again swim in non-contaminated lakes? Through the lens of Brexit, it becomes clear that now more than ever, there is a need for individuals to make their voices herd. For individuals to hold their nations accountable, so they in the future might once again hold one another accountable in a recosmopolitanized world where patriotism is not the enemy but the reason why our nations and world thrive.