However extensive the coverage, global governance arrangements will remain aspirational to some degree

Abstract

No part of the world remains unaffected by human activity: we have created or conditioned the fundamentals of human circumstances around the globe. For both good and ill, the world as it is — ‘everything that is the case’ — is an outcome of our values and the aspirations they inspire. Acknowledging this does not nullify plurality as a fact or as an ideal, nor does it lessen the importance of contention and resistance to dominant forms of social, political and economic organisation¹ — in fact, quite the opposite. As discussed in Chapter 1, our globalised condition has left few aspirations innocent — that is, without far-reaching and sometimes undesirable consequences; and at least in the developed world we have become acutely conscious that aspirations in organised, social forms entail costs and outcomes that not even the most scrupulous democratic procedures can obviate. The extent of globalisation means that ‘we the people’ is no longer merely an expression of inclusion within a bounded culture or polity, but is now also the expression of a common human fate. So for example, there is a good deal about large-scale carbon emitting behaviours such as power generation, mass transportation and international tourism and their impact on distant peoples and environments that we could reasonably characterise as ‘collateral damage’.