Abstract

The accelerating polycrisis has become a defining condition of governance in the Anthropocene, as ecological, economic, and political crises increasingly reinforce one another and generate systemic risk. This essay argues that policy paralysis in response to planetary instability is not simply a failure of coordination, expertise, or political will, but an ethical refusal embedded within prevailing political and economic structures. Contemporary governments repeatedly privilege short term stability and economic continuity over the existential requirement of planetary security, thereby sustaining the conditions that reproduce crisis. Drawing on normative political theory and critical political economy, the paper examines how fossil fuel dependency and petroaggression exemplify the moral failure of political prioritisation. It further critiques market based approaches to climate governance, including the promise of green growth, and argues that such frameworks are incapable of addressing systemic ecological limits. The essay advances the claim that governance in the Anthropocene requires a fundamental revision of normative standards through which political performance is evaluated. Political systems must be judged primarily by their demonstrated capacity to protect planetary stability and ecological integrity. Without such a shift in moral orientation, policy paralysis will remain a structurally embedded feature of contemporary governance, undermining the possibility of meaningful planetary protection.