In the struggle for breathable air amid pollution and climate change, both resistance and inspiration can be found in ‘atmospheric care practices’ (Vine 2019). In this article, I embed these practices in a more than human political approach (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017). More than human atmospheric care practices work to undo toxic harm both on a material and social level while intimately involving human beings with more than human worlds. In so doing, they are demonstrative of different kinds (...) of agency and political activity that open up alternative ways of relating and responding to climate change. (shrink)

This article examines the centrality of Brazil within the future of climate policy and politics. The state of the carbon sink of the Amazon rainforest has long been an iconic marker of the condition of the Earth. Brazil has been innovative in developing many non-carbon forms of energy generation and use and it has played a major role in international debates on global warming since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. We examine various ways in which climate (...) change has come to be centrally important in Brazilian public opinion. Survey evidence shows that Brazilians are the most concerned about issues of climate change – with less climate change scepticism as compared with more ‘advanced’ societies. Through using techniques of corpus linguistics we examine how Brazilian media has engendered and stabilized such a high and striking level of climate change concern. We show that the media helped to fix a ‘climate change framing’ of recent often strange weather. The article analyses the newly constructed Brazilian Corpus on Climate Change, presenting data on a scale and reach that is unique in this area of research. (shrink)

Obligations to reduce one’s green house gas emissions appear to be difficult to justify prior to large-scale collective action because an individual’s emissions have virtually no impact on the environmental problem. However, I show that individuals’ emissions choices raise the question of whether or not they can be justified as fair use of what remains of a safe global emissions budget. This is true both before and after major mitigation efforts are in place. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to establish an (...) obligation to reduce personal emissions because it appears unlikely that governments will in fact maintain safe emissions budgets. The result, I claim, is that under current conditions we lack outcome, fairness, promotional, virtue or duty based grounds for seeing personal emissions reductions as morally obligatory. (shrink)

There appear to be few ways available to improve the prospects for international cooperation to address the threat of global warming within the very short timeframe for action. I argue that the most effective and plausible way to break the ongoing pattern of delay in the international climate regime is for economically powerful states to take the lead domestically and demonstrate that economic welfare is compatible with rapidly decreasing GHG emissions. However, the costs and risks of acting first can (...) be very large. This raises the question of whether it is fair to expect some states to go far ahead of others in an effort to improve the conditions for cooperation. I argue that a costly obligation to act unilaterally and to accept weak initial reciprocity can be justified and does not violate standards of fair burden sharing. Rather, the costs of creating the underlying conditions within which we can hope to achieve meaningful international cooperation are non-­‐ideal burdens for which we can appropriately assign fair shares. (shrink)

Ulrich Beck and other theorists of reflexive modernization are allies in the general project to reduce technocracy and elitism by rendering decision making more democratic and robust. However, this study of U.S. climate politics reveals complexities and obstacles to the sort of democratized decision making envisioned by such theorists. Since the early 1990s, the U.S. public has been subjected to numerous media-driven campaigns to shape understandings of this widely perceived threat. Political interests have instigated an important part of (...) these campaigns, frequently resorting to ethically problematic tactics to undermineattemptsat policy action designed to avert or reducethe threat. The disproportionate in fluence of such interests suggests the need for a more level political playing field characterized by more equalized access to power and influence. (shrink)

This book turns critical feminist scrutiny on national climate policies in India and examines what transition might really mean for marginalized groups in the country. -/- A vision of “just transitions” is increasingly being used by activists and groups to ensure that pathways towards sustainable futures are equitable and inclusive. Exploring this concept, this volume provides a feminist study of what it would take to ensure just transitions in India where gender, in relation to its interesting dimensions of power, (...) is at the centre of analysis. With case studies on climate mitigation and adaptation from different parts of India, the book brings together academics, practitioners and policymakers who provide commentary on sectors including agriculture, forestry and renewables. Overall, the book has relevance far beyond India’s borders, as India’s attempt to deal with its diverse population makes it a key litmus test for countries seeking to transition against a backdrop of inequality both in the Global North and South. -/- This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate policy, gender studies, sustainable development and development studies more broadly. (shrink)

The emphasis on general distributive principles in the climate justice literature has left significant gaps regarding the problem of weak climate governance. The main contribution of this chapter is to show how normative theory can contribute to addressing the apparent political incapacity to respond to the threat of climate disruption. The chapter argues that a set of six underlying obstacles to effective climate change politics can serve as a framework around which ‘non-ideal’ normative theorizing about (...) climate politics can be organized. Policies and other tactics to mediate the six obstacles are shown to raise distinct normative issues in need of deeper analysis. (shrink)

This essay investigates the fit between solar radiation modification (SRM) and climate politics. Researchers, activists, and politicians often present SRM technologies as “radical.” According to this frame, SRM comes into view as a last-ditch effort to avoid climate emergencies. Such a rationale may be applicable to the scientists researching the potential of SRM, yet it only partially accounts for political and policy interest in SRM. In this contribution, I argue that there is an increasingly tight fit between (...) the promise of SRM technologies and the global regime of climate politics. Within this regime, SRM may not be a radical option but is more of a logical extension of current rationales. I argue that SRM corresponds to tightly controlled discursive rules within which climate politics operates, leading to a shifting narrative on the feasibility, desirability, and necessity of SRM. The ethical implications of this tight fit are threefold. First, it implies that SRM might be an instrument of mitigation deterrence, implicitly as much as explicitly. Second, ethical responsibility and political value debates are at risk of becoming invisible once SRM becomes embedded in the prevailing regime. Third, SRM use might become inevitable, despite the good intentions of most people involved. (shrink)

There is a major divide between the work of normative theorists and concrete climate action (or inaction) politics and policies. In this volume, authors tackle the strained relationships between principles of justice and climate politics by responding to real-world climate politics and policies, offering proposals and analyses that take concerns of feasibility seriously, and identifying immediate justice and feasibility concerns with recent proposals for climate action. Contributors look at questions of feasibility as they (...) relate to specific international institutions like the IPCC and UNFCCC, and widely discussed principles of climate justice, including backward-looking principles like polluter pays and forward-looking principles like ability to pay. Others explore the feasibility hurdles and justice concerns that challenge popular mitigation proposals. (shrink)

Zygon®, Volume 57, Issue 1, Page 287-289, March 2022.

Climate change poses a serious problem for established ethical theories. There is no dearth of literature on the subject of climate ethics that break down the complexity of the issue, thereby enabling one to arrive at partial conclusions such as: 'historical justice demands us to do this...' or 'intergenerational justice demands us to do that...'. In contrast, this article attempts to face up to this complexity, that is: to end with a synthesis of the arguments into what can (...) be considered to be the most reasonable and fairest approach to the politics of climate change on a global scale. A significant part of the paper is devoted to the questions whether or not a) historical emissions and b) population changes are relevant to how emissions rights should be distributed. I discuss the merits and drawbacks of each perspective and briefly outline the normative justifications. (shrink)

Responding to the unique challenge posed by the climate crisis, several recent commentators have invoked the concept of basic needs. Whilst that concept proves useful in meeting many of the distinctive practical and normative problems posed by climate change, those commentators largely neglect the politics surrounding our needs. This article responds by distinguishing three notionally sequential political moments – the politics behind needs, in specifying needs, and following needs – showing how each of these problematizes any (...) attempt to determine the normative importance of needs outside of the political. I finish by considering the implications for needs-based approaches to the climate crisis. (shrink)

This article explores the international dimensions of multinationals' corporate political activities, focusing on an international issue—climate change—being implemented differently in a range of countries. Analyzing data from Financial Times Global 500 firms, it examines the influence on types and process of multinationals' political strategies, reckoning with institutional contexts and issue saliency. Findings show that the type of political activities can be characterized as an information strategy to influence policy makers toward market-based solutions, not so much withholding action on emission (...) reduction. Moreover, multinationals pursue self-regulation, targeting a broad range of political actors. The process of political strategy is mostly one of collective action. International differences particularly surface in the type of political actors aimed at, with U.S. and Australian firms focusing more on nongovernment actors (voluntary programs) than European and Japanese firms. Influencing home-country (not host-country) governments is the main component of international political strategy on climate change. (shrink)

In this commentary, the author argues that the alleged failure of the Copenhagen climate summit in December 2009, and in particular the role played by the developing countries, should be embraced as a political accomplishment opening up a moment of political opportunity. Admittedly Copenhagen was a political failure, albeit of a populist consensual policy practice that invokes the semi-scientific threat of an apocalyptic doomsday scenario to make everybody toe the line of the neo-liberal market economy. Now that we are (...) at the point where this consensual policy approach has imploded under its own weight, the time is right to revive the climate and, by extension, the environment as a matter of genuine political concern that is open to struggle and contestation, in this way constituting an essential component of social change. (shrink)

Public perceptions are well established as a key factor in support for climate change mitigation policies, and they tend to vary both within and between countries. Based on data from the European Social Survey Round 8 (N = 44 387), we examined the role of climate change beliefs and political orientation in explaining worry about climate change across 23 countries. We show that belief in anthropogenic climate change, followed by expectations of negative impacts from climate (...) change, are the strongest predictors of worry about climate change. While the strength of the association between political orientation and worry about climate change varies across countries, self-positioning further to the right of the political spectrum is associated with lower levels of worry in most of the countries included in the analysis. We further show that political orientation moderates the relationship between climate change beliefs and worry. While increased confidence in the anthropogenic nature of climate change and expectations of negative impacts are both associated with increased worry across the political spectrum, the relationship is weaker among right-leaning as compared to left-leaning individuals. Notably, the main effect of political orientation on worry about climate change is no longer statistically significant when the interaction terms are present. Finally, a relatively small amount of the explained variance in worry is attributable to differences between countries. The findings might inform strategies for climate change communication in a European context. (shrink)

This book provides the first systematic critique of the concept of climate change adaptation within the field of international development. Drawing on a reworked political ecology framework, it argues that climate is not something 'out there' that we adapt to. Instead, it is part of the social and biophysical forces through which our lived environments are actively yet unevenly produced. From this original foundation, the book challenges us to rethink the concepts of climate change, vulnerability, resilience and (...) adaptive capacity in transformed ways. With case studies drawn from Pakistan, India and Mongolia, it demonstrates concretely how climatic change emerges as a dynamic force in the ongoing transformation of contested rural landscapes. In crafting this synthesis, the book recalibrates the frameworks we use to envisage climatic change in the context of contemporary debates over development, livelihoods and poverty.With its unique theoretical contribution and case study material, this book will appeal to researchers and students in environmental studies, sociology, geography, politics and development studies. (shrink)

Climate activists have recently engaged in widely publicized acts of politically motivated lawbreaking. This article identifies and critically analyzes two seemingly overlapping but in fact divergi...

Is authoritarian power ever legitimate? The contemporary political theory literature—which largely conceptualizes legitimacy in terms of democracy or basic rights—would seem to suggest not. I argue, however, that there exists another, overlooked aspect of legitimacy concerning a government’s ability to ensure safety and security. While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 (...) pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach. While unsettling, this suggests the political importance of climate action. For if we wish to avoid legitimating authoritarian power, we must act to prevent crises from arising that can only be resolved by such means. (shrink)

Public sentiment regarding climate change in the United States is starkly divided, with the Republicans and Democrats holding markedly different views. Given the inherent connection between the water crisis and climate change, this research aimed to investigate the interplay between the residents’ beliefs about the impact of climate change on water supply unpredictability, their political identity, and their willingness to adopt direct and indirect potable water reuse. The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was conducted on a dataset (...) of 1,831 water users in the arid region of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The findings reveal a complicated interplay among examined factors. Specifically, we discovered a positive association between the belief in the impacts of climate change and the willingness to adopt potable water reuse among non-Republican water users. In contrast, Republican water users exhibit a negative association between climate change belief and willingness to adopt potable water reuse. Interestingly, despite this, Republicans generally show a higher overall willingness to adopt potable water reuse compared to non-Republicans. These findings suggest that contextual factors in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in which challenges of aridity and economic dependence on water resources are pronounced, might be important aspects contributing to the Republican’s high willingness to adopt potable water reuse. Also, the current climate change communication strategy with the Republicans might not be appropriate, and it should be tailored to align with the Republicans’ beliefs and persuade them better. (shrink)

Political liberals refuse that there are biophysical limits to human wealth accumulation. Coal fuelled the first liberal political economy — England’s — for 800 years before coal smoke was legally regulated in London. The English also have an enduring love for the diverse and scenic quality of their island nation, and a long history of commons governance that predates the acts of land theft which accompanied the emergence of political liberalism. By contrast the United States is a modern liberal polity (...) with little collective memory of commons. American political economists therefore refuse that commons can be collectively governed, or even that atmospheric pollution may be conceived as a problem of commons governance. The historically unsituated character of North American liberals — and liberalism more generally — also explains their inability adequately to describe moral connections between past, present and future generations implicated in anthropogenic climate change. The Christian account of the spiritual communion of saints remains a more powerful intergenerational narrative than political liberalism. As interpreted by Tolstoy, Gandhi and John Howard Yoder, true spiritual communion is characterised by the Christ-shaped refusal to render evil for evil. This refusal is an essential corrective to the realist and violent frame of international relations in which the international implications of climate change is conventionally conceived. (shrink)

European Journal of Political Theory, Ahead of Print. How should responsibility be theorized in the context of the global climate crisis? This question is often framed through the language of distributive justice. Because of the inequitable distribution of historical emissions, climate vulnerability, and adaptation capacity, such considerations are necessary, but do not exhaust the question of responsibility. This article argues that climate change is a structural injustice demanding a theory of political responsibility. Agents bear responsibility not in (...) virtue of their individual causal contribution or capacity, but because they participate in and benefit from the carbon-intensive structures, practices, and institutions that constitute the global political and economic system. Agents take responsibility by engaging in collective political action to transform these structures that generate both climate hazards and unjust relationships of power. By incorporating distributive principles within a capacious conception of political responsibility, this framework advances the theory and practice of climate justice in two ways. First, adopting a relational rather than individualistic criterion of responsibility better makes sense of how and why individuals bear responsibility for a global and intergenerational injustice like climate change. Second, framing climate justice in terms of political responsibility for unjust structural processes better orients and motivates the political action necessary for structural transformation. (shrink)

The promotion of conservation agriculture for smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa is subject to ongoing scholarly and public debate regarding the evidence-base and the agenda-setting power of involved stakeholders. We undertake a political analysis of CA in Zambia that combines a qualitative case study of a flagship CA initiative with a quantitative analysis of a nationally representative dataset on agricultural practices. This analysis moves from an investigation of the knowledge politics to a study of how the political agendas of the (...) actors involved are shaping agrarian practices. From its initial focus on CA as soil conservation and sustainable agriculture, the framing of the initiative has evolved to accommodate shifting trends in the policy arena. In tandem with the increased focus on climate adaptation, we see an increased emphasis on private sector-led modernisation. The initiative has shifted its target group from the poorest smallholders to prospective commercial farmers, and has forged connections between its farmer-to-farmer extension network and private input suppliers and service providers. The link between CA and input intensification is reflected in national statistics as a significantly higher usage of herbicides, pesticides and mineral fertilizer on fields under CA tillage compared to other fields. We argue that the environmental and participation agendas are used to buttress CA as an environmentally and socially sustainable agricultural development strategy, while the prevailing practice is the result of a common vision for a private sector-led agricultural development shared between the implementing organisation, the donor and international organisations promoting a new green revolution in Africa. (shrink)

An inquiry into how to build the political force to make a global Green New Deal a reality.

China's political environment offers limited space for critical debates on domestic politics. In such a constrained environment, people tend to represent and articulate climate change issues without explicitly addressing their political aspects. The aim of this paper is to examine this political ambiguity in climate change discourses. Q methodology was employed to elicit the subjective positions of forty-five young and educated Chinese individuals. Three discourses were extracted: namely, prosaic environmentalism, co-operative economic optimism and actor scepticism. These discourses (...) do not indicate critical intent and deep engagement in the political arguments regarding climate change. This raises concern about the growth of climate citizenship within the country. (shrink)

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season was one of the most destructive in recent history. Scientists attributed the hurricanes’ increased intensity, frequency, duration, and reach to climate change (Sn...

The available choices of political responses to disruption in the global climatic system depend in part on how the problem is conceptualized. Researchers and policymakers often invoke a “climate crisis” or “climate emergency,” but such language fits poorly with current knowledge of the problem's physical causes and social impacts. This article argues that climate change is instead more like a political epic. It involves neither sudden onset, as in the concept of emergency, nor decisive resolution, as in (...) the concept of crisis, but rather a protracted ordeal of (temporally) obscure origins and uncertain outcomes. This alternative ontology of climate change highlights its novel temporal properties, including unusually slow-moving or time-lagged causal dynamics, with unsettling implications for academic research on the climatic-institutional nexus. Normatively, it undermines arguments for democracies’ environmental superiority over autocracies that rely on the former's general superiority at resolving crises and responding to emergencies. At the same time, some new arguments for democratic distributions of power become possible within the epic frame. More broadly, embracing the assumption of epic climate change may redirect attention from Promethean, managerial, or technocratic solutions to questions about which values or identities deserve preservation amid presumptively interminable and imperfectly remediable sources of disorder. (shrink)

Discussion of global climate change is shaped by the intellectual categories developed to address capitalism and globalization. Yet climate change is only one manifestation of humanity’s varied and accelerating impact on the Earth System. The common predicament that may be anticipated in the Anthropocene raises difficult questions of distributive justice – between rich and poor, developed and developing countries, the living and the yet unborn, and even the human and the non-human – and may pose a challenge to (...) the categories on which our traditions of political thought are based. Awareness of the Anthropocene encourages us to think of humans on different scales and in different contexts – as parts of a global capitalist system and as members of a now-dominant species – although the debate is, for now, still structured by the experiences and concepts of the developed world. (shrink)

Climate change is a product of the entire social and economic system within which we exist, in a word, capitalism.

Globalization -- Globalization and the environment -- Climate change and the crisis of philosophy -- Social conscience and global market -- Categories, environmental indicators, and the enlightenment market -- Environmentalism -- Pessimistic realism and optimistic total management -- Population statistics and modern governmentality -- Pragmatism -- Technological enframing -- Heidegger, the origin and the finitude of civilization -- Technology and the kultur of late modernity -- Embodied subjectivity and the critique of modernity.

As environments and their inhabitants undergo a multitude of abrupt changes due to climate, in the aesthetic field there has been a hardening of a few representational figures that stand in for those contested political ecologies. Biodiversity loss and habitat change can be seen to be forcing an acceleration of archival practices that mobilize various images of the ‘play of the world’, including the making of star species to represent planetary loss, and the consolidation of other species into archives (...) implicitly organized around the category of their destruction. The first section of this article looks at Jacques Rancière’s concept of political aesthetics in order to extend an argument about the importance of aesthetics in multispecies living beyond a concentration on practices per se and into a more excessive engagement articulated by Georges Bataille. I argue that aesthetics must be considered as part of the practice of politics and a space that configures the realm of what is possible in that politics. This is to suggest aesthetics as a form of ethics or an ‘aesthetics of existence’, as Foucault put it. The conclusion considers how a biopolitical aesthetic comes into being through such archival practices, and asks what aesthetic shifts would make the ‘play of the world’ more present in its absences. (shrink)

Irresponsible carbon emissions by businesses are the leading factor in climate change, which are threatening human civilisation. Global leaders did little to curb industrialists’ authoritarianism despite calls from all concerned. Many researchers believe that business has an important role behind policymakers’ inaction. In this context, the main objective of this research is to explore the impact of business on climate policy when they shake hands or embrace with politics. This qualitative study used content analysis to meet the (...) objective using primary data from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Conference of Parties decisions, and so on and secondary literature from books, dissertations, journals, and others. This study demonstrates that businesses have vehemently opposed climate science since its inception. When the issue became political in the 1980s, animosity intensified as they feared climate regulations would harm their interests. So, initially, they attempted to negate climate science by portraying it as something unproven and promoting climate change as an opportunity for humanity. They additionally applied a variety of strategies like publishing books, periodicals, research articles, and newspaper articles, spreading media propaganda, and giving donations to mislead policymakers. As a result, climate policy formation and implementation are significantly delayed, and business interests are protected. This study implies that businesses will suffer if civilisation collapses due to the unwise use of fossil fuels. Therefore, all stakeholders must prioritise collective interests over individual ones. Otherwise, it will engulf everyone. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#73-74; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2023 P 151-182. (shrink)

This article advances theory on social movements’ strategic adaptation to political opportunity structures by incorporating a narrative perspective. Our theory explains how people acquire and use knowledge about political opportunity structures through storytelling about the movement’s past, present, and imagined future. The discussion applies the theory in an ethnographic case study of the climate movement’s mobilization around the UN Climate Summit in Paris, 2015. This analysis demonstrates how a dominant narrative of defeat about the prior protest campaign in (...) Copenhagen, 2009 shaped the strategizing process. While those who experienced Copenhagen as a success preferred strategic continuity, those who experienced defeat developed a “Copenhagen narrative” to advance strategic adaptation by projecting previously experienced threats and opportunities onto the Paris campaign. Yet by relying on a retrospective narrative, movement actors tended to overlook emerging political opportunities. We demonstrate that narrative analysis is a useful tool for understanding the link between structure and agency in social movements and other actors affected by (political) opportunity structures. (shrink)

ArgumentDr. James Hansen's 1988 testimony before the U.S. Senate was an important turning point in the history of global climate change. However, no studies have explained why Hansen's scientific communication in this deliberative setting was more successful than his testimonies of 1986 and 1987. This article turns to Hansen as an important case study in the rhetoric of accommodated science, illustrating how Hansen successfully accommodated his rhetoric to his non-scientist audience given his historical conditions and rhetorical constraints. This article (...) provides a richer explanation for the rhetorical/political emergence of global warming as an important public policy issue in the United States during the late 1980s and contributes to scholarly understanding of the rhetoric of accommodated science in deliberative settings, an often overlooked area of science communication research. (shrink)

Global climate change raises profound questions for social and political theorists. The human impacts of climate change are sufficiently broad, and generally adverse, to threaten the rights and freedoms of existing and future members of all countries. These impacts will also exacerbate inequalities between rich and poor countries despite the limited role of the latter in their origins. Responding to these impacts will require the implementation of environmental and social policies that are both environmentally effective and consistent with (...) the equality and liberty of populations to which they are applied. This article considers whether global emissions trading, namely, the creation of a global market for tradable allowances conferring the right to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gas over a specified time period, is normatively defensible from a liberal egalitarian perspective. After a brief review of the theory and practice of emissions trading, a number of normative objections to the international trade in emissions allowances are analysed. These objections appeal to one, or a combination, of two claims. First, emissions trading schemes are likely to produce undesirable outcomes, such as environmental neglect, in the further future. I call these ‘instrumental objections’. Second, emissions trading schemes violate non‐consequential norms of justice and fairness. I call these ‘intrinsic objections’. It is argued that, when combined, instrumental and intrinsic objections indicate that instituting a global network of emissions trading schemes, as envisioned by a number of parties to the Kyoto Protocol and Copenhagen Accord, would be illegitimate in absence of significant procedural and consequential safeguards. (shrink)

The mounting pressures of the climate -and ecological crisis organising politics under a “new climatic regime” (Latour 2017, 3). The epistemic and affective interference of Holocene collapse (author 2022) mobilises Minority-world liberal and far-right resistance, driving feedbacks that undercut democratic capacities for mitigation and adaptation (IPCC 2022). This paper proposes approaching such resistance through an “ecology of practices” (Stengers 2005, 2010), thereby delineating a shared modern timespace linked to affordances of whiteness. In response, the paper proposes a ‘ (...) class='Hi'>politics of life’ that displaces humanistic agency as the bearer of historical progress and territorial integrity. (shrink)

This book explores some of the conditions and underlying causes of the multiple environmental crises facing humanity. Rooted in anthropology, but multidisciplinary in scope, it surveys the many socio-cultural and socio-economic errors, foibles, and follies that brought us to these circumstances. Crucially and uniquely, it outlines an array of viable and practical solutions, some of which are radically different from the current status quo and cultural expectations. The first chapter canvasses the emerging, interdisciplinary field of political ecology, then Part I (...) examines details and trends in agriculture. Part II portrays the threats posed by carbon dependent and combustive technologies as well as the hydro and nuclear energy systems now powering the majority of human actions in developed parts of the world and expanding beyond. The third part turns to consider solutions, including green new deals, de-growth policies, localization, agroecology, alternative energy systems, and many more possibilities. The conclusions engage with urgent moral and legal issues and outline social movement strategies-all related to our collective neglect of climate change-and then finally speculate upon possible futures. This book is key reading for researchers and students interested in climate change across the social and physical sciences and humanities. (shrink)

Wendy S. Parker and I have advanced an inductive-risk approach to the provision of climate information that relies on the contextual values of information users. This approach aims to improve the e...

This book reflects on Indonesia's recent experience with REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), all set within a broader discussion of neoliberal environmentalism, hyper-capitalism and Indonesian carbon politics. Drawing on the author's political ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Jakarta, Central Sulawesi and Oslo, where the author examined Norway's interests and role in implementing REDD, this book discusses the long evolution of the idea that foreign state and private financing can be used to protect tropical forests and the carbon (...) stored within them, resulting in both local economic development and global climate benefits. It shows how neoliberal environmental approaches to climate change, of which REDD is a leading example, increases the severity of political contestations that must be overcome to reach global climate mitigation goals, and how recent incarnations of REDD have tended to forget earlier scholarly advice to couple anti-deforestation approaches with policies that reduce industrial carbon emissions. In Indonesia, tectonic political and economic forces are shown to have negatively impacted REDD implementation. Using a political ecology approach, the book links the literature on REDD with that covering Indonesia's recent democratic regression, highlighting how the country's environmental performance is inextricably linked to the timbre of its political governance. Given the severity of the political contestations that must be overcome to reach its stated goals, REDD cannot replace global policies that drastically reduce industrial carbon emissions. This book will be of great interests to students and scholars of political ecology, deforestation, climate change, environmental politics, natural resource management and environmental conservation. (shrink)

Storm surges, flooding, heatwaves, and prolonged drought, as ever more regular features of life under deteriorating climate conditions, are unmistakably violent. Their effects on the lives of vulnerable human populations and ecosystems across the world are widely known to be devastating. Yet a legal order that denies the victims of such ecological persecution safe haven, no matter how great its use of force (e.g., detention, arrest, forced return) cannot, by definition, be violent. The power of law, used to protect (...) states’ rights to exclude from their jurisdictions growing numbers displaced involuntarily by global climate harms, in being a source of ‘legitimate right’, is never the same as violence. This article challenges the ongoing validity of this assumption. It points to some of the ways in which legal instruments are used today to deny those displaced by climatic conditions sufficient normative status to guarantee their safety. What is needed instead is a new critical normative understanding of the evolving relationship between climate change, violence, justice, and law, one that re-assesses the democratic justificatory grounds for the current positions of non-responsibility for the climate displaced whilst re-affirming such people’s legal and political status as equal co-members of the politically constituted international community of humanity. (shrink)

Climate concepts are crucial to understand the effects of human activity on the climate system scientifically, and to formulate and pursue policies to mitigate and adapt to these effects. Yet, scientists, policymakers, and activists often use different terms such as “global warming,” “climate change,” “climate crisis,” or “climate emergency.” This advanced review investigates which climate concept is most suitable when we pursue mitigation and adaptation goals in a scientifically informed manner. It first discusses how (...) survey experiments and social science reviews on climate frames draw normative recommendations about which terms to use for public climate communication. It is suggested that such normative claims can be refined by including the scientific alongside lay uses of a climate concept, and by using explicit assessment conditions to evaluate how suitable a concept is for formulating mitigation and adaptation goals. Drawing on philosophical theories of conceptual change in science and conceptual engineering, a novel framework with two assessment conditions is introduced and then applied to “global warming,” “climate change,” “climate emergency,” and “climate crisis.” The assessment suggests that currently, “climate crisis” is most suitable to formulate and pursue climate mitigation and adaptation goals. Using this concept promotes the epistemic goals of climate science to a high degree, bridges scientific, political, and activist discourse, and fosters for democratic participation when articulating climate policies. (shrink)

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges that human societies have ever faced. After a late start, it is by now rather intensely debated and analysed also in the social sciences and humanities, though mostly through overly generic explanations in terms of an instrumental relation to nature, of capitalist expansion drives or of the human longing for comfort. In contrast, this article concentrates on the socio-political transformations since the middle of the 20th century, which have been referred to (...) as the ‘Great Acceleration’ in the use of biophysical resources and in environmental degradation. It provides an analysis of the socio-political mechanisms that brought the resource-intensive path of social development about, showing how Western democratic societies tended to ‘solve’ difficult social problems by means of a triple displacement: onto other societies; onto nature and the planet; and into the future. As an unintended consequence, this displacement politics led to the globalization of resource-intensive development and to a planetary situation in which, at least as it appears in much of current debate, no further displacement is possible. The article concludes with insights for a more adequate approach to social phenomena of large scale and long duration in social theory. (shrink)

When the policies and activities of one country or generation harm both other nations and later generations, they constitute serious injustices. Recognizing the broad threat posed by anthropogenic climate change, advocates for an international climate policy development process have expressly aimed to mitigate this pressing contemporary environmental threat in a manner that promotes justice. Yet, while making justice a primary objective of global climate policy has been the movement's noblest aspiration, it remains an onerous challenge for policymakers. (...) -/- Atmospheric Justice is the first single-authored work of political theory that addresses this pressing challenge via the conceptual frameworks of justice, equality, and responsibility. Throughout this incisive study, Steve Vanderheiden points toward ways to achieve environmental justice by exploring how climate change raises issues of both international and intergenerational justice. In addition, he considers how the design of a global climate regime might take these aims into account. Engaging with the principles of renowned political philosopher John Rawls, he expands on them by factoring in the needs of future generations. Vanderheiden also demonstrates how political theory can contribute to reaching a better understanding of the proper human response to climate change. By showing how climate policy offers insights into resolving contemporary controversies within political theory, he illustrates the ways in which applying normative theory to policy allows us to better understand both. -/- Thoroughly researched and persuasively argued, Atmospheric Justice makes an important step toward providing us with a set of carefully elaborated first principles for achieving environmental justice. (shrink)

This article examines the efforts of the Obama administration and many other actors-ranging from non-governmental organizations, municipalities, and state governments to some Congressional representatives-to put the United States back on track towards international climate leadership. Efforts to shift policy direction, however, still face many hurdles. Over the course of the better part of a decade or more, climate skeptics and policy change opponents were able to seed doubt about the urgency of the issue in the public’s mind, establish (...) new organizations and strategies to fight against climate action, and institutionalize serious obstacles to meaningful policy change. (shrink)

I contend that to be politically feasible a global climate treaty must satisfy the International Paretian principle (IP). I begin by defending IP as a principle of instrumental rationality that reflects the fact of extremely limited altruism vis-à-vis foreigners. I then address two objections to my thesis. One holds that an IP treaty is either economically infeasible or, contrary to its proponents’ claim, does not require side payments from poor states to rich ones. The other holds poor states will (...) reject any climate treaty that requires such side payments because it ignores or exacerbates their unjust treatment by rich states. (shrink)

Many fear that climate change will lead to the collapse of civilization. I argue both that this is unlikely and that the fear is potentially harmful. Using examples from recent disasters I argue that climate change is more likely to intensify the existing social order—a truly terrifying prospect. The fear of civilizational collapse is part of the climate crisis; it makes us fear change and prevents us from imagining different social relations which is necessary if we are (...) to survive the coming disasters and prevent further escalation. Using affect theory, I claim that our visions of the future affect our ability to act in the present. Rather than imagining a terrifying societal breakdown, we can look at how communities have survived recent disasters to get an image of what we need to expand upon to prepare for the future. (shrink)