Book Review: The Activist Humanist: Form and Method in the Climate Crisis

Climate and conflict crises increasingly occur together, creating compounded risks for household food security. This review synthesizes evidence from 37 quantitative studies published 2020-2025 on how climate crises (such as drought, storms, or floods), violent conflict (such as war and institutional fragility), and their interactions affect household food security. Most studies examine either climate crises (51%) or conflict crises (38%), while only 11% analyze combined crises. Evidence is geographically concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa (65%) and relies largely on cross-sectional surveys (68%), limiting insight into longer-term trajectories. Climate crises are measured mainly using meteorological or remote-sensing datasets (42%) while conflict exposure relies predominantly on self-reported data (71%). Only a small number of studies integrate geocoded climate or political violence datasets with household surveys, and few studies estimate interaction or spillover effects. Food security measurement is also narrow, with most studies using access and utilization indicators such as the food consumption score (FCS) (43%), household food insecurity access scale (HFIAS) (35%), or household dietary diversity score (HDDS) (19%). Across studies, climate crises, conflict, and their concurrence are associated with reduced consumption, lower dietary diversity, and greater coping burdens. Impacts vary by household assets, agroecology, and institutional or humanitarian support, highlighting the need for longitudinal and spatially or contextually explicit evidence measuring productive resilience rather than only short-term consumption smoothing.

Many academics today struggle with their role in the climate and ecological crisis. Increasing numbers take to the streets to demand stronger climate measures, not just as citizens, but as scientists and scholars. How should we conceptualize and evaluate such actions? I examine the responsibilities of academics in the context of the climate and ecological crisis. I offer a defense of academic climate activism that is grounded in membership of the academic community and its special position in the climate crisis, not in the specific expertise of individual scholars. We have a responsibility, as members of the academic community, to listen to our colleagues’ warnings, let their message sink in, reflect on it, and let it move us to action. Such action can take many forms, including collective action. In a context where such warnings are actively thwarted, participating in protest as an academic is not necessarily undemocratic, nor at odds with professional integrity.

The state and local governments are implementing emissions trading systems and carbon neutral policies to reduce greenhouse gases. Nevertheless, the Earth is facing a climate crisis due to the increase in greenhouse gases generated from energy generation, steel and chemical industries, energy in the home and transportation, industrial processes such as cement, agriculture, and waste. The number of cases of youth and future generations filing climate lawsuits in the Constitutional Court and courts regarding the climate crisis is increasing, and the issue of guaranteeing basic climate rights under the Constitution is becoming a social issue.
 Therefore, a public legal response is urgently needed so that the state and local governments can protect the lives, bodies, and property of citizens in order to respond to the climate crisis and achieve sustainable development, and guarantee the right of current and future generations to live in a pleasant environment.
 In this paper, after examining the concept of climate crisis and Korea's climate crisis response legislation, we review legislative precedents and precedents in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France to find implications for Korea. In addition, the provisions on climate crisis response are stipulated in the Constitution, guaranteeing basic climate rights to protect against damage caused by climate change, the role of the Climate Crisis Response Act, climate crisis response and cooperation through cooperative climate governance, and the freedom of the current generation to respond to the climate crisis. We review the role of public law by discussing emergency declarations and public law issues in response to the crisis of climate change, guaranteeing future generations' temporal climate crisis protection rights, and protecting future generations.
 For climate protection and response to the climate crisis, the Constitution should specify climate change reduction goals, basic climate rights, and cooperative measures to respond to the climate crisis, and legislatively consider the “urgent need” of the climate crisis beyond the concept of climate protection. In addition, in order to ensure equity and fairness due to infringement of basic rights related to the climate crisis, basic climate rights should be guaranteed under the constitution as well as legislative, scientific, and judicial responsibilities. In addition, the Climate Crisis Response Act should be enacted on necessary measures to make the climate crisis effective by public law. The Climate Crisis Response Act shall be guided and complementary in relation to the Building Act, the National Territory Planning Act, the Economic Act, the Disaster Safety Act, etc., and shall prescribe clear legal responsibility and due process for the climate crisis. In addition, climate crisis response requires cooperation by establishing climate governance between the state and local governments, between local governments, and between countries, so climate change reduction technologies and climate crisis response strategies should be shared, and legal countermeasures should be prepared in cooperation with each other. In addition, in order to reasonably allocate the cost burden of the climate crisis, the right to protect the temporal climate crisis should be clearly established legally and systematically to lead a life in a comfortable environment in accordance with the principle of equity and proportionality for current and future generations. The state or local government's climate emergency declaration and emergency plans on climate change crises and risks, administrative measures under executive orders, scientific predictions of climate crises and improve the vulnerability of disasters, and the role and legal responsibility of responding to climate crises should be considered in public law.

BackgroundAs the climate and environmental crises unfold, eco-anxiety, defined as anxiety about the crises’ devastating consequences for life on earth, affects mental health worldwide. Despite its importance, research on eco-anxiety is currently limited by a lack of validated assessment instruments available in different languages. Recently, Hogg and colleagues proposed a multidimensional approach to assess eco-anxiety. Here, we aim to translate the original English Hogg Eco-Anxiety Scale (HEAS) into German and to assess its reliability and validity in a German sample.MethodsFollowing the TRAPD (translation, review, adjudication, pre-test, documentation) approach, we translated the original English scale into German. In total, 486 participants completed the German HEAS. We used Bayesian confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to assess whether the four-factorial model of the original English version could be replicated in the German sample. Furthermore, associations with a variety of emotional reactions towards the climate crisis, general depression, anxiety, and stress were investigated.ResultsThe German HEAS was internally consistent (Cronbach’s alphas 0.71–0.86) and the Bayesian CFA showed that model fit was best for the four-factorial model, comparable to the factorial structure of the original English scale (affective symptoms, rumination, behavioral symptoms, anxiety about personal impact). Weak to moderate associations were found with negative emotional reactions towards the climate crisis and with general depression, anxiety, and stress.DiscussionOur results support the original four-factorial model of the scale and indicate that the German HEAS is a reliable and valid scale to assess eco-anxiety in German speaking populations.

The Climate Crisis and Other Animals is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of our planet and the animals who live on it. Twine examines the impact of the climate crisis on nonhuman animals and argues for the importance of a climate and food justice movement inclusive of nonhuman animals. The book examines the ways in which climate breakdown is affecting nonhuman animal species and delves deeply into the politicised controversy over the extent of emissions from animal agriculture, demonstrating the markedly lower emissions of eating vegan. Critical of misguided human-centred framings of the climate crisis, Twine makes clear the necessity of including practices of animal commodification, the importance of documenting the effect of a changing climate on other animal species, and the mitigative opportunities of a radical remaking of dominant human–animal relations. The Climate Crisis and Other Animals addresses the emissions impacts of radical land-use changes and the twentieth century scaling-up of animal commodification within the animal-industrial complex, revealing how this system is interwoven in the gendered and racialised histories of capitalism. Twine collates an impressive body of scientific research that demonstrate both the already enormous impact of the climate crisis on the lives of nonhuman animals and the need to tackle the dominance of meat-based cultures. Twine critically explores approaches to food transition and three potentially transformative scenarios for global food systems that could help dismantle the animal-industrial complex and create a more sustainable and just food system. Averting the climate and biodiversity crises requires nothing less than a radical transformation in how we see ourselves in relation to other species.

We are ever more connected, on a global scale, and our problems have no real borders, as we are increasingly aware in the ongoing discussions of the global climate and biodiversity crises. This collection brings together different vantage points on the interstitial relationship between these considerations. While the chapters in the volume are organized in three sections—perspectives on the climate crisis; concrete challenges of extinctions; and posthuman reconfigurations of human-nonhuman relations—this introduction traces other elements of continuity between the chapters: framing, vulnerability, and interconnectedness. We open by discussing how framing operates when considering climate crises and the nonhuman. Then, following Rachel Carson, we consider the notion of vulnerability, as we are faced with global problems of pandemic and climate crisis. This is shared—by human and nonhuman actors alike—but shared unequally and impacts disproportionately. The introduction highlights this phenomenon and draws connections along this axis. For, just as we are vulnerable, we are also interconnected, which is both a strength and part of our vulnerability. Our narrative responses to these challenges, paired with the goals of such a discussion, bring us back to the frame of the debate and frame the collection as a whole.

Climate movements led by students and the youth worldwide (and in particular, those in richer economies) have been recognized as having a formidable voice and making important contributions towards a more radical societal transformation to face the climate crisis. However, little is said about the contribution of popular sectors, who have been mobilizing for decades and demanding broader structural transformations—with proposals that tackle environmental issues more broadly and the climate crisis in particular—but who are not directly involved in climate politics arenas, such as the United Nations Climate Change conferences. Usually portrayed as vulnerable, as those most affected by climate events, as victims and receivers of adaptation strategies, or, as resilient, rarely do popular sectors appear as agents of transformation. Critical scholars have advocated for understanding the climate crisis as part of multiple crises, including the biodiversity crisis, a crisis of care, and a crisis of democracy. Situating our article within this scholarship, we argue that the scholarly and societal debate on climate change will further benefit from broadening the scope of which social subjects are considered as part of the climate movement. Based on our research with rural popular feminist movements in Brazil, and in particular, the coalition Marcha das Margaridas, we address the following questions: how are their diagnostics of, and proposals to, overcome the climate crisis embedded in their broader project of transformation? Additionally, how does their political identity within class, gender, and rural categories of inequality inform their positions?

The need to prepare school students to respond to the climate and environmental crises is rapidly rising up educational agendas nationally and internationally, but the role of the humanities, and particularly history, is often marginalised. In England, the main context of this article, the climate crisis does not appear on any official history curriculum documentation, reinforcing a separation of nature and culture. This is not surprising, given that the climate crisis in general has been engaged with so little in the humanities, but teaching climate change as a ‘science’ problem rather than a societal one risks exacerbating students’ anxieties and sense of powerlessness. By contrast, humanities subjects, including history, can furnish students with the knowledge and skills to respond in more constructive and critical ways to a crisis that they will experience more acutely than us. We acknowledge and welcome the work that is already underway in school history, but we also call for a greater urgency to reform history curricula and provide better support for teachers. Meanwhile, mindful of how painfully slow these processes can be, we also call on history educators and academics to take matters into their own hands and make changes within existing curriculum structures where possible.

Climate change is increasingly being framed as a “climate crisis.” Such a crisis could be viewed both to unfold in the climate system, as well as to be induced by it in diverse areas of society. Following from current understandings of modern crises, it is clear that climate change indeed can be defined as a “crisis.” As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 1.5oC special report elaborates, the repercussions of a warming planet include increased food insecurity, increased frequency and intensity of severe droughts, extreme heat waves, the loss of coral reef ecosystems and associated marine species, and more. It is also important to note that a range of possible climate-induced crises (through, e.g., possible increased food insecurity and weather extremes) will not be distributed evenly, but will instead disproportionally affect already vulnerable social groups, communities, and countries in detrimental ways. The multifaceted dimensions of climate change allow for multiple interpretations and framings of “climate crisis,” thereby forcing us to acknowledge the deeply contextual nature of what is understood as a “crisis.” Climate change and its associated crises display a number of challenging properties that stem from its connections to basically all sectors in society, its propensity to induce and in itself embed nonlinear changes such as “tipping points” and cascading shocks, and its unique and challenging long-term temporal dimensions. The latter pose particularly difficult decision-making and institutional challenges because initial conditions (in this case, carbon dioxide emissions) do not result in immediate or proportional responses (say, global temperature anomalies), but instead play out through feedbacks among the climate system, oceans, the cryosphere, and changes in forest biomes, with some considerable delays in time. Additional challenges emerge from the fact that early warnings of pending so-called “catastrophic shifts” face numerous obstacles, and that early responses are undermined by a lack of knowledge, complex causality, and severe coordination challenges.

A cross-sectional survey of climate and COVID-19 crises in young people in Indian slums: context, psychological responses, and agency

With ever-increasing focus from policymakers on the potential of vocational education to provide skills for livelihoods and sustainability in the rural economy, this study set out to investigate attempts at curriculum reform by agricultural technical and vocational education and training providers in the context of the dual crisis – ‘climate and economic’ – in Zimbabwe. The question addressed is: How should the agricultural vocational education and training curriculum respond to the climate and economic crisis to ensure sustainability? The paper highlights enablers and barriers to curriculum responsiveness. Moll’s model of curriculum responsiveness provided analytical lenses for the study. Data collection was through semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews, document analysis and observations, and analysed thematically. The study revealed that the climate crisis in Zimbabwe has affected both government and non-government vocational training centres in several ways. However, the curriculum was 'one-size fits all', focused on the needs of a formal labour market. Such a labour market has been decimated by the economic crisis and climate break down. Hence, providers of agricultural vocational education in rural areas ought to consider re-engineering the curriculum to be more responsive to a range of drivers, including climate change, especially within the rural context.

The thirst for system change is growing in the face of the climate crisis. Yet the prospect for translating rhetoric into action will remain remote if power brokers that benefit from the international financial architecture remain unchanged. Incontrovertible evidence shows that the climate crisis emanates from extractivist anthropocentric systems erected under colonial rule that have become entrenched. These were built by European powers based on their perceived racial superiority over others, ostensibly promoting Commerce, Christianity and ‘Civilization’. The colonial project was presented to their public and to rival colonizers as part of Europeans’ inalienable right to free trade, adventurism and proselytization. Decolonization ended direct European rule on other continents without accountability. The systems endured – promoted by colonists and accepted by incoming States faced with the desperate need to rebuild. These systems drive the climate and other modern crises. This book identifies a typology of colonial crimes that lie at the heart of contemporary injustice through examples from across the globe. The categorization intends to stimulate discussions around tailored remedies to combat the continued impact of these crimes in undermining peace, security, development and sustainability. The work addresses extractivist economic activities that sustain the climate crisis, emphasizing their link with colonization, but articulates solutions for system change. These include explicit codification of the crime of ‘unjust enrichment’ to unlock climate financing, in conjunction with a governance approach based on 16 sub-regions to defeat colonial-era enhanced fragmentary politics that detract from addressing the urgency of the current challenge.

Many studies and initiatives are animated by the potential for science education to intervene in the climate crisis and crises of environmental degradation and disinformation. For science teachers to learn to address these issues in their classes, their teaching must expand beyond scientific facts and face controversial social aspects. Dealing with these crises' complexity and politics implies substantial teacher education and professional development shifts. Intending to contribute to understanding how to prepare teachers to engage in critical teaching, this article describes a collaborative cross‐study dialogue to analyse science teachers' artefacts. Pre‐service science teachers from Chilean universities participated, creating explanations about the climate crisis and mutually giving peer feedback. Likewise, we explore the storylined relationships between local issues of industrial pollution and chemistry content written by experienced teachers who were organised in a collective around issues of environmental racism in a large city in the United States. Through our dialogue, we refined a tool for formative feedback that contributes to research and teaching on environmental crises by supporting awareness of ideological issues in climate change and sustainability education (CCSE) and pedagogies of hope. We discuss how teachers in different global contexts address (or not) scientific and social justice concerns within environmental problems created by extractivist economies. Our orientation is towards horizontal dialogue and epistemic humility that recognises the problematic historical relationship between our nations and moves towards imagining more just futures. We conclude by reflecting on orientations for practice to critically address climate and environmental crisis education in different stages of teacher preparation and development. We argue that through noticing controversies, possibilities, and questions, we can transcend the barriers of dominance and dichotomy between the Global South and North and between individual and collective action in climate change and sustainability education.

BackgroundThe climate and ecological emergency is the single biggest health threat facing humanity, yet it is not clear to what extent the public health workforce have been involved in work...

The climate and ecological crisis will constitute the defining public health challenge of the twenty-first century, posing an unprecedented global threat to all determinants of health, and to healthcare delivery systems. We believe that mental health professionals have a crucial role to play in responding to this crisis. Whilst responding to the mental health consequences of the climate crisis will remain a key role for us as mental health professionals, we argue that our remit goes beyond this, and should include advancing public understanding of the climate crisis, highlighting its impact on physical and mental wellbeing, and advocating for systemic changes to limit its impending harms. This paper is an urgent call to action for all mental health professionals to take up a role in the context of the climate and ecological crisis. This paper will describe the relationship between mental health and climate change, and frame it within wider systemic and conceptual frameworks. It will demonstrate that as mental health professionals we are well placed to act as leaders of change—arguing that we have a duty to do so—and suggest actions that can be implemented depending on interests, skill sets and opportunities.