Natural resource inequities, domination and the rise of youth communicative power: changing the normative relevance of ecological wrongdoing

Abstract

ABSTRACT The failure of states to take the necessary actions to prevent global temperatures from soaring may be interpreted as more than an act of environmental negligence. In terms of a knowing imposition of harm, it also represents an act of domination. That is, a deliberate denial of rights to a safe, democratic, and sustainable future. This paper notes the role played by institutional power in preserving this system of domination and in shaping the discursive spaces in which carbon energy options continue to be vigorously defended even in the face of mounting evidence of their danger. Yet as signs of eco-distress grow stronger, so too does a questioning of the legitimacy of this power order. This paper examines how youth employ ‘communicative power’, as the product of a common will formed in non-coercive communication, to counter this domination and reinterpret climate change as the product of dysfunctional decision-making and ‘abnormal’ justice relations between generations. It notes the significance of these actors’ mobilization efforts to societal processes of learning about democracy's better potentialities and capacities to transform society from within (via law).