On social ecology and the movement for climate justice

Abstract

This chapter reviews the distinct perspective of social ecology and then addresses a variety of challenging political questions for climate justice that this approach may help clarify. Social ecology's philosophical inquiry examines the emergence of human consciousness from within the processes of natural evolution. By the late 1970s, social ecology was playing quite a visible role in the rapidly growing movement against nuclear power in the US By the mid-1980s emerging Green political movements in many countries were torn between conventional party politics and strategies rooted in radically democratic, ecologically centered grassroots movements. Climate scientists have long been in the forefront of mapping out the magnitude of the challenges. Investment in renewable energy grew rapidly through the first decade of this century but leveled off in 2012 and has substantially declined in some recent years. The projections of climate science highlight the difficulty of transforming societies and economies quickly enough to prevent a descent into a planet-wide climate catastrophe.