Climate Movement Research Articles

The Extinction Rebellion and going beyond politics: can deliberation be the answer in climate mitigation?

The United Nations (UN) has characterized the climate crisis as ‘the defining crisis of our time’ (United Nations 2023). To address the crisis in the 2020s, the so-called new climate movement has emerged to protest the inadequate climate action taken by political power holders and to demand real political action on climate issues. One of the movement’s branches is Extinction Rebellion, which has three central demands: demand for the government to ‘act now’ (to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to net zero by 2025), to ‘tell the truth (by declaring climate emergency) and to ‘go beyond politics’ by introducing a Citizens Assembly on climate and environmental justice. The question, however, is how impactful these demands, and by extension, actions, can be to address the issue of the climate crisis. This Reflection takes a critical view of Extinction Rebellion’s third goal, going beyond politics, and discusses the potential issues with the impact of the proposed Climate Assembly.

On climate apocalypse

The right-wing has accused the climate movement, and the climate science upon which it is based, of being apocalyptic to in order to discredit it. This editorial discusses whether we should accept describing the climate movement as apocalyptic. It does so by exploring the etymology of the term and its use in its religious/historical contexts. It discusses its relationship to the interrelated terms of prophecy, messianism, eschatology, and millenarianism. Through a deconstruction and demystification of the term apocalypse in its biblical historical context, it argues that we need to have a secular understanding of it which is indeed applicable to the climate crisis.

Panic activism or crisis solidarity? Reworking crisis narratives in climate activism through the COVID‐19 pandemic

AbstractCrisis narratives have long been a prominent feature of the climate movement to spur system change. The COVID‐19 pandemic brought to the fore the complexities of navigating climate action through the overlapping crises of the Anthropocene. While crisis is seen to offer possibilities for transformational change, it also threatens to prioritise urgency over justice. It is therefore important to understand how climate activists, in practice, are mobilising different narratives of crisis. To this end, we empirically examine climate activists' reflections on crisis in Aotearoa New Zealand through their experiences of the COVID‐19 pandemic. We identify a narrative of ‘panic‐activism’ that uses crisis to demonstrate the severity of the climate threat to enable drastic action. Such narratives are often underpinned by a ‘hierarchy of crisis’ that positions climate change as the most imminent existential crisis. We caution that this crisis narrative is troubling for climate justice, particularly as it positions one crisis as more urgent than others. However, in contrast to panic‐activism, our study suggests climate activists in Aotearoa tended to approach crisis cautiously and with reluctant necessity, rather than as something to be actively catalysed or capitalised on. Instead, activists cultivated a narrative of ‘crisis solidarity’ that highlights the networks of reciprocity and vulnerability across and within communities for more intersectional social movement organising.

'You can't really separate these risks, our environment, our animals and us': Australian children's perceptions of the risks of the climate crisis.

Perceptions of the risks associated with the climate crisis are shaped by a range of social and political contexts and information sources. While some have expressed concerns about the impact of the spread of climate misinformation through social media platforms on young people, others have shown that the youth climate movement has played a key role in countering misinformation. Despite this, there has been very limited research with children about how they conceptualize the risks associated with the climate crisis, how they receive climate information, and how they understand and apply this to their own and others' lives. The following qualitative study used photo-elicitation techniques and in-depth interviews with Australian children to address this gap. A total of n = 28 children(12-16 years) participated, with four themes constructed from the data using a reflexive approach to thematic analysis. Children were concerned about how the climate crisis would continue to harm their futures and the health of planet and people. They recognized that some groups and countries would experience more risks associated with the climate crisis as compared to others. While they received information from a range of different sources (school, family, social media), they mostly used social media to seek out climate information. They recognized that social media sites could be a source of climate misinformation, and argued that a range of strategies were needed to identify and counter false information about the climate crisis. Children's perspectives must be harnessed to improve information about climate risks and action.

David versus Goliath? Indigenous people, carbon majors and climate litigation in South Africa

AbstractIn two recent South African cases, Indigenous communities successfully challenged proposed fossil fuel exploration activities by the Shell petroleum company off South Africa's pristine West Coast. In contrast to earlier climate litigation cases in South Africa, the litigants relied specifically on their Indigenous rights and knowledge. In this case note, we highlight the ways in which the two courts engaged with the communities' cultural beliefs and practices as well as their knowledge related to sustainability and how this relates to protecting their livelihoods, cultural practices and identities that are threatened by the proposed activities. We highlight the important role played by Indigenous communities in the climate movement and argue that, in the future, Indigenous and related considerations could provide a strong basis for climate litigation in South Africa and potentially contribute to efforts to protect Indigenous communities against the activities of carbon majors.

Climatization and Declimatization

Abstract Climate change forces a reckoning with the ecological side effects of fossil-fuel-based industrial development, requiring an incorporation of climate issues into the mainstream structures of society. In this perspective article, we address this as a “climatization” process directed at aligning society with climate imperatives. We focus on the contingent dynamics of “climatization” and show how contention may be avoided by “declimatizing” climate action. Here, we emphasize the immediate co-benefits of climate action as against more distant climate benefits. “Declimatization” is therefore a strategic move: it is distinct from the “anti-climatization” backlash, though it is often figured as a reflexive response to it. We draw on climate anthropology, climate advocacy, and climate movement theory, and provide brief insights into de/climatization in Germany, India, and Australia.

THE EMOTIONAL DIMENSION OF MEXICAN CLIMATE ACTIVISM: A SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH

Since many disciplines started to examine emotions in the nineties, studies that focus on emotions and protest have increased, despite the difficulties of systematizing the complex matrix of emotions that activists feel, as well as the limitations that emotion labels create. In this article, we show how using a sociocultural approach to analyze emotions and protest allows us to overcome these limitations that belong to the classical view of emotions. We will do this by analyzing the emotional dimension of the new wave of the climate movement in Mexico (2019-2022). The article focuses on how several long-term and medium-term emotions that activists feel affect their climate activism, influencing, for instance, the framing of the problem, the perception of the threat, and how emotions interact with each other. This article helps highlight both the potential and the difficulties of the sociocultural approach to emotion and protest in the context of the climate crisis.

Broadening the Climate Movement: The Marcha das Margaridas’ Agenda for the Climate (and Other) Crises

AbstractClimate 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 Political in the Anthropocene: Reflections on a Ministerial Veto, 2021

Abstract This article was prompted by a Ministerial veto (2021) of the Australian Research Council’s decision to fund a research project by the authors to explore the student-led climate movement in Australia. It was also prompted by criticism of the veto which accused the Minister of bringing “politics” into what was represented as a scholarly matter. It addresses two questions: How should we understand this idea of “politics” in the context of Australian climate politics since the 1990s? Secondly it considers dominant ways of thinking about “the political” devised by ancient Greek writers and politicians which still inform the European liberal tradition. We question how fit for purpose this approach is in the Anthropocene? Our key argument is that the western tradition of thinking about “the political” is deeply anthropocentric. Historical traditions have encouraged inegalitarian and anti-democratic accounts of who can be political by excluding different kinds of people from political life. The Anthropocene requires a new, critically reflexive account of “the political” that is inclusive of people currently marginalized and excluded as well as nonhumans and nonliving components of ecosystems on which we all depend. This extends the idea of democracy beyond the human and points to a politics of climate justice.

“I Owe It to My daughter”: How Parents Deal with the Climate Crisis. Psychodynamic Interviews with Parents Committed to Climate Protection

ABSTRACT Based on four interviews with parents committed to climate protection, it is shown how they deal with the existential threat posed by the climate crisis and how it affects their relationships with their children. It becomes apparent that these parents are profoundly unsettled by the climate crisis, because they are aware of their own responsibility for their children and future generations. The interviewees describe how much of a burden it is for them to deal with the ominous forecasts for the future without being able to simply ignore them – as many others do. They feel guilt toward their children about how they have lived their lives so far, wasting resources. Although they often feel helpless and powerless, they are also actively involved in the climate movement for the sake of their children, which gives them some hope.

“Outstanding”: early Schwarze and the seeds of melodrama

ABSTRACT In this essay, I reflect on how ideas and commitments that defined Steve Schwarze’s early engagements with rhetorical studies shaped his later work on environmental melodrama. Steve and I met as teenagers when we were both undergraduates at Drake University, studying with Robert Hariman, who encouraged his students to publish our own journal, Diatribe. Steve’s writings in that journal are astonishingly prescient and presage the later emphasis in his work on kairos, moral framings, feelings as a legitimate part of public discourse, and the need for self-reflexivity about the scholarly enterprise. I consider the impact of Steve’s work on my own thinking with an exploration of how his insights about melodrama illuminate the rhetorical force of the youth climate movement.

Political Representation Practice in Global Environmental Politics. Feminist Representation Theory and the Claims of Marginalized Youth Groups

ABSTRACT The climate movement has mobilised unprecedented numbers of people to address the issue of climate change. Notably, this movement has seen significant participation from young people who, as they will bear the brunt of the climate crisis in the coming decades, have voiced the urgency of the situation. By representing the future, these young climate activists have made the effects of the climate crisis tangible and personal. Drawing on feminist and constructivist representation theory, this paper examines the role of representative claims about future generations by young people in global environmental and climate politics. In their interactions with fora such as UNFCCC meetings , young people often find themselves marginalised. Despite this relative powerlessness, I argue that through their descriptive claims to represent future generations, they have appropriated and reshaped the concept of intergenerational justice. This paper details the intricate interplay between marginalisation and representation experienced by youth-led environmental groups. It contributes to the conceptualisation of political representation as a discursive practice of future-making by marginalised actors in the context of global climate politics.

Articulating post-apocalyptic environmentalism: global civil society and the struggle for anti-colonial climate politics in the climate movement

ABSTRACT This article examines the dynamics of the climate movement’s (CM) engagement within global civil society (GCS), focusing on how this relates to its evolving commitment to anti-colonial climate politics and the wider, ongoing tensions between actors from the Global North and South within the movement. Here, this article contributes with a theorization on how counter-hegemonic and anti-colonial social movement alliances can be forged in GCS, building from neo-Gramscian, post- and decolonial concepts. This theorization builds on a study of the COP26 Coalition’s efforts in Glasgow in November 2021, exploring how the coalition strategically utilized post-apocalyptic environmentalism to amplify Southern and anti-colonial perspectives within the broader CM and to carve out a space for such perspectives within GCS. However, this study also highlights how GCS spaces are shaped by a neo-colonial global hegemony which fosters structures of Northern epistemic dominance which often function to de-legitimize, exclude, or co-opt non-Western knowledges and movements within GCS.

Crime without punishment? On the legitimacy of illegal actions from the climate movement

Crime without punishment? On the legitimacy of illegal actions from the climate movement

Engaging “unusual suspects” in climate action: cultural affordances for diverse competences and improvised identities

The demonstrated urgency of the climate crisis would require mobilization by a larger and more diverse set of participants than those usually recognized as environmental activists. Hence this article asks: (1) What conditions enable unlikely participants (such as men working in manual occupations) to engage in and identify with a climate movement? And (2) what is it about the relationship between participants’ biographies, the practices of the climate movement and the interaction between them that allows – or affords – such identification to occur? I draw on an approach to identity formation as situated practice, i.e., as occurring in situations where social relations are enacted while drawing on the individual experience and shared understandings that participants bring to the situation. Based on fieldwork in Finnish municipalities that have committed to climate neutrality, I find that the conditions for engagement depend on socio-cultural affordances for engaging in climate action, which (1) accept and welcome participants’ life histories and lifestyles (2) build on and respect participants’ competences and multiple forms of expertise, (3) engage participants in practices that are familiar enough not to produce anxiety but stimulating enough to be fun, and (4) produce small but visible achievements that are acknowledged as such by both participants and onlookers. The current study contributes to previous research arguing for a more populist approach to climate policy by emphasizing existing competences and embodied practices as an avenue for engagement in climate action.

An inopportune moment: trade unions, climate crisis and the collapse of labour education in England

A growing number of climate activists and scholars argue that an effective climate movement needs the involvement of the trade union movement, to be able to push forward the radical social transformations required to address the global climate crisis. If workers are to be able to play this kind of role in a global climate movement, a sustained and transformative programme of labour education on the climate crisis will be essential. In England, however, the climate crisis has arrived at a particularly inopportune moment for the trade union movement, when labour education has virtually collapsed – a state of labour education decline that has echoes elsewhere in the world. This article argues that in order to build a labour education programme that can help workers fight effectively against the climate crisis – or, indeed, any other challenge of worker and social injustice – it will be essential to understand and address the root causes of the decline and collapse of labour education more generally. For the union movement in England, this involves attending to three key issues, in particular: the relationship of labour education to the state, to the formal education sector, and to broader labour movement organising strategies and agendas.

Green Deal and Climate Pact as a Lighthouse and for Public Health in Europe

Abstract Public health professionals (PHP) have a dual task in climate change. They should persuade colleagues in clinical medicine of the importance of all the issues covered by the European Green Deal (EGD). The fact that the health sector contributes to the overall emissions of 4.4% states to the lack of awareness within the health sector itself. Strengthening the opportunities and development of the circular economy within healthcare is more than just a current issue. The second task of PHP is targeting the population digitally. The PH mission is being implemented, inter alia, through numerous activities related to environmental monitoring and assessment of the impact on health. EGD and European Climate Pact (ECP) are a lighthouse for priorities and actions in PH, bearing in mind: an ambitious goal of climate neutrality, an insistence on clean, affordable and safe energy, a strategy for a clean and circular economy. The ECP is an opportunity for citizens but especially for health professionals, to participate in climate action across Europe, to learn about climate change, develop and implement solutions. As part of the EGD, ECP aims to become a space to act on the climate crisis, and offer support for a European climate movement but also to health care professionals to act and implement innovative solutions. ECP and role of Climate pact Ambassadors give opportunities for actions in health care and wider. EGD is a leadership step in the global framework towards a healthier future and comprises all the non-EU members. The PH sector should involve the EGD as an argument for achieving goals at national levels, and align national PH policies with the goals of this document. There is a need for stronger advocacy of public health interests and sustainability into all health policies. Achieving goals requires more environmentally education process for healthcare professionals covering all of topics of climate change, PH digitalization and air pollution to a much greater extent.

Culture workers against big oil: the importance of labor education in fighting the climate crisis

This article argues for the importance of labor education in fighting the climate crisis, a vital form of education too often overlooked in the climate movement. Drawing on a case study of unionized culture workers in the United Kingdom, the article seeks to show the distinctive embedded nature of labor education. Success of labor education on the climate crisis hinges not so much on a particular pedagogy or curriculum in any one classroom setting, but on the ways in which a range of formal and informal educational actors and spaces work together across the labor and environmental movements, as part of a mobilizing project that seeks to link worker interests directly to the climate crisis, and identify actions that workers can take to address the crisis effectively. Labor education has a central role to play in ensuring a just transition in the move away from a fossil fuel based economy.

Blocking the sun? Social movements, industries, and the adoption of solar energy in the United States

Despite scholars' growing interest in sustainability transitions, they have paid little attention to how organizational opponents and allies of the climate movement shape the diffusion of low-carbon technologies. Drawing on literature on social movements, social psychology, and environmental sociology, this study develops new arguments about how environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) and the fossil fuel industry influence the adoption of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels. Using an original data set, we assess these arguments by conducting quantitative analyses that test the direct and mediated effects of the ENGOs and fossil fuel industry on the installation of solar PV technology by residents and commercial enterprises in over fifteen thousand U.S. cities during a nine-year period. Findings suggest that local ENGOs promote both types of adoption, but their effect also depends on solar irradiance. Conversely, local fossil fuel companies directly inhibit residential and commercial adoption of PV technologies. We discuss the implications of our results for future research on the diffusion of low-carbon technologies and on energy transitions.

The fall after the hatching: Evolution and engagement of Greta Thunberg’s frame on Twitter

Greta Thunberg pushed forward a new collective action frame for the climate movement with the necessary resonance to mobilize millions of people. However, the coronavirus outbreak forced Thunberg to adjust her strategy in an abrupt way, and the resonance of the activist’s frame decreased after achieving its peak in 2019. How has Thunberg’s frame evolved before, during and after the pandemic? Can we attribute the loss of resonance to a failed frame adaptation? This article studies the composition and resonance of the Swedish activist’s frame on Twitter between August 2018 and December 2022, making use of a methodological design that combines qualitative and quantitative methods to analyse 61 public interventions and 1692 tweets. The results show that, despite adapting successfully to the pandemic, the loss of the core elements of the original frame provoked a misalignment between her framing strategy and her storytelling, which reduced Thunberg’s ability to provide resonance.