Social Implications Of Climate Change Research Articles

In Defense of Doom and Gloom: Science, Sensitivity, and Mobilization in Teaching about Climate Change

Given the profound social implications of climate change, this subject is increasingly important for a broad range of sociology classes. Sociology instructors who address the subject of climate change face a dilemma. Presenting too grim of a portrait risks fostering psychological distress and withdrawal from action to address climate change, whereas downplaying the magnitude of the crisis can provide false assurance that the situation is well in hand and that urgent action is unnecessary. I argue that educators must be sensitive in their presentation of the issue but forthright, even as the scientific evidence indicates that the social impacts of climate change are grim. This does not necessarily foster withdrawal and inaction. Social movement theory suggests that political participation is not primarily a rational pursuit based on calculated outcomes. Educators can inspire climate action by providing students with opportunities and support to do so.

A “lifeline out of the COVID‐19 crisis”? An ecofeminist critique of the European Green Deal

A “lifeline out of the <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 crisis”? An ecofeminist critique of the European Green Deal

Justice in climate change adaptation planning: conceptual perspectives on emergent praxis

Abstract. The measures implemented to adapt to climate change are primarily designed to address the tangible, biophysical impacts of climate change in a given geographic area. They rarely consider the wider social implications of climate change, nor the politics of adaptation planning and its outcomes. Given the necessity of significant investment in adaptation over years to come, adaptation planning and implementation will need to place greater concern on justice-sensitive approaches to avoid exacerbating existing vulnerabilities and creating maladaptive and conflicting outcomes. Building on recent calls for more just and transformative adaptation planning, this paper offers a flexible analytical framework for integrating theories of justice and transformation into research on climate change adaptation. We discuss adaptation planning as an inherently normative and political process linked to issues pertaining to recognition justice as well as distributional and procedural aspects of justice. The paper aims to contribute to the growing discussion on just adaptation by intersecting theoretical justice dimensions with spatial, temporal and socio-political challenges and choices that arise as part of adaptation planning processes. A focus on justice-sensitive adaptation planning not only provides opportunities for examining spatial as well as temporal justice issues in relation to planning and decision-making processes. It also paves the way for a more critical approach to adaptation planning that acknowledges the need for institutional restructuring and offers steps towards alternative futures under climate change conditions.

Encourager les emplois verts : le travail décent dans la transition vers des économies vertes et à faible émission de carbone

This chapter explores the nexus between climate change and jobs. For the International Labour Organization (ILO), the relevance of climate change and low carbon development has not always been evident. Member states and social partners have long been reluctant to include the transition to low carbon economies in the programme of work and commit resources to it. But in recent years, environmental issues have become a policy priority among ILO member states and social partners. Why, then, is climate change now more relevant than ever for the world of work? What are the current and forecasted employment and social implications of climate change and the policies for adaptation and mitigation? How can the distributional impact of the move to a low-carbon society be better understood and managed? In this respect, how relevant is the concept of ‘green jobs’? What policy approach has emerged within the ILO despite initial resistance and disagreement among constituents? Finally, what role could the ILO play in the future to promote social justice in the transition?

Gender and Climate Change in Rural Australia

This paper outlines the results of a literature review exploring the relationship between gender and climate change in rural Australia. Whilst the climate change debate in Australia has largely focused on environmental and economic implications, little attention has been given to the social implications of climate change. The focus of this study is on the climate change impacts on Australian rural women and men, with particular emphasis on the disadvantage experienced by rural women. A key finding in the review was that rural women and men adapt to climatic events, such as, drought and water shortages, in different ways. Outcomes of the review also highlight the dearth of Australian research that focuses on rural women and climate change. We contend that social workers have an ethical responsibility to be aware of the impact of climate change on disadvantaged groups, such as, rural women. The fact that gender equality has been largely ignored in the Australian climate change debate points to a need for social work involvement in climate change advocacy, research, and policy development, in an effort to redress the imbalance.

Decarbonizing Finance Recent Developments and the Challenge Ahead

Societies around the world are faced with a multitude of social and environmental challenges as the negative effects of human activity on the Earth’s ecosystem are becoming increasingly evident. At COP21 in Paris, 195 countries agreed to work together to limit global warming to 2°C and aim for net zero carbon emissions by the second half of the 21st century. This will require large-scale investment in renewable energy, energy efficient buildings, protection of forests, sustainable production processes and materials, and innovative solutions to social problems. Niche finance and public sector funds alone will not be sufficient to address this challenge. Thus, mainstream investment must be aligned with sustainable development – a process already under way, although hobbled by challenges such as carbon-locked legacy infrastructure, technological path dependence, financialization, lack of patient capital for innovation, and underdeveloped policy frameworks and markets for mainstreaming impact-driven investment. While the financial sector has been grappling with the environmental and social implications of climate change for at least a decade, the Paris Agreement could represent a tipping point for Sustainable Finance. However, a systemic response has been left so late that even with increased mitigation action, warming of 2°C can still be expected, leading to climate migration and growing social and political tensions. This article maps the current landscape of Sustainable Finance and key challenges that lay ahead.

Taming the Climate? Corpus analysis of politicians’ speech on climate change

ABSTRACTThe politics of climate change is much discussed, but there has been little investigation into how politicians themselves understand or articulate the issue. Corpus analysis, a method developed within linguistics, is used to investigate how UK politicians talk about climate change, using the example of the 2008 Climate Change Bill. Corpus techniques, including keyword analysis, collocation and semantic tagging, are used, alongside critical reading of the text. The analysis shows that politicians frame climate change as an economic and technical issue, and neglect discussion of the human and social dimensions. They are selective in their use of scientific evidence, with little mention of abrupt or irreversible change. In doing so, they attempt to ‘tame’ climate change, rather than confronting difficult realities. While this strategy has the benefit of political acceptability, it does not allow for discussion of the full political and social implications of climate change, and precludes more radical responses.

Tools and strategies for climate change decision making

The world faces key decisions on how to mitigate or adapt to climate change under uncertainty and under extreme and non-stationary weather events (hurricanes, droughts, flooding, etc.). Questions loom regarding how to improve decision-making processes regarding the integration of variable and intermittent renewables; the role of energy generation, transmission, and storage; the use of unconventional resources; and the consequences of large-scale adoption of novel technologies. Governments, industries, and researches must grapple with issues relating to the ecological, economic, and societal implications of adaptations that may be made to climate change. This special issue of Environment Systems and Decisions explores these topics in an effort to better understand how to make risk-informed decisions under the deep uncertainty that surrounds climate change. The issue opens with two perspective articles—the first regarding ‘‘wicked’’ problems, and how to go about solving them (Stahl 2014), and the second outlining a multi-stakeholder planning approach under uncertainty (Styczynski et al. 2014). The second group of papers focuses mainly on analytic tools and methods to enable decision making in the face of climate change. Santos et al. (2014) use input–output modeling and event tree analysis to support decision making regarding drought induced by climate change. The next two papers are part of a series and model the disruption effects of climate change on the global supply chain (Bierkandt et al. 2014, Wenz et al. 2014). You et al. (2014) describe a method for conducting regional climate vulnerability assessments incorporating multiple stakeholder perspectives and future scenarios. Finally, Ahmed et al. (2014) compare several methods for spatially interpolating climatic data and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each method. The final papers in this special issue focus on the social implications of climate change. First, Wuebbles et al. (2014) discuss the complex relationship between climate change and global security. Next, Hoss et al. (2014) describe a framework in which communities can reduce the hazards, exposure, and vulnerabilities to climate change in an effort to best mitigate and adapt to dynamic conditions. de Bruin et al. (2014) then report on a study regarding public perceptions to flood risks and climate change. Finally, Juhola et al. (2014) discuss climate adaptation from the perspective of the Nordic countries and explore ways in which the countries can work together to build a collaborative adaptation strategy. As a final note, the Editorial Board would like to thank Dr. Gregory Kiker and Dr. Ines Azevedo for their service as special guest editors for this issue. The following issue will contain additional climate change articles, as well as a series of papers on nanotechnology.

The Carbon Footprint of Conference Papers

The action required to stem the environmental and social implications of climate change depends crucially on how humankind shapes technology, economy, lifestyle and policy. With transport CO2 emissions accounting for about a quarter of the total, we examine the contribution of CO2 output by scientific travel. Thankfully for the reputation of the scientific community, CO2 emissions associated with the trips required to present a paper at a scientific conference account for just 0.003% of the yearly total. However, with CO2 emissions for a single conference trip amounting to 7% of an average individual’s total CO2 emissions, scientists should lead by example by demonstrating leadership in addressing the issue.

Reducing poverty, protecting livelihoods, and building assets in a changing climate: social implications of climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean

This book provides a much needed look at the impact of climate change on the poor. It convincingly demonstrates that issues of poverty and livelihoods must be integrated into climate change policies to help achieve sustainable development gains. The high incidence of natural disasters, growing urbanization, and increased water scarcity combined with the acute impact of these phenomena on the poor and vulnerable complicates the already enormous challenge of reducing poverty and inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean. This publication lays bare the social implications of climate change and equips the reader with a framework for understanding how climate change and climate variability affect livelihoods, poverty, income, health, and migration. These scenarios call for greater efforts to incorporate poverty, livelihood, and social considerations into climate change adaptation and mitigation policies. Purposefully targeted policies and investments can support economic growth and poverty reduction efforts and help achieve sustainable development goals. In other words, good climate change adaptation policies can also be good development policies. This book will change the way the author think about the relationship between poverty, social development, and climate change. It provides climate-smart policy options to help reduce vulnerability, protect livelihoods, and build communities that are resilient to changing climate conditions.

Indigenous peoples and climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean

Indigenous peoples across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) already perceive and experience negative effects of climate change and variability. Although the overall economic impact of climate change on gross domestic product (GDP) is significant, what is particularly problematic is that it falls disproportionately on the poor including indigenous peoples, who constitute about 6.5 percent of the population in the region and are among its poorest and most vulnerable (Hall and Patrinos 2006). This book examines the social implications of climate change and climatic variability for indigenous communities in LAC and the options for improving their resilience and adaptability to these phenomena. By social implications, the authors mean direct and indirect effects in the broad sense of the word social, including factors contributing to human well-being, health, livelihoods, human agency, social organization, and social justice. This book, much of which relies on new empirical research, addresses specifically the situation of indigenous communities because our research showed them to be among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. A companion book (Verner 2010) provides information on the broader social dimensions of climate change in LAC and on policy options for addressing them. This book will help to place these impacts higher on the climate-change agenda and guide efforts to enhance indigenous peoples' rights and opportunities, whether by governments, indigenous peoples' organizations and their leaders, or non-state representatives.

Does the weather really matter? The social implications of climate change

Dédiée aux sciences de l'atmosphère, au climat et à d'autres domaines connexes, tels que l'océanographie ou la glaciologie, La Météorologie, révisée par des pairs et publiée en français, s'adresse aux professionnels de la météo et du climat, aux enseignants, aux étudiants, aux amateurs et aux utilisateurs. La Météorologie a succédé en 1925 à l'Annuaire de la Société météorologique de France (1852-1924) qui avait lui-même succédé à l'Annuaire météorologique de la France (1849-1851).

Does the Weather Really Matter? The Social Implications of Climate Change

Societies around the globe have become fascinated with weather and climate. Killer tornadoes, ice storms, floods, mudslides, forest fires, and rain‐related disease outbreaks—the list is almost endless for any given year. The list grows dramatically from the perspective of a decade, and even more so when attempting to assess the impacts of weather and climate on societies for centuries. Such assessment seems like an impossible task. Then there is the recently emerging concern about global warming. Now, William Burroughs has attempted to bring weather and climate to the public in his book, Does the Weather Really Matter? The Social Implications of Climate Change.

Does the weather really matter?: the social implications of climate change

Preface 1. Introduction 2. The historical evidence 3. Cold winters 4. Storms, floods and droughts 5. How much do we know about climatic change? 6. Models of the climate and the economy 7. Consequences of forecasting 8. Conclusions References Index.

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Colonial observatories and observations: Meteorology and geophysics. Edited by Joan M. Kenworthy and J. Malcolm Walker.Global environmental change: An atmospheric perspective by John Horel and Jack Geisler.Does the weather really matter? The social implications of climate change by William Burroughs.

Does the Weather Really Matter? The Social Implications of Climate Change

Does the Weather Really Matter? The Social Implications of Climate Change