Local Activism For Global Climate Justice

This book will inspire and spark grassroots action to address the inequitable impacts of climate change, by showing how this can be tackled and the many benefits of doing so. With contributions from climate activists and engaged young authors, this volume explores the many ways in which people are proactively working to advance climate justice. The book pays special attention to Canada and the Great Lakes watershed, showing how the effects of climate change span local, regional, and global scales through the impact of extreme weather events such as floods and droughts, with related economic and social effects that cross political jurisdictions. Examining examples of local-level activism that include organizing for climate-resilient and equitable communities, the dynamic leadership of Indigenous peoples (especially women) for water and land protection, and diaspora networking, Local Activism for Global Climate Justice also provides theoretical perspectives on how individual action relates to broader social and political processes. Showcasing a diverse range of inspirational and thought-provoking case studies, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate justice, climate change policy, climate ethics, and global environmental governance, as well as teachers and climate activists.

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"Deniers of climate change have benefited from political strategies developed by conservative think tanks and public relations experts paid handsomely by the energy industry. With this book, environmental activists can benefit from some scholarly attention turned to their efforts. This book exhibits the best that public scholarship has to offer. Its authors utilize sophisticated rhetorical theory and criticism to uncover the inventional constraints and possibilities for participants at various sites of the Step-It-Up day of climate activism. What makes this book especially valuable is that it is not only directed to fellow communication scholars, but is written in a clear and accessible style to bring the insights of an academic field to a broader public of activists committed to building an environmental social movement." - Prof. Leah Ceccarelli, University of Washington "This is an unusually interesting volume grounded in a sustained and coordinated analysis of the Step It Up campaign. Generating a multifaceted and shared archive for analyzing the SIU campaign on global warming, the volume's multiple authors critically examine intersecting dimensions of the SIU campaign-its persuasive strategies, organizational dynamics, and political practices for everyday citizens-with an eye on implications for enhancing the larger environmental movement. Readers with a practical and theoretical interest in social and political movements will find this book engaging and leavened with heuristic value." - Professor Robert L. Ivie, Indiana University, Bloomington

“Let this book immerse you in the many worlds of environmental justice.”—Naomi Klein We are living in a precarious environmental and political moment. In the United States and in the world, environmental injustices have manifested across racial and class divides in devastatingly disproportionate ways. What does this moment of danger mean for the environment and for justice? What can we learn from environmental justice struggles? Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger examines mobilizations and movements, from protests at Standing Rock to activism in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Environmental justice movements fight, survive, love, and create in the face of violence that challenges the conditions of life itself. Exploring dispossession, deregulation, privatization, and inequality, this book is the essential primer on environmental justice, packed with cautiously hopeful stories for the future.

An urgent and timely story of the contentious politics of incorporating environmental justice into global climate change policy Although the science of climate change is clear, policy decisions about how to respond to its effects remain contentious. Even when such decisions claim to be guided by objective knowledge, they are made and implemented through political institutions and relationships—and all the competing interests and power struggles that this implies. Michael Méndez tells a timely story of people, place, and power in the context of climate change and inequality. He explores the perspectives and influence low†‘income people of color bring to their advocacy work on climate change. In California, activist groups have galvanized behind issues such as air pollution, poverty alleviation, and green jobs to advance equitable climate solutions at the local, state, and global levels. Arguing that environmental protection and improving public health are inextricably linked, Mendez contends that we must incorporate local knowledge, culture, and history into policymaking to fully address the global complexities of climate change and the real threats facing our local communities.

Approaching the issues of climate change and climate justice from a range of diverse perspectives including those of culture, gender, indigeneity, race, and sexuality, as well as challenging colonial histories and capitalist presents, Climate Futures boldly addresses the apparent inevitability of climate chaos. Seeking better explanations of the underlying causes and consequences of climate change, and mapping strategies toward a better future, or at a minimum, the most likely best-case world that we can get to, this book envisions planetary social movements robust enough to spark the necessary changes needed to achieve deeply sustainable and just economic, social, and political policies and practices. Bringing together insights from interdisciplinary scholars, policymakers, creatives and activists, Climate Futures argues for the need to get past us-and-them divides and acknowledge how lives of creatures far and near, human and non-human, are interconnected.

This book provides an accessible but intellectually rigorous introduction to the global social movement for ‘climate justice’ and addresses the socially uneven consequences of anthropogenic climate change. Deploying relational understandings of nature-society, space, and power, Brandon Derman shows that climate change has been co-produced with social inequality. Mismatching levels of responsibility and vulnerability, and institutions that emerged in tandem with those disproportionalities compose the terrain on which NGOs and social movements now contest climate injustice in a wide-ranging “politics of connection.” Case-based chapters explore the defining commitments of affected and allied communities, and how they have shaped specific struggles mobilizing human rights, international treaties, transnational activist forums, national and local constituencies, and broad-based demonstrations. Derman synthesizes these cases and similar efforts across the globe to identify and explore crosscutting themes in climate justice politics as well as the opportunities and dilemmas facing advocates and activists, and those who would ally with them going forward. How should we understand campaigns for climate justice? What do these initiatives share, and what differentiates them? What, in fact, does “climate justice” mean in these contexts? And what do the framing and progression of such efforts in different settings suggest about the broader conditions that produce and sustain climate injustice, how those conditions could be unmade, and what might take their place? Struggles for Climate Justice approaches these questions from an interdisciplinary perspective accessible to graduate and advanced undergraduate students as well as scholars of geography, social movements, environmental politics, policy, and socio-legal studies.

Organizing Cools the Planet offers a challenge to all concerned about the ecological crisis: find your frontline. This booklet weaves together stories, analysis, organizing tools, and provocative questions, to offer a snapshot of the North American Climate Justice movement and provide pathways for readers to participate in it. Authors share hard lessons learned, reflect on strategy, and grapple with the challenges of their roles as organizers who do not come from “frontline communities” but work to build a movement big enough for everyone and led by the priorities and solutions of low-income people, communities of color, Indigenous, youth, and other constituencies most directly impacted by the crisis. Rooted in the authors’ experiences organizing in local, national, and international arenas, they challenge readers to look at the scale of ecological collapse with open eyes, without falling prey to disempowering doomsday narratives. This booklet is for anyone who wants to build a movement with the resiliency to navigate one of the most rapid transitions in human history.