Social Movement to Address Climate Change


Book Description

"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




All We Can Save


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Provocative and illuminating essays from women at the forefront of the climate movement who are harnessing truth, courage, and solutions to lead humanity forward. “A powerful read that fills one with, dare I say . . . hope?”—The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE There is a renaissance blooming in the climate movement: leadership that is more characteristically feminine and more faithfully feminist, rooted in compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration. While it’s clear that women and girls are vital voices and agents of change for this planet, they are too often missing from the proverbial table. More than a problem of bias, it’s a dynamic that sets us up for failure. To change everything, we need everyone. All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States—scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race—and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society. Intermixing essays with poetry and art, this book is both a balm and a guide for knowing and holding what has been done to the world, while bolstering our resolve never to give up on one another or our collective future. We must summon truth, courage, and solutions to turn away from the brink and toward life-giving possibility. Curated by two climate leaders, the book is a collection and celebration of visionaries who are leading us on a path toward all we can save. With essays and poems by: Emily Atkin • Xiye Bastida • Ellen Bass • Colette Pichon Battle • Jainey K. Bavishi • Janine Benyus • adrienne maree brown • Régine Clément • Abigail Dillen • Camille T. Dungy • Rhiana Gunn-Wright • Joy Harjo • Katharine Hayhoe • Mary Annaïse Heglar • Jane Hirshfield • Mary Anne Hitt • Ailish Hopper • Tara Houska, Zhaabowekwe • Emily N. Johnston • Joan Naviyuk Kane • Naomi Klein • Kate Knuth • Ada Limón • Louise Maher-Johnson • Kate Marvel • Gina McCarthy • Anne Haven McDonnell • Sarah Miller • Sherri Mitchell, Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset • Susanne C. Moser • Lynna Odel • Sharon Olds • Mary Oliver • Kate Orff • Jacqui Patterson • Leah Penniman • Catherine Pierce • Marge Piercy • Kendra Pierre-Louis • Varshini • Prakash • Janisse Ray • Christine E. Nieves Rodriguez • Favianna Rodriguez • Cameron Russell • Ash Sanders • Judith D. Schwartz • Patricia Smith • Emily Stengel • Sarah Stillman • Leah Cardamore Stokes • Amanda Sturgeon • Maggie Thomas • Heather McTeer Toney • Alexandria Villaseñor • Alice Walker • Amy Westervelt • Jane Zelikova




Extinction Rebellion and Climate Change Activism


Book Description

This book summarises and critiques Extinction Rebellion (XR) as a social movement organisation, engaging with key issues surrounding its analysis, strategy and tactics. The authors suggest that XR have an underdeveloped and apolitical view of the kind of change necessary to address climate change, and that while this enables the building of broad movements, it is also an obstacle to achieving the systemic change that they are aiming for. The book analyses different forms of protest and the role of civil disobedience in their respective success or failure; democratic demands and practices; and activist engagement with the political economy of climate change. It engages with a range of theoretical perspectives that address law-breaking in protest and participatory forms of democracy including liberal political theory; anarchism and forms of historical materialism, and will be of interest to students and scholars across politics, international relations, sociology, policy studies and geography, as well as those interested in climate change politics and activism.




Stepping Up for Democracy


Book Description

Contemporary activists in the United States find it increasingly difficult to negotiate socio-political constraints to build a social movement. Those looking for relatively safe and effective venues for participation in and communication of dissent face oppression by the hegemonic power of the political right and, in the case of climate activism, anti-climate-science discourse. I use the case study of the climate action movement to explore how contemporary activists use new communication media technologies (hereafter new media) to establish and strengthen a movement. Even though climate change affects the daily lives of ordinary Americans, no U.S. policy exists to mitigate carbon emissions. New media offer the potential for new, safer venues for participation in and communication about social movements. I used empirical qualitative and critical methods to analyze the communication of climate change activism in Texas, USA. I examined how Step It Up! 2007 (SIU) used new media to facilitate or constrain public participation in climate action. I used critical discourse analysis to examine information provided to citizens on the SIU website, and I attended the SIU event in San Antonio, Texas. I found SIU organizers successfully used new media to increase agitation and to shift power away from the federal government to the local grassroots level. I recommend activists use new media as a unifying tool, to provide a fragmented and apathetic citizenry with a message that can be used to affect change. I conducted a critical rhetorical analysis of Working Film's 2007 documentary on global warming, Everything's Cool, as a means to suggest how, and in what ways, activists use new media to build a movement. I also hosted an activist screening. I examined how new media facilitate or constrain communication of movement messages. I found activists used the documentary and open source activism as a rhetorical exercise in agitation to refigure public understanding of climate science and attitudes toward U.S. climate change policy. Everything's Cool positioned climate activism, and participating in the movement broadly, as accessible and acceptable, helping to rhetorically constitute a new kind of citizen activist, shifting power roles to a grassroots network of local leaders.




New Climate Activism


Book Description

Climate change was once understood as solely an environmental issue. A growing class of activists now claim climate change to be a gender, equity, labour, Indigenous rights, faith, and health issue.




Climate Change Is Racist


Book Description

** LONGLISTED FOR THE JAMES CROPPER WAINWRIGHT PRIZE LONGLIST 2022 ** 'Really packs a punch' Aja Barber, author of Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism 'Will open the minds of even the most ardent denier of climate change and/or systemic racism. If there's one book that will help you to be an effective activist for climate justice, it's this one.' Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, author of This is Why I Resist 'Accessible. Poignant. Challenging.' Nnimmo Bassey, environmentalist and author of To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa When we talk about racism, we often mean personal prejudice or institutional biases. Climate change doesn't work that way. It is structurally racist, disproportionately caused by majority White people in majority White countries, with the damage unleashed overwhelmingly on people of colour. The climate crisis reflects and reinforces racial injustices. In this eye-opening book, writer and environmental activist Jeremy Williams takes us on a short, urgent journey across the globe - from Kenya to India, the USA to Australia - to understand how White privilege and climate change overlap. We'll look at the environmental facts, hear the experiences of the people most affected on our planet and learn from the activists leading the change. It's time for each of us to find our place in the global struggle for justice.




The Future of Manufactured Environmental Activism in the United States


Book Description

"Environmental activism is a well-defined pursuit, but it can also be intimidating. I know this from personal experience in environmental activism from 2016-2021. In this thesis, I will explore the potential of a new form of activism, one that is “manufactured” to increase public acceptance, interest, and support for a healthier environment. In this context, “manufactured” refers to the process of building something out of raw materials which, in the case of "manufactured environmental activism” is a good thing. With education, support, and guidance - with manufactured environmental activism - anyone who is passionate about the environment can make an impact. Anyone can gain the skills and knowledge and develop the network they need to turn their passion into something that has power. This thesis will provide evidence that manufactured environmental activism is already taking place and that this new approach is well positioned to be integrated by the modern climate movement. My work for a nonprofit organization helped to shape my current thinking about manufactured activism as a concept. I intended for this thesis to add to the developing conversation among activists and the public of how environmental activism is changing in the United States, especially as a result of climate change and Covid, and in the context of a recent switch in political leadership " -- Abstract




Climate Action in a Globalizing World


Book Description

The existence and urgency of global climate change is a matter of scientific consensus. Yet the global politics of climate change have been anything but consensual. In this context, a wave of global climate activism has emerged in the last decade in response to the perceived failure of the political negotiations. This book provides a unique comparative study of environmental movements in USA, Japan, Denmark and Sweden, analyzing their interaction with the international climate institutions of the United Nations, with national governments, and with currents in the global climate movement. It documents how and why the movement evolved between the Copenhagen Summit of 2009 and the Paris Summit of 2015, altering its strategies and tactics while attracting new actors to the issue area. Further, it demonstrates how the development of global environmental networks has increased contact between environmental movements in the Global North and those from the Global South, resulting in the establishment of ‘climate justice’ as a political cause and unifying frame for global climate activism.




Climate Change and Gender in Rich Countries


Book Description

Climate Change, Gender and Work in Rich Countries is unique in that it covers a wide range of issues dealing with work and climate change in wealthy industrialized countries. It shows how the gendered distinctions in both experiences of climate change and the ways that public policy deals with issues has been absent in policy discussions and why their inclusion matters.