A warning against climate change politics

 News 

Academics warn against climate change “politics of paralysis and self-destruction”

With COP26 still ongoing, academics from across the globe are warning against "the politics of paralysis and self-destruction” that have hindered effective change in climate policy over the past 20 year, in a new essay volume.

Sian Sullivan, Professor of Environment and Culture at Bath Spa, co-edited the volume with the University of Exeter Business School’s Professor Steffen Boehm.

In the volume, leading and emerging scholars and climate activists from around the world take a critical look at what has gone wrong, and what is to be done to create more decisive action to combat climate change.

Composed of twenty-eight essays – a combination of new and republished texts – the work looks at seven main themes, which include governance and finance.

In her introduction, written jointly with Professor Boehm, she says:

“In all the talk about the Paris Agreement, reached at the twenty-first Conference of Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris in 2015, it is sometimes forgotten that the world’s political leaders have held negotiations about climate change at the highest possible level for at least three decades.

“Many have known about climate change for a lot longer. Having arrived at 2021, however, scientific evidence for ongoing global temperature rises alongside industrial combustion of fossil fuels is now overwhelming.

“If current trends persist, and even if countries meet their Paris Agreement obligations, many climate scientists now warn that we are heading towards at least 3 degrees Celsius change compared to pre-industrial levels.”

The volume is fully open access and its production costs were supported through BSU HEQR seed funding. It includes contributions from three BSU academics and a PhD student whose MA dissertation she supervised.

You can read the full text online and see some key chapters below.

Bath Spa University affiliated chapters

• Introduction: Climate Crisis? What Climate Crisis?, Steffen Böhm and Sian Sullivan
• 3. On Climate Change Ontologies and the Spirit(s) of Oil, Sian Sullivan
• 6. Climate Migration Is about People, Not Numbers, David Durand-Delacre, Giovanni Bettini, Sarah L. Nash, Harald Sterly, Giovanna Gioli, Elodie Hut, Ingrid Boas, Carol Farbotko, Patrick Sakdapolrak, Mirjam de Bruijn, Basundhara Tripathy Furlong, Kees van der Geest, Samuel Lietaer and Mike Hulme
• 7. We’ll Always Have Paris, Mike Hannis
• 11. I’m Sian, and I’m a Fossil Fuel Addict: On Paradox, Disavowal and (Im)Possibility in Changing Climate Change, Sian Sullivan
• 12. Gendered Climate Change-Induced Human-Wildlife Conflicts (HWC) amidst COVID-19 in the Erongo Region, Namibia, Selma Lendelvo, Romie Nghitevelekwa and Mechtilde Pinto
• 13. Environmental Change in Namibia: Land-Use Impacts and Climate Change as Revealed by Repeat Photography, Rick Rohde, M. Timm Hoffman and Sian Sullivan
• 14. On Climate and the Risk of Onto-Epistemological Chainsaw Massacres: A Study on Climate Change and Indigenous People in Namibia Revisited, Ute Dieckmann
• 25. Telling the ‘Truth’: Communication of the Climate Protest Agenda in the UK Legacy Media, Sharon Gardham