Focusing on the urgent need for a unified climate action movement, the author critiques governmental inaction and advocates for a realignment of power to mitigate the impacts of climate change. By analyzing past social mobilizations, he proposes strategies to establish a new hegemonic agenda that emphasizes equitable emancipation and sustainable societal transformations. The book emphasizes the importance of collective consent and the cultivation of a just society to effectively address the climate crisis.
To keep the global average temperature from rising further than 2°C, emissions must peak soon and then fall steeply. This book examines how such rapid mitigation can proceed – in the scale and speed required for effective climate action – using an analogy provided by the mobilisation for a war that encompassed nations, the Second World War. Strategies for Rapid Climate Mitigation examines the wartime-climate analogy by drawing lessons from wartime mobilisations to develop contingency plans for a scenario where governments implement stringent mitigation programs as an ‘insurance policy’ where we pay for future benefits. Readers are provided a picture of how these programs could look, how they would work, what could trigger them, and the challenges in execution. The book analyses in detail one plausible approach to a crucial issue – an approach built upon knowledge of climate science and on proven and demonstrated mitigation measures. The book is meshed with a social and political analysis that draws upon narratives of mobilisations during the war to meet a transnational threat, while also addressing the shortcomings of the analogy and its strategies. The book will be of great interest to scholars, students, and practitioners of public policy, climate policy, energy policy, international relations, and strategic studies.
This book critiques responses to the Covid pandemic in the Majority World,
leading to construction of better, more just approaches for adapting to the
climate crisis going forward. It will be valuable for social science students
and researchers, policymakers, and anyone interested in inequality and
vulnerability in developing countries.
