The Green New Deal has gained international significance as the only prominent climate legislation in the United States. The Green New Deal has also become emblematic of a larger movement for climate justice; however, further analysis of the Green New Deal and its assumptions indicates that it falls short of enacting meaningful justice for those most effected by climate change, but least responsible for causing it. This shortcoming is due to the absence of calls to decolonize. Because of the large role U.S. militarism and imperialism play in contributing to the climate crisis, decolonization must be central to climate justice projects. Marx's concept of the metabolic rift and the phenomenon of humans' separation from nature through colonial acts of dispossession and enclosure of land plays an important role in thinking through the ways the Green New Deal recognizes this same phenomenon but fails to go deeper and recognize broader implications of the metabolic rift for continued U.S. imperialism. Additionally, the rocky legacy of the environmental justice movement raises questions as to whether working with the settler state can lead to meaningful justice. Though the Green New Deal is an operation of state recognition of the climate crisis as connected to other social inequalities, it does not overcome the settler state's reliance on racial capitalism and continued exploitation of people and the environment. A climate justice program that is in fact centered on decolonization and indigenous sovereignty is available and must be supported. / Master of Arts / The Green New Deal has gained international significance as the only prominent climate legislation in the United States. The Green New Deal has also become emblematic of a larger movement for climate justice; however, further analysis of the Green New Deal and its assumptions indicates that it falls short of enacting meaningful justice for those most effected by climate change, but least responsible for causing it. The project of the Green New Deal recognizes the phenomenon of humans' separation from nature and importantly seeks to connect environmental issues to social issues and assert environmental justice through state-led action. Because the Green New Deal fails to question the larger role of the U.S. military's involvement around the world and its pollution and wastefulness, it becomes complicit in the very forces that drive the climate crisis. A project of decolonization, which would involve ending U.S. military involvement at home and abroad and asserting indigenous nations' sovereignty, addresses many of the shortcomings of the Green New Deal.

This dissertation is a comparative international study of attitudes towards climate change. Using multilevel models, individual level data from the 2005-2008 wave of the World Values Survey, and country level data from the 2010 Climate Risk Index and the World Bank, this research identifies the factors associated with concern for global warming and support for various environmental policies and behaviors in economically developed, transitioning, and developing countries. The first paper addresses an ongoing debate in environmental sociology about the extent to which concern for environmental problems is a result of the objective deterioration of environmental conditions or subjective values among environmentally-oriented individuals. Findings indicate that a country's recent experience with climate-related environmental disasters has little to no effect on concern for global warming. Some support is found for the subjective values explanation, especially in countries at the most advanced stage of economic development. The second paper frames climate change as an asymmetrical social dilemma and tests whether four distinct citizenship identities are associated with the odds an individual considers global warming a very serious problem. This study finds that identifying as world citizens and autonomous individuals increases the odds an individual judges global warming very serious, while identifying as national citizens or local community members has no relationship with evaluations of global warming. The third paper examines the impact of numerous measures of security/vulnerability on individual willingness to make environment-economy trade-offs. The data reveal that higher household incomes, residing in a country with higher per capita GDP, and higher rates of adult literacy are positively associated with prioritizing environmental protection over economic growth. However, residents of economically developing countries (or countries designated Non-Annex I by the Kyoto Protocol) are also much more likely to express willingness to donate personal income for the protection of the environment compared to residents of developed (Annex I) countries. The findings from these three studies have implications for sociological research on the relationship between economic inequality and environmental attitudes, the conditions under which international cooperation on climate is more or less likely, and the quest for climate justice.

This thesis assesses the role of gender in social movement contestation of TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline. By understanding gender as a social construction and social position from which political action and transformation can occur, the study examines how hegemonic understandings and performances of femininity and masculinity influenced social movement engagement, tactics employed, and activist spaces and dynamics, if at all, within the climate movement in Canada. Using a snowball recruitment method, I interviewed 10 activists from November 2017 to May 2018 from four provinces, all of whom were engaged in the Energy East fight. I found that while particular gendered tactics, such as direct action, were not pivotal in the movement’s ultimate victory, gender did influence how people engaged in activism and how spaces within the movement were structured. Areas such as feminist leadership, non-profit versus grassroots spaces, and the ways in which movement members took up space were where gender played the clearest role. Moreover, some of the findings do reflect what has been found in available literature: that women make up the majority of the environmental base yet are underrepresented in high level spaces and traditional leadership. This thesis also explores potential next steps to make the climate justice movement more inclusive and equitable. While it remains unclear to what extent gender played a decisive role in the ultimate defeat of the pipeline project, it did influence internal dynamics, leadership, and recruitment.

Thesis advisor: Hiroshi Nakazato / Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the common desire of states has been for constant economic growth. While this aspiration has promoted the flourishing of some societies it has been a detriment to others. With intensified inequality across the globe, the powerful have both inadvertently and knowingly exploited the vulnerable— including people, animals and the planet. Now, that inequality and environmental degradation persist in the collective crisis of climate change. Moving forward, it is critical for nations to acknowledge both their culpability for destruction and their capacity for action amidst this crisis. With differing historical responsibilities, states may have proportionately accountable solutions. This thesis provides both an ethical and a practical framework for addressing both local and global challenges that come with climate change as well as how to mitigate the injustices that are borne of it in thoughtful, multi-faceted and integrated approaches to sustainable development. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: International Studies.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(地球環境学) / 甲第23592号 / 地環博第219号 / 新制||地環||42(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院地球環境学舎地球環境学専攻 / (主査)教授 宇佐美 誠, 教授 佐藤 淳二, 教授 山村 亜希, 准教授 徳永 悠, 教授 服部 高宏 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Global Environmental Studies / Kyoto University / DGAM

Climate change will undeniably be this century’s greatest challenge. The complexity and moral ambiguity of the problem entail severe difficulties in achieving unanimous conceptions of an equitable burden-sharing formula. It is additionally intrinsically intertwined with and an amplifier of social injustices, placing issues of justice at the forefront of climate agendas. The Paris Agreement remarked on the necessary breakthrough in climate negotiations and a ground-breaking switch in climate diplomacy. Nonetheless, much remains unclear when it comes to its achievements; has it eradicated old negotiation deadlocks between North and South, and how have conceptualizations of climate justice evolved. With a critical discourse analysis and lens of distributive climate justice, the thesis studies discursive practices at COP21 and COP26 with the aspiration of unveiling changes in discursive constructions of climate justice. Discoveries made indicate that developed and developing countries continue to construct climate justice on widely different normative grounds. Particularistic notions of climate justice persist and undermine abilities to foster socially shared solutions to climate change. This research provides revised and valuable insights into contemporary climate action under the Paris Agreement. Exposing discursive practices is vital to understand the underlying dynamics that produce the social reality of climate justice.

This essay investigates three questions relating to Climate Justice and are as follows: To what degree ought the global warming be restricted, How ought the greenhouse gas emissions be divided and How ought the costs related to the climate change be divided. To be able to answer these questions principles of justice are needed. An argument is therefore constructed modeled after John Rawls Original Position in general and The Veil of Ignorance in particular. The conclusions from this essay are that the global temperature increase ought to be restricted to 1.5 degrees Celsius with support from Maximin as a principle of justice. As a consequent to this goal net zero emissions need to be the case as soon as possible. The remaining possible emissions ought to be divided equally with support from Maximin as a principle of justice. For the last question it is suggested that the costs ought to be paid by the ones how have emitted greenhouse gases, this according to the principle of Polluter Pays.

In this dissertation, I analyze climate change as a collective action problem. Decades of consistent policy and indeed institutional failure suggest that climate change cannot be managed top-down by experts and politicians alone. Climate communicators must therefore take up the challenge of ethically and politically motivating public action on this issue. Unfortunately, the ethical and political logic of climate response presents profound challenges to public motivation that appears to confound thinkers in the climate literature across disciplines. I thus endeavors to rethink the climate situation today from the perspective of collective motivation. Doing justice to the complexities of this multifaceted problematic demands interdisciplinary analysis, but the equally pressing need for general comprehension requires philosophical synthesis. For the climate issue is at once global and intergenerational in scale, and is systemic to modern social and cultural institutions that have long-evolved to structure the way people relate to each other, to nature, and ultimately to the world of everyday experience. My thesis, then, is that this collective action problem is ultimately an existential problem that calls for an existential response. Specifically, I argue that the ethical and political implications of climate response are largely received as an “existential threat” to the extent that they unsettle the integrity of everyday existence lived in common. That is, the deeper implications of this issue roundly contradict the background structures of “lifeworld identity” informing collective experience at some of the most general (socio-cultural) levels of being in the world. The consequences of this existential problem present us with two “quandaries” that must be addressed coherently. The “quandary of denial” signifies the largely ethical challenges of motivating a collective response to the historical and material realities of the climate ‘problem.’ The “quandary of transition,” by contrast, speaks to the relatively political challenges of relating the climate problem as such to climate ‘solutions’ that are collectively meaningful enough to positively inspire viable ways forward. Finally, I conclude by drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty to advance a critical phenomenology of public motivation responsive to these two moments of the existential problem.

La Vía Campesina is an international network of peasant farmers that, since 1996, has promoted the concept of food sovereignty. More recently, this collection of over 160 groups worldwide has been connecting this concept with climate justice issues. Drawing on interviews conducted during the 2012 People’s Summit that took place in Rio de Janeiro, and an analysis of the network’s documents, I consider its work in relation to its member organizations and a broader movement tackling the systemic issues that are driving a range of social, economic and ecological crises. I contend that, while many of Vía Campesina’s proposals will require the establishment of intricate processes and systems depending on the geographic, political and cultural context in question, the network is demonstrating that its radical critiques, proposals and decision-making processes may help contribute to a larger counter-hegemonic narrative as a force to counteract global capitalism.

La Vía Campesina is an international network of peasant farmers that, since 1996, has promoted the concept of food sovereignty. More recently, this collection of over 160 groups worldwide has been connecting this concept with climate justice issues. Drawing on interviews conducted during the 2012 People’s Summit that took place in Rio de Janeiro, and an analysis of the network’s documents, I consider its work in relation to its member organizations and a broader movement tackling the systemic issues that are driving a range of social, economic and ecological crises. I contend that, while many of Vía Campesina’s proposals will require the establishment of intricate processes and systems depending on the geographic, political and cultural context in question, the network is demonstrating that its radical critiques, proposals and decision-making processes may help contribute to a larger counter-hegemonic narrative as a force to counteract global capitalism.