Climate Emergency Politics is Dangerous
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Authors
Publication Date
2019-10-05Journal Title
Issues in Science and Technology
ISSN
0748-5492
Publisher
University of Texas at Dallas
Volume
36
Issue
Fall
Pages
23-25
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Metadata
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Hulme, M. (2019). Climate Emergency Politics is Dangerous. Issues in Science and Technology, 36 (Fall), 23-25. https://issues.org/issue/36-1/
Abstract
A widespread popular movement over the last year or so has been insisting that on-going climate change warrants the formal declaration of a ‘climate emergency’. This movement has been most salient in western Europe and North America, with climate emergencies being voted through in recent months by parliaments in the UK, France, Canada and Ireland. Declarations of emergencies create ‘states of exception,’ often justified by governments under conditions of war, insurrection, or terrorist threat. Emergencies promise the mass mobilization of a jurisdiction’s full economic, social and technical capacities to ward off an existential threat. Yet at the same time emergencies can threaten constitutional rights and can justify the suspension of normal politics. In the case of climate change, such declarations are driven by a heightened sense of urgency among an array of scientists, activists, journalists, and others about the need to arrest climate change within the next 10 years, advanced by framing the impacts of unmitigated climate change as ‘existential’ threats. According to sociologist Will Davies, declarations of climate emergencies can be understood as manifestations of a democratic ‘green populism.’
Embargo Lift Date
2022-09-23
Identifiers
External link: https://issues.org/issue/36-1/
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/297032
Rights
All rights reserved