Publications by Type: Book

The most recent scientific reporting suggests that the outlook for continued global warming is dire. Collective action and civic engagement by ordinary people around the world will prove decisive in slowing down global warming and supporting planetary survival. Climate Change and Civic Engagement demonstrates the origins, gains, and future trajectory of the climate movement. In analyzing collective action events around the world and exploring how the movement navigates the competing paradigms of climate denialism, decarbonization, and just transitions, this book includes:

• Data collected from thousands of climate engagements and events.
• The most recent tools from social movement scholarship, such as GIS mapping, representative surveys from frontline communities, and theories of expanding climate civic engagement along just transition pathways.
• An exploration of the links between climate justice and environmental justice.
• Creative tactics for sustaining collective climate action in the face of climate denialism and technocratic solutions.
   

This book shows readers the indispensability of social movement knowledge in forging effective climate justice movements.

Climate action encompasses all kinds of efforts to mitigate climate change. The Oxford Handbook of Climate Action examines diverse efforts globally, with chapters discussing activism or policy on every continent. The volume presents major theoretical perspectives and concrete strategies for addressing climate change in the twenty-first century. The Handbook considers both noninstitutional and institutional forms of climate action. Contributors discuss the origins of climate activism as well as important achievements in raising public awareness, increasing participation, incorporating environmental justice, and implementing climate-friendly policies. They also demonstrate why nonconventional forms of collective action are necessary and effective when existing institutions fail to address planetary warming at an appropriate pace and level of urgency. Authors cover climate action planning, renewable energy systems, reforestation, carbon capture and storage technologies, nature-based climate solutions, and just economic transitions. The scholars also identify climate action within broader systems of race, class, gender, and colonialism. Drawing from environmental science, sociology, political science, and anthropology, the Handbook gathers analyses and recommendations from an interdisciplinary field of specialists. The volume is thereby both comprehensive and accessible to students and scholars from various disciplines, making it a vital resource for anyone interested in the study of climate issues.

Key Findings
• First representative survey of priority populations impacted by high-speed rail station
development in the San Joaquin Valley
• Fare discounts for local residents will increase ridership of the high-speed rail
• Residents express strong preferences for job creation and job training to accompany
high-speed rail
• The Kings/Tulare Station design should incorporate multi-purpose community facilities
and anti-displacement features
• A Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) can address many of the most important
concerns and desired benefits expressed by residents in relation to a high-speed rail
station
• Residents would like to see Greenhouse Gas Reduction Funds invested in employment
opportunities and in climate and environmental protections

Report Highlights and Community Preferences

•  First set of representative surveys of residents impacted by High-Speed Rail in the San
    Joaquin Valley

•  More local residents would likely use High-Speed Rail if subsidized

•  Preferences for job creation and reduced pollution

•  Preferences for local economic development and cultural amenities

•  Strong support for community participation in the design of the Merced High-Speed Rail station 
    and the budgeting process

•  Community Benefit Agreements should focus on job creation and affordable housing
 

The work outlines the fundamental properties of social movements, including chapters focusing on: classification and methods of study; dominant and alternative theoretical frameworks; movement emergence; movement framing and messaging; individual recruitment/participation; movement outcomes/conditions associated with success; and social movement struggles in the global South as well as transnational movements.  The book emphasizes the critical role of joint action by ordinary people to confront major economic, political and environmental threats in the twenty-first century.  More specifically, Almeida examines how and when people mobilize against economic inequality, racism, environmental injustice, climate change, gender discrimination and other major issues and the likelihood of achieving desired social change.