Publications

This chapter examines the most promising gains of multiple forms of climate action and the most pressing challenges to future advancements. While significant climate action advances have occurred over the past 30 years, the current impediments to further expansion of efforts are substantial. In terms of institutional climate action, city-level climate planning, green energy transitions, and the expansion of nature-based climate solutions represent major gains in addressing the climate crisis. On the noninstitutional front, both the global climate social movement and local antiextraction struggles made substantial progress in raising awareness and influencing policy outcomes. Major obstacles remain for expanding climate action in the areas of civic engagement, climate financing, carbon reductionism, climate denialism, and growing authoritarian populism.

As human and ecological systems face an existential threat from planetary warming, institutions and collectivities are implementing multiple forms of climate action to address the escalating crisis. Examples of major institutional climate action strategies include climate action planning, nature-based climate solutions, carbon markets and taxes, expansion of green and renewable energy, carbon capture, storage and management technologies, climate public education, litigation and referendums, climate reparations, and a variety of non-institutional mobilizations involving climate protest and anti-extraction actions. Most modes of climate action appear to be driven by various strands of environmental threat—the specter of deteriorating ecological conditions in the face of nonaction. This chapter examines the ways environmental threats motivate multiple types of climate action covered in this Handbook.

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

The environmental justice and climate justice movements have differing histories and trajectories. One of the promising developments in recent years is a growing alignment between the two movements and recognition of how the previous struggles over environmental justice contribute to the climate justice movement. This chapter describes the driving forces behind the development of the environmental justice movement, including history, goals, and outcomes. It also links the environmental justice movement to current climate advocacy efforts and the most promising forms of practicing climate justice in the contemporary era.

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
 

Collective action against extraction tends to occur at the local level at the sites where nearby ecological damage takes place. In Panama in 2023, protests reached a national level against copper mining by a transnational corporation and successfully terminated operations. The protests endured for a month and acted as the largest outpouring of protests in Panamanian history. This study details how a massive campaign against extraction with a successful outcome builds from multi-sectoral alliances attained in previous struggles. The lessons learned from the mobilizations provide strategies for other regions in the search for equitable environmental policies that avoid threatening ecological sustainability.

Research on individual participation in climate action largely focuses on middle class environmental activism around protest events. To better understand the expansion of civic engagement on climate issues, more work needs to be carried out on wider sectors of the population. This study examines the drivers associated with involvement in climate action at the individual level with a survey sample of working-class youth of color. The findings suggest that youth embedded in pro-climate social networks, a history of civic engagement, and an equity belief system increase willingness to participate in several forms of climate action, including climate meetings, demonstrations, and inviting others to participate. For larger climate action initiatives to overcome the barriers of participation, linking to specific pools of sympathy in civil society that value economic equality may provide a mass base of support for policies consistent with just transition perspectives.

Labor has stood as a central actor in the waves of contention against authoritarian forms of pro-market development in the Global South. In this paper, we analyze the local-level conditions that foster the mobilization of labor groups under such contexts. We study how municipal-level repressive and economic threats from authoritarian forms of pro-market development models generate labor protest. We focus on a wave of labor protest in El Salvador. In particular, we examine how subnational counts of labor mobilization events relate to variations in targeted repression and the labor flexibilization associated with transnational production. We use a unique dataset of labor mobilization, forced disappearances, and industrial ownership in El Salvador at the municipal level. More instances of disruptive labor protest emerged in those localities characterized by heightened political persecution and new workplace pressures from manufacturing operations financed by transnational capital. Based on threat models of contention, a more fine-grained approach at the subnational level helps explain how collective resistance builds into a full-blown wave of labor protest in authoritarian capitalist regimes.