Suchergebnisse

Much has been written about the challenges of tackling climate change in post-political times. However, times have changed significantly since the onset of the debate on post-politics in environmental scholarship. We have entered a politicised, even polarised world which, as this article argues, a number of voices within the climate movement paradoxically try to bring together again. This article scrutinises new climate movements in a changing world, focusing on the School Strikes for Climate in Belgium. It shows how the movement, through the establishment of an intergenerational conflict line and a strong politicisation of tactics, has succeeded in putting the topic at the heart of the public agenda for months on end. By claiming that we need mobilisation, not studying, the movement went straight against the hegemonic, technocratic understanding of climate politics at the time. However, by keeping its demands empty and establishing a homogenised fault line, the movement made itself vulnerable to forms of neutralisation and recuperation by forces which have an interest in restoring the post-political consensus around technocratic and market-oriented answers to climate change. This might also partly explain its gradual decline. Instead of recycling post-political discourses of the past, this article claims, the challenge is to seize the 'populist moment' and build a politicised movement around climate change. One way of doing that is by no longer projecting climate change into the future but reframing the 'now' as the moment of crisis which calls on us to build another future.

Much has been written about the challenges of tackling climate change in post-political times. However, times have changed significantly since the onset of the debate on post-politics in environmental scholarship. We have entered a politicised, even polarised world which, as this article argues, a number of voices within the climate movement paradoxically try to bring together again. This article scrutinises new climate movements in a changing world, focusing on the School Strikes for Climate in Belgium. It shows how the movement, through the establishment of an intergenerational conflict line and a strong politicisation of tactics, has succeeded in putting the topic at the heart of the public agenda for months on end. By claiming that we need mobilisation, not studying, the movement went straight against the hegemonic, technocratic understanding of climate politics at the time. However, by keeping its demands empty and establishing a homogenised fault line, the movement made itself vulnerable to forms of neutralisation and recuperation by forces which have an interest in restoring the post-political consensus around technocratic and market-oriented answers to climate change. This might also partly explain its gradual decline. Instead of recycling post-political discourses of the past, this article claims, the challenge is to seize the 'populist moment' and build a politicised movement around climate change. One way of doing that is by no longer projecting climate change into the future but reframing the 'now' as the moment of crisis which calls on us to build another future.

Contemporary discourses on climate change have been analysed as profoundly depoliticised. At the same time, this post-political thesis has been challenged for not taking the multiplicity of voices and actually existing forms of contestation into account. In this paper, I investigate the tension between these two positions and show that the existence of diverging voices and environmental struggles does not disprove the post-political thesis as such. I do this both from a theoretical and an empirical point of view. Theoretically, the paper presents a rereading of post-foundational theory and its implications for dealing with climate change. Empirically, the paper is based on activist research in the Transition Towns and Climate Justice Action movements, which have variably been depicted as profoundly political and depoliticised. The paper argues that it is often overlooked that it is on the level of discourse or representation that the diagnosis of post-politics should be made. It is not reality as such which is post-political, but the way reality is portrayed and thereby constructed. On this basis, I argue that post-politics is a real problem for climate movements and that the attempt to overcome it is not only a necessity but also a profound challenge for them.

Grassroots environmental movements have recently started to question the focus on sustainable consumption as a main strategy to tackle climate change. They prefer to address individuals as citizens rather than as consumers, and focus on collective rather than individual change. Two prominent movements in this regard are Transition Towns and Climate Justice Action. While both movements criticise conventional approaches, they put forward entirely different strategies for what has to happen instead. Based on extensive qualitative research, this article analyses how these movements manifest themselves in Flanders (Belgium). The focus is on their different accounts of how and why collective practices have to be built, and the place they attribute to 'the political' in this. The analysis reveals the existence of two different forms of ecological citizenship: one communitarian, the other agonistic.

Projecting win-win situations, new economic opportunities, green growth and innovative partnerships, the green economy discourse has quickly gained centre stage in international environmental governance and policymaking. Its underlying message is attractive and optimistic: if the market can become the tool for tackling climate change and other major ecological crises, the fight against these crises can also be the royal road to solving the problems of the market. But how g̀reen' is the green economy? And how social or democratic can it be? This book examines how the emergence of this new discourse has fundamentally modified the terms of the environmental debate. Interpreting the rise of green economy discourse as an attempt to re-invent capitalism, it unravels the different dimensions of the green economy and its limits: from pricing carbon to emissions trading, from sustainable consumption to technological innovation. The book uses the innovative concept of post-politics to provide a critical perspective on the way green economy discourse represents nature and society (and their interaction) and forecloses the imagination of alternative socio-ecological possibilities. As a way of repoliticising the debate, the book advocates the construction of new political faultlines based on the demands for climate justice and democratic commons. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of environmental politics, political ecology, human geography, human ecology, political theory, philosophy and political economy. Includes a foreword written by Erik Swyngedouw (Professor of Geography, Manchester University).

Mapping the media frames that have both triggered and articulated the mobilisation around air pollution in London in the period 1997–2017, this paper shows how especially those events that have been framed in agonistic terms have led to a rise of media engagement with the topic. From the controversy around Sahara dust as a so-called 'natural' explanation for smog episodes, to the staging of Oxford Street as the most polluted street of the world, from Sadiq Khan's decision to join ClientEarth in its court case against the UK government to the debate on a new runway for Heathrow, from the Volkswagen scandal to the Black Lives Matter blockade of London City Airport: the discursive construction of us/them divides has been crucial in sparking passion, contestation and debate. Empirically, the paper starts from a detailed study of 1594 newspaper articles that appeared on air pollution in five British newspapers, The Guardian, Financial Times, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and The Times, between January 1997 and March 2017. Theoretically, it combines Chantal Mouffe's political theory with Anabela Carvalho's media theory, in particular her diachronic model of circuits of culture. On this basis, the paper distinguishes five critical discourse periods and shows how a number of critical discourse moments, exactly because of their agonising dimension, have been able to spike media attention and shift the terms of the debate. Starting from this observation, the paper argues that media processes should not only be understood in cyclic terms, but can also trigger non-linear iterative dynamics, leading to upward spirals characterised by thresholds and a gradually increasing level of interest overall, in this case raising the profile of London's poor air.

The "green economy" is fast becoming the new alpha and omega for many policy makers, corporations, political actors, and NGOs who want to tackle both the environmental and economic crisis at once. Or would it be better to speak about "green capitalism?" Going green is not only important in the fight against environmental destruction, it also makes a country "stronger, healthier, safer, more innovative, competitive and respected," argues Thomas Friedman, the well-known New York Times columnist. "Is there anything that is more patriotic, capitalist, and geostrategic than this?" Indeed, the rationale underlying the nascent project of the green economy is that if the market could become the instrument for tackling the environmental crisis, the fight against this crisis could be the royal road to solving the problems of the market. Focusing in particular on the green economy's impact on climate change, this paper analyzes the green economy as a hegemonic project that tries to retranslate environmental concerns into a new jargon, and to turn environmental conflict into a new motor for economic development.

Situating the 'post-ecologist turn' within the framework of post-politics, we not only investigate why environmental issues are so easily represented in consensual and technocratic terms, but also seek avenues for repoliticisation. We thereby try to avoid the pitfall of a voluntaristic or substantively normative approach to what repoliticisation can mean. By pointing to the subtle polemic on a meta-level which lurks beneath even the most consensual discourse, a potential starting point for repoliticisation is uncovered, which also enables a political rereading of the 'post-ecologist turn'. Finally, we argue that the same characteristics that make the environmental question liable to depoliticisation can also turn it into a field of politicisation par excellence .