| Description |
The climate change movement shares a single grievance that it seeks to address, climate change, but within this movement there are different perspectives on, first, what solutions are most appropriate and, second, what the fundamental problem is to be addressed. Looking at these two factors through the lens of system justification theory reveals a spectrum of difference within the climate change movement. On one end of this spectrum is Radical Resistance, defined by an advocacy for systemic change, rejecting market and technological fixes and urging instead for alternative, noncapitalist systems centered around environmental goals and social justice. On the other end of this spectrum, Ecological Modernists see addressing climate change as a matter of “greening†capitalism and promoting informational campaigns directed at changing individual attitudes around climate change, which, it is assumed, will prompt behavioral change. The second chapter discusses survey-based research applied to determine the relationships between belief factors, including concern about climate change, climate change mitigation approach, political identification, and system justification tendency; action, in this case, carbon footprint; and demographic factors. Statistical analysis reveals that concern about climate change is not associated with a substantially lower carbon footprint in relation to the national average and to low-emission scenario targets. The third chapter discusses what insight geographers may apply to social movement study by using the concepts of space, place, and scale to the core social movements literature, which looks at how social movements mobilize resources, exploited or are foreclosed by political processes, and express identity lost within hegemonic capitalist systems. Place, space, and scale, however, are concepts hinged on the notion of territoriality, that territories are bounded spaces made distinct by differences in social, economic, and political situations in distinct places, which in the context of globalization at times may not hold, thus demanding a relational perspective. This study incorporates the concepts of both territoriality and relationality by looking at the geographically extensive relations of the Transition movement, which are distant relations facilitated by globalization, and at territorially intensive relations, or proximate relations where spatial proximity and place-based context make in imprint on social movement outcomes. |
