scholarly journals The hidden injustices of advancing solar geoengineering research

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennie C. Stephens ◽  
Kevin Surprise
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Small Group ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
White Men ◽  
Climate System ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
Elite Institutions ◽  
Global North ◽  
Solar Geoengineering

Abstract Advancing solar geoengineering research is associated with multiple hidden injustices that are revealed by addressing three questions: Who is conducting and funding solar geoengineering research? How do those advocating for solar geoengineering research think about social justice and social change? How is this technology likely to be deployed? Navigating these questions reveals that solar geoengineering research is being advocated for by a small group of primarily white men at elite institutions in the Global North, funded largely by billionaires or their philanthropic arms, who are increasingly adopting militarized approaches and logics. Solar geoengineering research advances an extreme, expert–elite technocratic intervention into the global climate system that would serve to further concentrate contemporary forms of political and economic power. For these reasons, we argue that it is unethical and unjust to advance solar geoengineering research.

Possibilities for new social work professional resistance in Chile: times of social change?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taly Reininger ◽  
Gianinna Muñoz-Arce ◽  
Cristobal Villalobos
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Exponential Growth ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
The Past ◽  
Global North ◽  
Material Conditions

In the current unscrupulous neoliberal climate, social workers are increasingly confronted with ethical and political tensions that clash with the profession’s commitments to human rights and social justice. However, despite neoliberalism’s global reach, the scholarship on social work professional resistance has been largely limited to the Global North. Taking into consideration this absence in the literature, this article seeks to explore the possibilities for professional resistance in the Global South, specifically, in Chile, a country in which neoliberalism was forcefully imposed and that has experienced an exponential growth in social movements over the past two decades. The following article explores the structural and material conditions that have historically shaped social work resistances, arguing that the current social and political climate, specifically, the constitutional process under way, presents a space from which new resistances are possible and necessary in order to challenge neoliberal hegemony.

From “Inconvenient Truth” to Effective Governance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Passarelli ◽  
David Michel ◽  
William Durch
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Climate System ◽  
Global Public Good ◽  
Environmental Groups ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Effective Governance ◽  
Political Response ◽  
Earth’S Climate ◽  
National Governments

The Earth’s climate system is a global public good. Maintaining it is a collective action problem. This chapter looks at a quarter-century of efforts to understand and respond to the challenges posed by global climate change and why the collective political response, until very recently, has seemed to lag so far behind our scientific knowledge of the problem. The chapter tracks the efforts of the main global, intergovernmental process for negotiating both useful and politically acceptable responses to climate change, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, but also highlights efforts by scientific and environmental groups and, more recently, networks of sub-national governments—especially cities—and of businesses to redefine interests so as to meet the dangers of climate system disruption.

scholarly journals Exhaustion and possibility. The wor(l)dlyness of social work in (G)local environment worlds during a pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 54-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona B Livholts
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Local Environment ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Writing Genres

Exhaustion is not about being tired. It is an intense feeling of restlessness, of insomnia, and awakening when I ask myself: have I exhausted all that is possible? Such a state of restlessness and wakefulness represents a turning point for having enough, and opens for new possibilities to act for social change. This reflexive essay departs from the notion that the language of exhaustion offers a wor(l)dly possibility for social work(ers) to engage in critical analytical reflexivity about our locations of power from the outset of our (g)local environment worlds. The aim is to trace the transformative possibilities of social change in social work practice through the literature of exhaustion (eg. Frichot, 2019 ; Spooner, 2011 ). The methodology is based on uses of narrative life writing genres such as poetry, written and photographic diary entrances between the 4th of April and 4th of June. The essay shows how tracing exhaustion during the pandemic, visualises a multiplicity of forms of oppression and privilege, an increasing attention and relationship to things, and border movements and languages. I suggest that social work replace the often-used terminology of social problems with exhaustive lists to address structural forms of racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, which has been further visualized through death, illness, violence, and poverty during the pandemic. I argue that the language of exhaustion is useful for reflexivity and action in social work practice through the way it contributes to intensified awareness, attention, engagement, listening, and agency to create social justice.

scholarly journals Meridional changes in the South Atlantic Subtropical Gyre during Heinrich Stadials

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tainã M. L. Pinho ◽  
Cristiano M. Chiessi ◽  
Rodrigo C. Portilho-Ramos ◽  
Marília C. Campos ◽  
Stefano Crivellari ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Global Climate ◽  
South Atlantic ◽  
Subtropical Gyre ◽  
Climate System ◽  
The South ◽  
Foraminiferal Species ◽  
Ocean Gyres ◽  
Long Term Monitoring ◽  
Term Monitoring

AbstractSubtropical ocean gyres play a key role in modulating the global climate system redistributing energy between low and high latitudes. A poleward displacement of the subtropical gyres has been observed over the last decades, but the lack of long-term monitoring data hinders an in-depth understanding of their dynamics. Paleoceanographic records offer the opportunity to identify meridional changes in the subtropical gyres and investigate their consequences to the climate system. Here we use the abundance of planktonic foraminiferal species Globorotalia truncatulinodes from a sediment core collected at the northernmost boundary of the South Atlantic Subtropical Gyre (SASG) together with a previously published record of the same species from the southernmost boundary of the SASG to reconstruct meridional fluctuations of the SASG over last ca. 70 kyr. Our findings indicate southward displacements of the SASG during Heinrich Stadials (HS) 6-4 and HS1, and a contraction of the SASG during HS3 and HS2. During HS6-4 and HS1, the SASG southward displacements likely boosted the transfer of heat to the Southern Ocean, ultimately strengthening deep-water upwelling and CO2 release to the atmosphere. We hypothesize that the ongoing SASG poleward displacement may further increase oceanic CO2 release.

A Conceptualization Framework of Allyship: Bidirectional Allyship Between Black Heterosexual Women and White Gay Males

2021 ◽  
pp. 153270862110353
Author(s):  
Peter Scaramuzzo ◽  
Michael Bartone ◽  
Jemimah L. Young
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Black Women ◽  
White Men ◽  
Gay Males ◽  
Social Justice Movements ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Heterosexual Women ◽  
Complex Dimensions ◽  
Justice Movements

Allyship is a complicated idea laden with multiple, layered assumptions. One should not presume that allyship conceptually permeates all social justice movements. One should not presume that allyships develop to combat or dismantle a predefined socially constructed ism. A critical interrogation of allyship and allyship constructions necessitates recognition of broader, universal tenets of allyships anywhere. This must go further to embrace the nuanced, situated, dynamic, critically problematic, and complex dimensions rooted in individual lived experiences intersecting multiple marginalizations which contribute as praxis toward an actualizing of individual allyships. Although we will blur constructed distinctions as we progress, here, we endeavor to surface and deliberate upon the derivations and functions and shapes of allyships between two demographic categories, made arbitrarily distinct here for the purposes of engaging in discursive analysis: cisgender heterosexual Black women and cisgender gay White men. In short, we are proposing a way to view this allyship as bidirectional allyships, grounded in social justice frames of existing: a way to see each respective group as traveling within their own lane down a collectively traveled highway. Each traverses the space along their own course, traveling down “their own road.”

Practitioner perspectives on learning for social change through non-formal global citizenship education

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleanor J Brown
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Citizenship Education ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Global Citizenship ◽  
Small Individual ◽  
Global Citizenship Education ◽  
The Social

This article engages with debates about transformative learning and social change, exploring practitioner perspectives on non-formal education activities run by non-governmental organisations. The research looked at how global citizenship education practitioners met their organisation’s goals of change for social justice through educational activities. This education is sometimes criticised for promoting small individual changes in behaviour, which do not ultimately lead to the social justice to which it pertains to aim. Findings suggest that this non-formal education aims to provide information from different perspectives and generate critical reflection, often resulting in shifts in attitudes and behaviour. While the focus is often on small actions, non-formal spaces opened up by such education allow for networks to develop, which are key for more collective action and making links to social movements. Although this was rarely the focus of these organisations, it was these steps, often resulting from reflection as a group on personal actions, which carried potentially for social change.

scholarly journals Permafrost-Affected Soils of the Russian Arctic and their Carbon Pools

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 619-655
Author(s):  
S. Zubrzycki ◽  
L. Kutzbach ◽  
E.-M. Pfeiffer
Keyword(s):  
Organic Matter ◽  
Organic Carbon ◽  
Soil Organic Carbon ◽  
Carbon Sink ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Fundamental Property ◽  
Climate System ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Quaternary Period ◽  
Permafrost Regions

Abstract. Permafrost-affected soils have accumulated enormous pools of organic matter during the Quaternary Period. The area occupied by these soils amounts to more than 8.6 million km2, which is about 27% of all land areas north of 50° N. Therefore, permafrost-affected soils are considered to be one of the most important cryosphere elements within the climate system. Due to the cryopedogenic processes that form these particular soils and the overlying vegetation that is adapted to the arctic climate, organic matter has accumulated to the present extent of up to 1024 Pg (1 Pg = 1015 g = 1 Gt) of soil organic carbon stored within the uppermost three meters of ground. Considering the observed progressive climate change and the projected polar amplification, permafrost-affected soils will undergo fundamental property changes. Higher turnover and mineralization rates of the organic matter are consequences of these changes, which are expected to result in an increased release of climate-relevant trace gases into the atmosphere. As a result, permafrost regions with their distinctive soils are likely to trigger an important tipping point within the global climate system, with additional political and social implications. The controversy of whether permafrost regions continue accumulating carbon or already function as a carbon source remains open until today. An increased focus on this subject matter, especially in underrepresented Siberian regions, could contribute to a more robust estimation of the soil organic carbon pool of permafrost regions and at the same time improve the understanding of the carbon sink and source functions of permafrost-affected soils.

Climate Dynamics as a Nonlinear Brownian Motion

1998 ◽  
Vol 08 (04) ◽  
pp. 799-803 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. M. Sonechkin
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Brownian Motion ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Surface Air Temperature ◽  
Warming Trend ◽  
Climate System ◽  
Temperature Oscillations ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Temperature Time ◽  
The Heat Balance

Based on the heat balance equation of the global climate system the well-known surface air temperature time series of the Northern and Southern hemispheres were analyzed as realizations of a fractional Brownian motion. The technique of the so-called wavelet transform was used for this purpose. The technique easily admits splitting time series of interest to statistically stationary oscillations and a trend. Such temperature oscillations were extracted which include within themselves almost all differences between both hemispheric time series. As a result of subtraction of the oscillations from the primary hemispheric series a residual trend-like component was evaluated. The latter evidences a single warming trend of the global climate system that was started from the early 20th century.

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