Are There Limits to Limits?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Dobson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Global South ◽  
Peak Oil ◽  
Limits To Growth ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Ecological Problems ◽  
The Rich

The idea that there might be “limits to growth” is a key and contested feature of environmental politics. This chapter outlines the limits to growth thesis, describes and assesses critical reactions to it, and comments upon its relevance today. It argues that, after an initial highpoint in the early 1970s, the thesis declined in importance during the 1980s and 1990s under criticism from “ecological modernizers” and from environmental justice advocates in the global South who saw it as way of diverting blame for ecological problems from the rich and powerful to the poor and dispossessed. “Peak oil” and climate change have, though, given renewed impetus to the idea, and this has given rise to new discourses and practices around “sustainable prosperity” and “degrowth.”

“Occupying” Our Social Imagination: The Necessity of Utopian Discourses in an Anti-Utopian Age

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 152-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Webb
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political System ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Social Imagination ◽  
Social Imaginaries ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Willful Blindness ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Mainstream Society ◽  
Occupy Movements

AbstractWe are in the depths of multiple catastrophes that Western society is seemingly unwilling and unable to address: growing inequalities between the rich and the poor, a willful blindness to climate change, and a political system mired in uncompromising and ever increasing extremism. However, there are no reality transcending dialogues, no new social imaginaries to drive change—our own dystopic reality has no utopian response. The greatest importance that the Occupy movements may play in spurring social change and revolution is their success at bringing radical discourses into mainstream society. Occupy not only occupied fixed public locations, but also occupied our social imagination.

scholarly journals Climate Change and Economic Development: A Pragmatic Approach (Invited Lecture)

2007 ◽  
Vol 46 (4I) ◽  
pp. 337-350
Author(s):  
John Gowdy ◽  
Aneel Salman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Development Economics ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Adaptation To Climate Change ◽  
Global Issues ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Theoretical System ◽  
The Rich

Two major problems promise to dominate economic and social policy during the twentyfirst century. These are global climate change and the growing gap between the rich and the poor. Economists are facing these issues at a time when many of the standard tools of economic analysis—for example, competitive general equilibrium and the theoretical system that supports it—have fallen into disfavour in analysing global issues involving uncertainty and irreversibility. This is both a challenge and an opportunity for development economics. This paper first examines economic models of human development and climate change, drawing, where possible, on the situation in Pakistan. We then outline an approach to coping with climate change based on new perspectives in behavioural and development economics, and on the likely consequences of global warming for Pakistan. We focus on adaptation to climate change rather than on mitigation strategies.

Necropolitical metamorphoses

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-69
Author(s):  
Sang-Keun Yoo
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Environmental Toxicity ◽  
Unequal Distribution ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Distribution Of Power

This article analyses and compares two films by South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho: his 2006 sf film Gwoemul (The Host; South Korea 2006) and his most recent film Gisaengchung (Parasite; South Korea 2019). I interpret these two films through the lens of outbreak narrative and socio-environmentalism. I argue the films foreground the way each class has a different power and ability to defend itself against environmental toxicity, even though our bodies share the same porosity to it. The films show that with the unequal distribution of power and wealth, the rich and necropolitical nation-states use outbreak narrative to (re)constitute communities based on class lines, drawing imaginary lines between them. As a fictionalised enemy, poor communities are pushed away to uninhabitable places - the exceptional places made for emergencies. Bong shows that those pushed away to live minimal lives metamorphosise into parasites in the mental, behavioural and somatic senses, and further demonstrates that the current economic and political conditions offer no possibilities of solidarity. The paper concludes that his films demand that humanities scholars rethink our approach to environmentalist discourses, reminding our audiences that environmental justice for the poor can never be achieved without changing the necropolitical system of politics and economics.

scholarly journals The international political economy of nature and society: from climate emergency to climate justice in our common home

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
pp. 172
Author(s):  
Rey Ty
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Reasonable Doubt ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Security Models ◽  
The Rich ◽  
People First

Longitudinal scientific evidence proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the problem of climate change is reaching a point of no return, upon which Earthly and human survival depends. The major contributors of climate change include industry, transportation, agriculture, and consumers, over which corporate globalization controls, which consume fossil fuels, such as oil, coal, and gas that produce greenhouse gases. Climate change impacts access to clean water, human health, forests, coastal areas, biodiversity, and agriculture. Our tasks ahead include: 1) exposing and opposing flawed economic, political, social, cultural, and security models that destroy nature, cause mal-development, and widening the gap between the rich and the poor and 2) proposing new cooperative models that put sustainability and equality—nature and people—first, especially the poor and the oppressed, before profits.

scholarly journals The Analysis of the International Climate Change on Environmental Justice

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-124
Author(s):  
Wu Xueqin ◽  
Chengping .
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Climate Changes ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Limits To Growth ◽  
Global Issue ◽  
The World ◽  
International Climate ◽  
Environment And Development ◽  
Club Of Rome

Since the Club of Rome published "Limits to Growth" in 1972, the environmental problems have caused the attention of people around the world and become a global issue. The international community has also organized special meetings to promote the study of environmental issues. One of the most important meetings is the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held every year since 1972. The most important issue is on how to deal with climate change, which has become an international mainstream issue. From the perspective of the environmental justice, the following is a brief analysis of the negotiations on international climate changes, based on the opportunities of the 2009 Copenhagen Summit, the 2010 Cancun Summit and the 2011 South Africa Bender Climate Summit.

Dispossession and Solidarity in Athol Fugard and Juan Radrigán

2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-331
Author(s):  
LOREN KRUGER
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Global South ◽  
Free World ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Culture Of Consumption ◽  
The Rich

This article compares the two major figures of Chilean and South African theatre, in particular two intimate realist dramas onstage and onscreen in the 1970s and 1980s, when both countries were ruled by tyrannies tolerated by governments in the so-called free world. InBoesman and LenaandHechos consumadosthe depiction of solidarity against the dispossession caused by ‘capitalist revolution’ in Pinochet's Chile or Afrikaner capitalism in apartheid South Africa still resonates today when the rhetoric of struggle appears compromised by the culture of consumption and when post-apartheid and post-dictatorship governments retreat from ‘suspended revolution’ in a world shaped not only in the global South but also in the affluent North by neo-liberal axioms of shrunken government and free markets for the rich against austerity for the poor.

Ecological Social Work in South Africa and the Way Forward

2021 ◽  
pp. 151-174
Author(s):  
Linda Arkert ◽  
Issie Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Hot Spot ◽  
Sustainable Environment ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Work Practitioners

Internationally, social work has been delayed in engaging with ecological social work. The delay is reflected in South Africa, which is predicted to be a hot spot where the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are already being experienced. The effects of climate change and environmental degradation are social and environmental justice issues as the marginalized and poor in this country and the world have already been experiencing dire consequences. Social work practitioners and academics, in their roles as advocates for the marginalized and the poor, are therefore duty-bound to act for a sustainable environment for both people and the planet. In this chapter, the authors examine ecological social work in South Africa, its importance, and how it could become part of the global call for an ecological social work approach.

Is the Brazilian National Climate Change Adaptation Plan Addressing Inequality? Climate and Environmental Justice in a Global South Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 42-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Henrique Campello Torres ◽  
Ana Lia Leonel ◽  
Gabriel Pires de Araújo ◽  
Pedro Roberto Jacobi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
Global South

Climate beyond Borders

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-184
Author(s):  
Michael Méndez
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
Global South ◽  
Forest Carbon ◽  
Carbon Offsets ◽  
Forest Carbon Offsets ◽  
Regulatory Program

This chapter reveals the international dimensions and contradictions of California’s climate change regulatory program. It provides an account of the rise of a coalition of translocal justice actors—California-based environmental justice activists and Indigenous rights leaders in Chiapas, Mexico and Acre Brazil—who mobilized against linking California’s forest carbon offsets in the Global South.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document