Published September 3, 2010
by jmedalye
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Last month, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives published Climate Change— Who’s Carrying the Burden? The chilly climates of the global environmental dilemma (Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2010), edited by Professor L. Anders Sandberg and Tor Sandberg. This timely publication draws attention to the disparity between climate change and social justice concerns. Its contributors confound, confuse and extend what constitutes the meaning of climate change. Moreover, they juxtapose and make connections between climate change and the chilly climates that exclude and marginalize groups and individuals who live and imagine different ways of interacting that are more respectful of social and environmental relationships.
As the introduction succinctly notes, the devastating impacts of climate change are clear. But there are disturbing revelations about how global elites are tackling the issue. Al Gore—on one hand — promotes carbon emissions trading and green technologies as a solution, and—on the other—profits handsomely from his timely investments in those same initiatives. Infamous climate change skeptic Bjørn Lomborg recommends free market solutions to fight global poverty and disease. And it’s these solutions that almost exclusively receive the attention of world leaders, so-called experts and media pundits. This publication rallies the call of climate justice advocates and activists concerned with ‘system change not climate change’. This call demands control of local resources, the restitution of past wrongs, and the willingness to conceive and accept different modes of living and seeing.
The book is dedicated to those that suffer the most from climate change yet are the least responsible for it. The authors focus on the distributional impact and visions of climate change and the connection of climate change to wider systemic forces. The contributors present a view of climate change that is critical of markets, new technologies, and international agreements as solutions to the climate change dilemma and also explore the origins of climate change and the places where its impacts are felt the most. The collection makes a significant contribution to understanding climate change itself as an oppressive force in not only hiding the historical connections of the carbon economy to colonialism, capitalism, and a rampant and exploitative resource extraction, but also the resiliencies, possibilities and alternatives articulated by groups who fight and stand outside the carbon economy. It argues that there are chilly climates that surround the discussions on climate change that erase, exclude and marginalize alternative views and possibilities.
To purchase a copy visit the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. See Climate Change— Who’s Carrying the Burden? The chilly climates of the global environmental dilemma
Contents
- Introduction: Climate change — who’s carrying the burden? -- L . ANDERS SANDBERG and TOR SANDBERG
PART I: CLIMATE CHANGE AND CLIMATE JUSTICE
- The Health Impact of Global Climate Change -- STEPHEN LEWIS
- From Climate Change to Climate Justice in Copenhagen -- L . ANDERS SANDBERG and TOR SANDBERG
- Paying Our Climate Debt -- NAOMI KLEIN
- Vandana Shiva Talks About Climate Change -- AN INTERVIEW BY TOR SANDBERG
- The Path from Cochabamba -- SONJA KILLORAN- MCKIBBIN
- COP15 in an Uneven World -- Contradiction and crisis at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change -- JACQUELINE MEDALYE
- Climate Change, Compelled Migration, and Global Social Justice -- AARON SAAD
PART II: CHILLY CLIMATES
- Framing Problems, Finding Solutions -- STEPHANIE RUTHERFORD and JOCELYN THORPE
- Penguin Family Values: The nature of planetary environmental reproductive justice -- NOËL STURGEON
- ‘Walking on Thin Ice’ The Ice Bear Project, the Inuit and climate change -- JELENA VESIC
- Operation Climate Change: Between community resource control and carbon capitalism in the Niger Delta -- ISAAC OSUOKA
- Broken Pieces, Shattered Lives: The lasting legacy of Hurricane Katrina -- TANYA GULLIVER
- Unearthing Silence: Subjugated narratives for environmental engagement -- JAY PITTER
PART III: BEYOND CLIMATE CHANGE AND CHILLY CLIMATES
- A Practical Environmental Education:Shrinking ecological footprints, expanding political ones - ELIZABETH MAY
- “Keep the fire burning brightly” Aboriginal youth using hip hop to decolonize a chilly climate -- ALILAKHANI, VANESSA OLIVER, JESSICA YEE , RANDY JACKSON & SARAH FLICKER
- Forty Years of System Change: Lessons from the free city of Christiania -- ANDERS LUND HANSEN
- Marginal Medleys: How Transition Towns and Climate Camps are relocalizing the global climate crisis -- ADRINA BARDEKJIAN AMBROSII
- Dig Where You Stand! Food research/education rooted in place, politics, passion, and praxis -- DEBORAH BARNDT
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