After briefly introducing this part of the conference, consisting of four panels on the problems and prospects of the Global Climate Justice Movement in the Age of Crisis, I will present what may be the movement’s biggest task: crafting ways and means for it to actually take power across the world so that the desires of the vast majority of the world’s residents (including the non-human creatures among us) can be the benchmark against which we measure our chances for arriving in mid-century in a world characterized not by multiple crises – global inequality, political disenchantment, and cultures of violence – but rather in a world beyond capitalism itself, even as the climate continues to threaten the very basis of humanity’s existence.
My academic specialty is movements for radical social change, both 20th century revolutions – my 2005 book Taking Power: On the Origins of Twentieth Century Revolutions in the Third World is free – and 21st century movements for radical social change, from the Zapatistas and the global justice movement to Occupy, the Arab Spring, and now, esp. the global climate justice movement (see “Beyond Insurgency to Radical Social Change: The New Situation (2014).
I now work passionately as a scholar-activist on, for, and within the global climate justice movement, which I see as at the center of the struggle for any prospect of achieving social justice and radical social change in the 21st century. A lot of my work is published at www.resilience.org. It can also be found on the websites of the International Institute of Climate Action and Theory and the Climate Justice Project. I am an active member of System Change Not Climate Change, the Green Party of California, and Santa Barbara 350.
