Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice in the US: Climate change

This volume seeks new methods of combining climate change mitigation, adaptation, development, and poverty reduction in ways that are effective, efficient and equitable.

This book examines the fateful global intersection of ongoing climate change and widening social inequality.

Asserts that escalating climate destruction today is not the product of public indifference, but of the blocked democratic freedoms of peoples to resist capitalist interference with their capacity to change the course of ecological disaster.

Provides a scientific and policy analysis on the challenges of ensuring that adaptation to global climate change doesn't place unfair burdens on vulnerable populations.

Topics addressed in these essays include moral accountability for energy consumption and emissions, the ethics of adaptation, and the ethical dimensions of the impact of climate change on nature

Over the last decade, the world has increasingly grappled with the complex linkages emerging between efforts to combat climate change and to protect human rights around the world. The Paris Climate Agreement adopted in December 2015 recognized the necessity for governments to take into consideration their human rights obligations when taking climate action. However, important gaps remain in understanding how human rights can be used in practice to develop and implement effective and equitable solutions to climate change at multiple levels of governance. This book brings together leading scholars and practitioners to offer a timely and comprehensive analysis of the opportunities and challenges for integrating human rights in diverse areas and forms of global climate governance. The first half of the book explores how human rights principles and obligations can be used to reconceive climate governance and shape responses to particular aspects of climate change. The second half of the book identifies lessons in the integration of human rights in climate advocacy and governance and sets out future directions in this burgeoning domain. Featuring a diverse range of contributors and case studies, this Handbook will be an essential resource for students, scholars, practitioners and policy makers with an interest in climate law and governance, human rights and international environmental law.

This book brings together the voices of people from five continents who live, work, and research on the front lines of climate resistance and renewal. The many contributors to this volume explore the impacts of extreme weather events in Africa, the Caribbean and on Pacific islands, experiences of life-long defenders of the land and forests in Brazil, India, Indonesia, and eastern Canada, and efforts to halt the expansion of fossil-fuel infrastructure from North America to South Africa. They offer various perspectives on how a just transition toward a fossil-free economy can take shape, as they share efforts to protect water resources, better feed their communities, and implement new approaches to urban policy and energy democracy. Climate Justice and Community Renewal uniquely highlights the accounts of people who are directly engaged in local climate struggles and community renewal efforts, including on-the-ground land defenders, community organizers, leaders of international campaigns, agroecologists, activist-scholars, and many others. It will appeal to students, researchers, activists, and all who appreciate the need for a truly justice-centered response to escalating climate disruptions.

An urgent and timely story of the contentious politics of incorporating environmental justice into global climate change policy   Although the science of climate change is clear, policy decisions about how to respond to its effects remain contentious. Even when such decisions claim to be guided by objective knowledge, they are made and implemented through political institutions and relationships--and all the competing interests and power struggles that this implies. Michael Méndez tells a timely story of people, place, and power in the context of climate change and inequality. He explores the perspectives and influence low‑income people of color bring to their advocacy work on climate change. In California, activist groups have galvanized behind issues such as air pollution, poverty alleviation, and green jobs to advance equitable climate solutions at the local, state, and global levels. Arguing that environmental protection and improving public health are inextricably linked, Mendez contends that we must incorporate local knowledge, culture, and history into policymaking to fully address the global complexities of climate change and the real threats facing our local communities.

"Addressing the need for a comprehensive and integrated reference compendium, The Routledge Handbook of Climate Justice provides students, academics and professionals with a valuable insight into this fast-growing field."