Radical movements need to urgently develop and make sense of what the science actually means in 2022, where and how the ecological impacts of climate systems breakdown are currently unfolding across the country and the world, and how the lens of justice is necessary to move beyond the end of the world.
What is the climate crisis? What does science say will happen, and how will it affect people worldwide? Where will the impacts be felt first and how will they spread? The crisis is much more than just the correlation between CO2 and global heating. It contains a slew of other planetary systems shoved far from their former states: ocean acidification, ozone depletion, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, aerosol pollution, freshwater use, land-use change, biological diversity destruction, and the release of toxic chemicals. Simultaneously, global food systems are becoming increasingly fragile, topsoil erodes, and the natural systems humans worldwide rely on are lurching into crisis states.
Our entire lives are structured around a globe-spanning energy system that is destroying the planet, powered by an economic system destroying us. The demand for justice is no mere additional extra on top of the necessity of a green energy transition. Those who have contributed the least to the crisis will pay its greatest and most immediate price. How do we struggle for justice inside this global machinery?
Questions we want to answer to:
- Beyond the fantasies of techno-fixes, what is the actual state of the climate and where are we headed in the short to medium term?
- What are the proposed solutions, will they actually stop climate change and are they just?
- How are we to understand climate justice, not just in terms of who is affected now, but what it means for any transition to a low carbon future and for living with climate change?