Center for Social Justice Online Library

Be inspired by this grassroots civil rights lawyer's quest for equity and justice. Born in 1947 and raised in rural South Carolina, Lewis Pitts grew up oblivious to the civil rights revolution underway across his native state and throughout the country. A directionless, white college student, in 1968 Pitts committed to military service and was destined for Vietnam. Five years later-after a formative period in which he underwent an intellectual and moral awakening, was discharged as a conscientious objector, and graduated from law school-he embarked on an unlikely forty-year career as a crusading social justice attorney. The Life of a Movement Lawyer: Lewis Pitts and the Struggle for Democracy, Equality, and Justice chronicles how Pitts positively affected thousands of lives working in civil rights movements for social change. Beyond documenting a life well-lived and shedding light on lesser-known activists and movements, Jason Langberg in this thoroughly researched biography explores issues that continue to threaten American democracy: poverty; climate change; police brutality; voter suppression; and corporate power. Pitts' life will energize, inspire, and compel action in those who seek to continue the pursuit of increased justice for all.

Why did it take so long for American law schools to start teaching about climate change? Although most environmental law professors were aware of climate change by 1990, it took nearly fifteen years for them to incorporate the topic into their curriculum. In her innovative new work, Kimberly K. Smith explores how American environmental law professors have addressed climate change, identifying the barriers they faced, how they overcame them, and how they created “climate law” as a domain of legal specialization.

Making Climate Lawyers explores the history of why American law schools were resistant to teaching about climate change and how that changed over the course of a forty-year period, resulting in law schools across the country incorporating climate change into their curricula, with many even establishing centers on the environment. Smith challenges dominant explanations of why the United States was slow to develop climate policy: it wasn’t just political opposition or short-sightedness. Creating climate legal professionals required changing the fundamentals of legal education.

Based on dozens of interviews with faculty and students, Making Climate Lawyers fills a gap in the literature on the intellectual history of climate change, most of which focuses on the history of climate science. Smith focuses instead on how the climate problem fits (or doesn’t fit) into the structure of American law. She uses this story as a lens through which to understand both the transformation of legal education since the 1980s and the nature of climate change as a policy problem.

For thirty-five years, the New Orleans-based Black feminist collective Women With A Vision (WWAV) has fought for the liberation of their communities through reproductive justice, harm reduction, abolition feminism, racial justice, and sex workers' rights. In 2012, shortly after one of WWAV's biggest organizing victories, arsonists firebombed and destroyed their headquarters. Fire Dreams is an innovative collaboration between WWAV and Laura McTighe, who work in community to build a social movement ethnography of the organization’s post-arson rebirth. Rooting WWAV in the geography of the South and the living history of generations of Black feminist thinkers, McTighe and WWAV weave together stories from their founders’ pioneering work during the Black HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and their groundbreaking organizing to end criminalization in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina---with other movements for liberation as accomplices. Together, the authors refuse the logics of racial capitalism and share WWAV’s own world-building knowledges, as well as their methods for living these Black feminist futures now. Fire Dreams is a vital toolkit for grassroots organizers, activist-scholars, and all those who dream to make the world otherwise.

The climate crisis is the greatest existential threat humanity faces today. The need for a radical societal transformation in the interests of social justice and ecological sustainability has never been greater. But where can we turn to find systemic alternatives?

From India, Turkey and Bolivia, to Venezuela, Canada and Lebanon, Just Transformations looks to local environmental struggles for the answers. With each case study grounded in the social movements and specific politics of the region in question, this volume investigates the role that resistance movements play in bringing about sustainable transformations, the strategies and tools they utilise to overcome barriers, and how academics and grassroots activists can collaborate effectively.

The book provides a toolkit for scholar-activists who want to build transformative visions with communities. Interrogating each case study for valuable lessons, the contributors develop a conceptualisation of a just transformation that focuses on the changes that communities themselves are trying to produce.

An open access ebook edition is also available, here.

This book provides an analytical introduction to the complex challenge of climate change and the equally multi-faceted movement for climate justice. Its approach is empirically and conceptually rich, while remaining both accessible and engaging. Each chapter examines the topic through a different thematic lens, drawing on contemporary and landmark scholarship, advocacy, and activism across relevant disciplines and campaigns. These distinct angles build toward a comprehensive perspective that will equip readers to ably and critically engage in era-defining policy, political, governance, and scholarly debates.

Species are going extinct, forests are burning, and children are worried about the future and their peers worldwide. But that is not the whole story: One Friday in 2018, a few young people joined Greta Thunberg to protest, and the global climate strike movement was born. Scientist David Fopp spent 250 Fridays with the newly formed grassroots movements. Together with activists Isabelle Axelsson and Loukina Tille, he offers an insider perspective on how scientists and activists can fight for a just and sustainable global society. The volume also offers both an introduction to ecophilosophy and a unified science of democracy in times of interdependent crises. How can research in all disciplines - from (drama) education and economics to psychology - help with this struggle? And how can we all fight the climate crisis by transforming and deepening democracy?

A visionary program for national renewal, the Green New Deal aims to protect the earth’s climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice, and eliminating poverty. Its core principle is to use the necessity for climate protection as a basis for realizing full employment and social justice.

Jeremy Brecher goes beyond the national headlines and introduces readers to the community, municipal, county, state, tribal, and industry efforts advancing the Green New Deal across the United States. Brecher illustrates how such programs from below do the valuable work of building constituencies and providing proofs of concept for new ideas and initiatives. Block by block, these activities have come together to form a Green New Deal built on a strong foundation of small-scale movements and grassroots energy.

A call for hope and a better tomorrow, The Green New Deal from Below offers a blueprint for reconstructing society on new principles to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Climate change is viewed as a global issue, but proposed responses require action at the national level. Over the past 16 years, a variety of voluntary and regulatory actions have been proposed or undertaken in the United States, including monitoring of electric utility carbon dioxide emissions, improved appliances efficiency, and incentives for developing renewable energy sources. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 included provisions indirectly related to greenhouse gas emissions, such as energy efficiency and renewable energy. The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 addresses renewable energy and conservation, but also includes provisions specifically on climate change. This book emphasises the steps that need to be taken to reduce the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. The authors of this book also discuss international law aspects of a nation's contributions to climate change, and the few international claims made against the United States to date. This book consists of public documents which have been located, gathered, combined, reformatted, and enhanced with a subject index, selectively edited and bound to provide easy access.

What role could or should the law play in dealing with the climate emergency? In this innovative volume, leading scholars explore fundamental debates at the frontier of climate change law scholarship. They address the key areas of scholarly disagreement about what climate change law is, the legal rules it consists of, and how these rules could be implemented in the real world. The first eleven topics are debated by teams of scholars expressing diametrically opposite points of view on each topic, in traditional debating style; the last seven chapters are presented as an individual author's own reflection on a topic that cannot readily be reduced to a binary debate. Each chapter is written in an accessible and thought-provoking way, emphasizing clear lines of argumentation. The debating-style format is designed to stimulate students to think critically and logically about the law and to fire up debate in and out of class.

The Elgar Encyclopedia of Environmental Law is a landmark reference work, providing definitive and comprehensive coverage of this dynamic field. Each volume probes the key elements of law, the essential concepts, and the latest research through concise, structured entries written by international experts. Each entry includes an extensive bibliography as a starting point for further reading. The mix of authoritative commentary and insightful discussion will make this an essential tool for research and teaching, as well as a valuable resource for professionals and policymakers. Climate Change Law, the first volume of the Elgar Encyclopedia of Environmental Law, provides a guide to the rapidly evolving body of legal scholarship relating to climate change. The amount of international, European and national legislation, judicial decisions, and legal scholarship in the field of climate law has now become almost overwhelming. This book focuses on the underlying concepts that are of concern to researchers, students and policymakers rather than on the details of national legislation. The core topics include the difficulty of setting up a coherent international treaty approach, the importance of national and subnational legal action, the potential role of international and national courts, and the importance of human rights and environmental justice. Providing a comprehensive discussion, more than 50 entries developed by experts from across the world cover mitigation and adaptation issues in their wider context, from both international and national perspectives. Each chapter concludes by identifying important research challenges. Finally, the concluding chapter argues that a discernible global legal regime is emerging. The 2015 Paris Agreement marks both the increasingly interlinked but polycentric nature of this new regime. This is the definitive resource for all those seeking the state of the art of climate change law, from students and legal scholars to practising lawyers, civil servants and NGOs.

This comprehensive examination of U.S. law as it relates to climate change completely updates and reconsiders material from the prior editions while also adding extensive new material. It offers an increased emphasis on all aspects of energy regulation, as well as additional material on emerging issues such as adaptation and geoengineering.

This book provides an account of how rectificatory justice for climate change loss and damage can be realized by bridging the worlds of political philosophy, climate science and climate policy together. The book focuses on three fundamental questions: what kinds of climate impacts should count as loss and damage, how climate science can help us identify them and who should bear the burdens of providing reparations for loss and damage.

Laura García-Portela argues that loss and damage occur after people’s capabilities have fallen below a threshold of sufficiency due to the negative impacts of climate change, thereby infringing people’s human rights. She argues for a historical responsibility principle for reparations for loss and damage (the Polluter Pays Principle, PPP) grounded in her Continuity Account. According to this account, responsibility for reparations is based on the duty to refrain from emissions-generating activities that would infringe people’s human rights. A new duty to provide reparations arises when human rights are infringed by climate change-inducing activities. Importantly, she examines how the latest developments in attribution science can help in developing a rectificatory account for loss and damage, an approach that has not been considered in depth by climate justice scholars so far.

Striving to improve the reader’s understanding of loss and damage as outlined by The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate justice, environmental justice, and environmental ethics.

Climate Change Law is the first book to offer a concise, readable treatment of this entire rapidly evolving body of law. Climate law runs the gamut from state and local regulations to federal policies and international agreements and includes both public and private sector involvement. This issue is just too important to leave to specialists alone. The focus is on core concepts of climate change law rather than all of the complex details. The book begins by discussing the scientific and policy issues that frame the legal scheme, including the state of climate science, the meaning of the social cost of carbon, and the variety of tools that are available to reduce carbon emissions. It then covers in turn the international, national, and state efforts in this sphere. Finally, the book turns to the challenge of adapting to climate change, before exploring the concept of geoengineering and the potential challenges associated with using geoengineering as a tool for addressing climate change. The new edition covers major developments such as the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA, Trump Administration rollbacks and their subsequent fates, climate litigation brought by state and local governments, and the implementation of the Paris Agreement. The book is designed to be accessible to a broad range of readers, not just those who have backgrounds in climate science, environmental economics, or law.

As the climate emergency intensifies, rights-based climate cases – litigation that is based on human rights law – are becoming an increasingly important tool for securing more ambitious climate action. This book is the first to offer a systematic analysis of the universe of these cases known as human rights and climate change (HRCC) cases. By combining theory, empirical documentation, and strategic debate among preeminent scholars and practitioners from around the world, the book captures the roots, legal innovations, empirical richness, impact, and challenges of this dynamic field of sociolegal practice. It looks specifically at the sociolegal origins and trajectory of HRCC cases, the legal innovations of this type of litigation, and the strategies and impacts of these cases. In doing so, this book equips litigators, researchers, practitioners, students, and concerned citizens with an understanding of an important method of holding governments and corporations accountable for climate harms. T

This book offers a fresh perspective on the historical, economic, and cultural foundations of capitalism, cities, and climate change. By exploring the intersection of urbanization, consumerism, and colonialism, the book sheds new light on the origins and development of the economic system that has shaped our world today. What sets this book apart is its unique approach, which challenges conventional wisdom and offers new insights into the complex relationships between culture, politics, and economics. The book is intended for readers interested in the history and evolution of capitalism and its impact on society, as well as those interested in climate change and urbanization. The content level is accessible for general readers, yet sophisticated enough to appeal to scholars and researchers. The two most important features of the book are its fresh perspective on the history of mercantilism and its examination of the economic landscape of cities and climate change. By reading this book, readers gain a deeper understanding of the complex relationships between urbanization, colonialism, and economic policies, and their impact on contemporary society.

Climate change is a driver of poverty, poor mental health, inequity, and increased intersectional vulnerability, with significant differential global impacts on individual and community health and well-being. For example, people living in low resource settings in high income countries (HICs) and in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) are at greater risk, often experiencing fragile socioeconomic, political and health infrastructures, and conflict-affected settings (FCAS) that place them at greater risk and vulnerabilities to climate change related mental health impacts. The broad goal of this book is to place a social justice and inclusive lens on climate change and mental health equity focusing on these three key elements: people, place, and community. The book includes perspectives from the global North, the global South, and Indigenous perspectives to help provide greater insight into how we can better understand climate change and mental health equity across peoples, place, and community. This book’s three-pronged approach will focus on certain trends in this emerging and growing field, also bridging some of the more extensive gaps, and is a tool for better understanding how mental health disparities might be addressed at this time.

Climate catastrophe throws into stark relief the extreme, life-threatening inequalities that affect millions of lives worldwide. The poorest and most marginalized, who are least responsible for the consumption and emissions that create climate change, are the first and hardest impacted, and the least able to protect themselves. Climate justice is simultaneously a movement, an academic field, an organizing principle, and a political demand. Building climate justice is a matter of life and death.

Climate Justice and Participatory Research offers ideas and inspiration for climate justice through the creation of research, knowledge, and livelihood commons and community-based climate resilience. It brings together articulations of the what, why, and how of climate justice through the voices of energetic and motivated scholar-activists who are building alliances across Latin America, Africa, and Canada. Exemplifying socio-ecological transformation through equitable public engagement, these scholars, climate activists, community educators, and teachers come together to share their stories of participatory research and collective action.

Grounded in experience and processes that are currently underway, Climate Justice and Participatory Research explores the value of common assets, collective action, environmental protection, and equitable partnerships between local community experts and academic allies. It demonstrates the negative effects of climate-related actions that run roughshod over local communities’ interests and wellbeing, and acknowledges the myriad challenges of participatory research. This is a work committed to the practical work of transforming socio-economies from situations of vulnerability to collective wellbeing.

This book analyzes climate change from a societal risk perspective, considering IPCC data, harm reduction, and global impact. Climate change is a globalised agent of social disruption whose impacts will worsen societal inequities and inequalities around the world. For some unfortunate societies already precariously exposed, climate change will tip them into societal collapse. Devastation will also occur to many ecological values in which all societies are embedded. But effective social action can limit the extent of these costs and losses. Ultimately, only social transformation can limit the social and environmental harms of climate change. But what does this mean? To what extent is society at risk? Are such risks particularized and restricted to specific segments and localities? Or is society at risk in a more universal way? Climate risks are re-shaping the practices of households, communities, governments and businesses. In this way, climate risks are a dynamic element in social change and social processes. Risk holds a mirror to society, revealing who and what is prioritized, recognized and valued. It also provides a reckoning of our perceived strengths, vulnerabilities and weaknesses. This volume examines how we understand the societal risks of contemporary and forecast climate change impacts—and those risks inherent in dealing with these impacts. We know that society is fashioning a new global climate—but climate change is also re-fashioning society; this book explores this dynamic process and considers its implications for future society.

A powerful argument for not approaching climate change in a hurry, but with a slow politics of urgency.

It’s understandable that we tend to present climate change as something urgently requiring action. Every day we fail to act, the potential for catastrophe grows. But is that framing itself a problem? When we hurry, we make more mistakes. We overlook things. We get tunnel vision.

In Haste, a group of distinguished contributors makes the case for a slow politics of urgency. Rather than rushing and speeding up, he argues, the sustainable future is better served by our challenging of the dominant framings through which we understand time and change in society. While recognizing the need for certain types of urgency in climate politics, Haste directs attention to the different and alternative temporalities at play in climate and sustainability politics. Divided into short and accessible chapters, written by both established and emerging scholars from different disciplines, Haste tackles a major problem in contemporary climate change research and offers creative perspectives on pathways out of the climate emergency.

This open access book explores the intersection of property law, relocation, and resettlement processes in the United States and among communities that grapple with migration as an adaptation strategy. As communities face the prospect of relocating because of rising seas, policy makers, disaster specialists, and community leaders are scrambling to understand what adaptation pathways are legally possible. While in its ideal application, law functions blindly and without variation, the authors find that legal contradictions come to bear on resettlement processes and place certain communities further in harm’s way. This book will unearth these contradictions in order to understand why successful community-based resettlement has presented such a challenge to communities that are experiencing increasing land deterioration as a result of climate change.

This book explores the possibilities of understanding the concept of climate refugees in order to ascribe to a consensual agreement that climate refugees are evident and this situation is a reality.

A framework to study both empirically and theoretically is presented in a detailed manner so that it may become a resource for understanding the challenges of climate refugees.

Through discussion and analysis the book presents potential answers to such questions as:

● Why has the international system been so short-sighted and has not given importance to the problems of climate migrants and refugees?

● How to identify a climate refugee?

● How do you justify a climate refugee or a migrant?

● What are internally displaced people? Should we call them just refugees?

The book covers the interdisciplinary nature of climate refugees and the perspectives of social science. The empirical findings provides an edge to holistically understanding climate refugees.

This book discusses the concept of, what really is a climate refugee, and the necessary factors to make it an important part of the climate discourse. The legality of the term is missing in international parlance, and the academic discourse should provide the necessary critique required for the evolution of the subject under study. Therefore, the major objective of the book is to make the subject of climate migration known to all.

Climate change is forcing us to consider the right of people to leave their disappearing homelands, and the shape this right should take. Climate Change, Disasters and People on the Move proposes international protection as a solution with three pillars: granting protection against return to the country of origin (non-refoulement); preventing future displacement; and facilitating safe, orderly, and regular migration in the context of disasters and climate change. Dr. Aylin Yildiz Noorda uses the theories of common concern of humankind and community interests to operationalise her proposal, providing a blueprint for future claims.