Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment

Large-scale assessments, such as those by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have been crucial in advancing our understanding of climate change. They have affirmed that reducing greenhouse-gas emissions is urgently needed to avoid its disastrous consequences and that we possess the scientific knowledge and technical ability to meet that challenge. Citizens around the world are concerned about climate change and are willing to do something about it. What stands in the way of action?

Climate Obstruction systematically addresses the complex, organized, and well-funded set of actors who have actively resisted and undermined policy efforts to address climate change. This volume assembles nearly one hundred top experts from around the world to make the case that as climate action becomes globalized, efforts to obstruct it have become more deceptive, widespread, better funded, and dangerous. Contributors review and analyze the obstruction efforts undertaken by fossil-fuel industries, utilities, the transportation sector, agribusinesses, public-relations firms, and organizations on the political far right. They also examine the role and effects of the media in disseminating climate disinformation and misinformation, and how these narratives potentially affect public opinion on climate action. They assess how obstruction of climate action occurs across the Global South, at the subnational level, at the United Nations and in the IPCC, and in the context of climate adaptation, concluding with a discussion of legal, state, and non-state efforts to address climate obstruction.

Providing a first-of-its-kind assessment of global climate obstruction, this volume advances our understanding of efforts to slow or block policies on climate change, which can guide more effective action to prevent obstruction in the future.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

J. Timmons Roberts is the Ittleson Professor of Environment and Society and the Executive Director of the Climate Social Science Network (CSSN) at Brown University. Roberts is the co-author or editor of fourteen books and edited volumes, and of more than one hundred articles and book chapters. He was awarded the Frederick Buttel Award for distinguished scholarship from the American Sociological Association and the International Sociological Association.

Carlos R. S. Milani is Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Social and Political Studies of the Rio de Janeiro State University. He is the director of the Interdisciplinary Observatory of Climate Change and a member of the Climate Social Science Network (CSSN) at Brown University. His latest book is Cooperación internacional al desarrollo: entre solidaridad e interés (El Colegio de México, 2023).

Jennifer Jacquet is Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at the University of Miami, and affiliated faculty with the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy. She is also Associate Research Director of the Climate Social Science Network (CSSN) at Brown University. She is the author of dozens of research articles and two books: Is Shame Necessary (Pantheon, 2015) and The Playbook (Pantheon, 2022).

Christian Downie is a Professor in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University, where he is the Director of the Governing Energy Transition (GET) Lab. Downie has worked as an advisor to governments and think tanks. He is the author of two books and more than forty peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on global climate and energy politics.