Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

The climate crisis represents one of greatest threats to humankind, but also one of the greatest opportunities for positive social transformation. Given the many social ills that already degrade wellbeing, many people desire a more equitable, just, and livable world. Some people may believe because of climate change “we are doomed,” yet I argue this represents a misunderstanding of the situation. We have the means to curtail global warming and enhance social wellbeing through making key systemic changes. Drawing from the work of Herbert Marcuse and André Gorz, I examine the opportunity for social transformation in the face of the climate crisis and how we can envision and pursue a “better” society in terms of human flourishing and sustainability. I discuss their concept of “destructive production” and their support for work time reduction and advertising restrictions. These strategies represent key, yet overlooked, steps to help mitigate climate change and improve wellbeing.

Keywords

Climate change global warming production work time reduction advertising

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Adua

Zhang

Clark

(2021) Seeking a handle on climate change: Examining the comparative effectiveness of energy efficiency improvement and renewable energy production in the United States. Global Environmental Change 70: 102351.

Bain

Bongiorno

(2020) It's not too late to do the right thing: Moral motivations for climate change action. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 11(1): e615.

Bressler

(2021) The mortality cost of carbon. Nature Communications 12(1): 4467.

Brockway

Sorrell

Semieniuk

, et al (2021) Energy efficiency and economy-wide rebound effects: A review of the evidence and its implications. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 141: 110781.

Castro-Santa

Drews

Bergh

JVD

(2023) Nudging low-carbon consumption through advertising and social norms. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics 102: 101956.

Climate Action Tracker (2024) Available at: https://climateactiontracker.org/ (accessed 10 June 2024).

Debord

(1967) The Society of the Spectacle. Black & Red.

Dixson-Declève

Gaffney

Ghosh

, et al (2022) Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity. New Society Publishers.

Fisher

(2009) Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Zero Books.

10.

Fitzgerald

Jorgenson

Clark

(2015) Energy consumption and working hours: a longitudinal study of developed and developing nations, 1990–2008. Environmental Sociology 1(3): 213–223.

11.

Fitzgerald

Schor

Jorgenson

(2018) Working hours and carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, 2007–2013. Social Forces 96(4): 1851–1874.

12.

Gorz

(1967) Strategy for Labor. Beacon Press.

13.

Gorz

(1973) The tyranny of the factory: Today and tomorrow. Telos 1973: 61–67.

14.

Gorz

(1980) Ecology as Politics. Black Rose Books.

15.

Gorz

(1982) Farewell to the Working Class: An Essay on Post-Industrial Socialism. Pluto Press.

16.

Gorz

(1988) Critique of Economic Reason. Verso Books.

17.

Gorz

(2010) The exit from capitalism has already begun. Cultural Politics 6(1): 5–14.

18.

Gunderson

(2019) Work time reduction and economic democracy as climate change mitigation strategies: Or why the climate needs a renewed labor movement. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 9(1): 35–44.

19.

Haberl

(2020) A systematic review of the evidence on decoupling of GDP, resource use and GHG emissions, part II: synthesizing the insights. Environmental Research Letters 15(6): 065003.

20.

Hayhoe

(2021) Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. Simon and Schuster.

21.

Heikkurinen

(2018) Degrowth by means of technology? A treatise for an ethos of releasement. Journal of Cleaner Production 197: 1654–1665.

22.

Hickel

(2021) Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. Penguin Random House.

23.

Hickel

Kallis

(2020) Is green growth possible? New Political Economy 25(4): 469–486.

24.

Hiri

Soni

(2024) No one knows exactly how many people are dying from extreme heat. Bloomberg News. Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-07-08/how-many-people-have-died-from-extreme-heat-officials-struggle-to-track (accessed 25 July 2024).

25.

Hubacek

Chen

Feng

, et al (2021) Evidence of decoupling consumption-based CO2 emissions from economic growth. Advances in Applied Energy 4: 100074.

26.

IPCC (2018) Allen

, et al Global Warming of 1.5°C. In An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty. Switzerland: IPCC.

27.

IPCC (2022) Creutzig

, et al Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation. In IPCC, 2022: Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA. DOI: 10.1017/9781009157926.007

28.

Jackson

(2009) Prosperity without growth: Economics for a Finite Planet. Routledge.

29.

Kallis

(2018) Degrowth. Agenda Publishing.

30.

Knight

Rosa

Schor

(2013) Could working less reduce pressures on the environment? A cross-national panel analysis of OECD countries, 1970–2007. Global Environmental Change 23(4): 691–700.

31.

LaJeunesse

(2009) Worktime Regulation as Sustainable Full Employment Strategy: The Social Effort Bargain. Routledge.

32.

Lee

, et al (2023) Synthesis report of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). IPCC. Available at: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-cycle/ (accessed 2 May 2024).

33.

Lenton

Mckay

Loriani

, et al (2023) The global tipping points report. Available at: https://global-tipping-points.org/ (accessed 9 January 2024).

34.

Lodziak

Tatman

(1997) André Gorz: A Critical Introduction. Pluto Press.

35.

Lowe

(2019) Ethics in the anthropocene: Moral responses to the Climate Crisis. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 32: 479–485.

36.

Macy

Johnstone

(2012) Active hope: How to Face the Mess we’re in without Going Crazy. New World Library.

37.

Mann

(2022) The best climate science you’ve never heard of. Available at: https://michaelmann.net/ (assessed 12 December 2023).

38.

Mann

, et al (2022) How a little discussed revision of the science could avert doom. The Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/02/23/warming-timeline-carbon-budget-climate-science/ (accessed 27 July 2024).

39.

Marcuse

(1955) Eros and Civilization. Routledge.

40.

Marcuse

(1964) One-Dimensional Man. Beacon Press.

41.

Marcuse

(1967) The end of utopia. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/1967/end-utopia.htm (accessed 12 February 2024).

42.

Miko

Stillman

(2023) Ocean temperatures are off the charts. Here’s where they are highest. The Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/07/28/ocean-temperature-maps-heat-records/ (accessed 12 June 2024).

43.

Milman

(2024) Global heating will pass 1.5C threshold this year, top ex-Nasa scientist says. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/08/global-temperature-over-1-5-c-climate-change. (accessed 20 July 2024).

44.

Molosky

(1988) Reagan vetos bill putting limits on TV programming for children. New York Times Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/07/us/reagan-vetoes-bill-putting-limits-on-tv-programming-for-children.html (accessed 19 March 2024).

45.

Moriarty

Honnery

(2023) Are energy reductions compatible with economic growth? Sustainability 15(10): 8043.

46.

Nyfors

Linnanen

Nissinen

, et al (2020) Ecological sufficiency in climate policy: Towards policies for recomposing consumption. Futura 3: 30–40.

47.

Osaka

(2023) Why climate doomers are replacing climate deniers. The Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/03/24/climate-doomers-ipcc-un-report/ (accessed 2 June 2024).

48.

Otto

Donges

Cremades

, et al. (2020) Social tipping dynamics for stabilizing Earth’s climate by 2050. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117(5): 2354–2365.

49.

Oxfam (2024) Inequality report. Available at: https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-publications/inequality-inc/ (accessed 25 July 2024).

50.

Pullinger

(2014) Working time reduction policy in a sustainable economy: Criteria and options for its design. Ecological Economics 103: 11–19.

51.

Riedlingstein

, et al (2023) Global carbon Budget 2023. Earth System Science Data 15: 5301–5369. 2023.

52.

Ripple

Wolf

Gregg

, et al (2023) The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory. Bioscience 73(12): 841–850.

53.

Ripple

Wolf

Newsome

, et al (2020) World scientists’ warning of a climate emergency. Bioscience 70(1):8–100.

54.

Rosnick

Weisbrot

(2006) Are Shorter Working Hours Good for the Environment? A Comparison of U.S. And European Energy Consumption. Center for Economic and Policy Research.

55.

Schmelzer

(2016) The Hegemony of Growth: The OECD and the Making of the Economic Growth Paradigm. Cambridge University Press.

56.

Schnaiberg

(1980) The Environment: From Surplus to Scarcity. Oxford University Press.

57.

Segovia-Martin

Creutzig

Winters

(2023) Efficiency traps beyond the climate crisis: exploration–exploitation trade-offs and rebound effects. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 378(1889): 20220405.

58.

Shue

(2010) Policy responses to Climate Change. In: Gardiner

(ed.) Climate Ethics: Essential Readings. Oxford University Press, pp.1015–1025.

59.

Solnit

Eby

(2016) Hope in the Dark. Haymarket Books.

60.

Solnit

Young-Lutunatabua

editors(2023) Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story From Despair to Possibility. Haymarket Books.

61.

Steffen

Rockström

Richardson

, et al (2018) Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115(33): 8252–8259.

62.

Stuart

(2020) Radical hope: Truth, virtue, and hope for what is left in extinction rebellion. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 33(3): 487–504.

63.

Stuart

Petersen

Gunderson

(2024) A Climate Agenda for System Change: From Theory to Social Transformation. Mayfly Press.

64.

Therborn

(1980) The Ideology of Pwer and the Power of Ideology. Verso.

65.

Thombs

(2017) The paradoxical relationship between renewable energy and economic growth: A cross-national panel study, 1990-2013. Journal of World-Systems Research 23(2): 540–564.

66.

Vadén

Lähde

Majava

, et al (2021) Raising the bar: on the type, size and timeline of a ‘successful’ decoupling. Environmental politics 30(3): 462–476.

67.

Venette

(2003) Risk Communication in a High Reliability Organization: APHIS PPQ's Inclusion of Risk in Decision Making. UMI Proquest Information and Learning.

68.

Ward

Sutton

Werner

, et al. (2016) Is decoupling GDP growth from environmental impact possible? PloS one 11(10): e0164733.

69.

Wright

(2020) Envisioning Real Utopias. Verso Books.

70.

York

Adua

Clark

(2022) The rebound effect and the challenge of moving beyond fossil fuels: A review of empirical and theoretical research. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews-Climate Change 13(4): 13.

71.

York

Bell

(2019) Energy transitions or additions?: Why a transition from fossil fuels requires more than the growth of renewable energy. Energy Research & Social Science 51: 40–43.

72.

York

McGee

(2015) Understanding the Jevons paradox. Environmental Sociology 2(1): 77–87.

Something new,something better: The climate crisis and social transformation

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References