Navigating Bulkeley’s challenge on climate politics and human geography

Abstract

While agreeing with the major tenets of Harriet Bulkeley’s timely and powerful argument for geographers (and social scientists more generally) to engage with climate change, this response raises three provocative challenges that arise from this intervention: the degree to which the epistemological and theoretical bases to these arguments are radical, the nature of the engagement problem in the discipline and, perhaps most importantly, how these arguments can be translated to a ‘progressive politics’. The response argues that there is much further to go in explaining the utility of socio-natural understanding of climate change if those beyond the social sciences and in the wider realm of policy and politics are to be convinced of the power of the approach being advocated. It also argues that geographers are well-positioned to develop the bolder and more interdisciplinary approach needed to achieve the kind of ambitious shift in thinking Bulkeley seeks.