The Contested Politics of Climate Change and the Crisis of Neo-liberalism

Climate change must be placed in relation to broader contestation of unequal social and environmental relations and specifically in relation to the crisis of neo-liberalism. I contest those accounts of climate change which isolate carbon emissions from the unequal social and environmental relations upon which neo-liberal globalization depends. I locate the mobilizations during the COP15 round of climate negotiations in relation to political trajectories that have shaped antagonistic ways of constructing climate change politics. These forms of contentious action challenge the dominant terms of climate change politics in a number of important ways, and at the same time the repressive policing of demonstrations and actions open up the space for protests and for productive debates around the environmental politics of climate change.