Climate Obstruction

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.