What the climate movement’s debate about disruption gets wrong

Kevin A. Young and Laura Thomas-Walters ()
Additional contact information
Kevin A. Young: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Laura Thomas-Walters: Yale University

Palgrave Communications, 2024, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: The recent debate about whether climate activists should employ disruptive tactics tends to conflate all forms of disruption. The debate typically focuses on the public’s reaction to protesters, yet the more important question is whether a given tactic imposes disruption on elite decision makers. Most external analysts, and many activists themselves, fail to specify what approaches are most disruptive of elite interests and which elite institutions the movement should target. They also often misinterpret the lessons of historical social movements. We reconsider one of those movements, the Birmingham civil rights campaign of 1963, in light of the current strategic debate. We argue that disruption is necessary, but that not all “disruptive” strategies are equally effective. In particular, we advocate a strategy that can impose sustained and escalating costs on the elite sectors that can force politicians to confront the climate emergency. Priority targets include financial institutions that fund and underwrite fossil fuels as well as corporations, universities, pension funds, and other institutions that consume and invest in fossil fuels.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-023-02507-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palcom:v:11:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-023-02507-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/palcomms/about

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-023-02507-y

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Palgrave Communications from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().