Introduction -- "Fear of a black planet" : ecotopia and eugenics in climate narratives -- Ghosts and reparations -- Mapping and memory -- "Bodies tell stories" : mourning and hospitality after Katrina -- Round dance and resistance -- "Slow insurrection" : dissent, collective voice, and social care -- Cannibal spirits and sacred seeds -- Epilogue: "Everyday micro-utopias".

"This book shows how the discourse of climate change emerges within histories of colonization, enslavement, and revolution. By placing climate change within the longer histories of enslavement and settler colonialism, Janet Fiskio reveals the connections between climate change activism and enslavement, genocide, imperialism, white supremacy, incarceration. Organized around three themes-speculative pasts and futures; practices of dissent, mourning, and repair; and everyday inhabitation and social care-Climate Change, Literature, and Environmental Justice shows the ways that frontline communities resist environmental racism and protect and repair the world. It provides anaylisis of expressive cultures, including literature, dance, protest movements, oral history, and cooking utilizing decolonial and reparative theories. It offers readings of key figures, such as Octavia Butler, Louise Erdrich, Winona LaDuke, Mark Nowak, Simon Ortiz, Jesmyn Ward, and Colson Whitehead"--

An urgent and timely story of the contentious politics of incorporating environmental justice into global climate change policy Although the science of climate change is clear, policy decisions about how to respond to its effects remain contentious. Even when such decisions claim to be guided by objective knowledge, they are made and implemented through political institutions and relationships—and all the competing interests and power struggles that this implies. Michael Méndez tells a timely story of people, place, and power in the context of climate change and inequality. He explores the perspectives and influence low†‘income people of color bring to their advocacy work on climate change. In California, activist groups have galvanized behind issues such as air pollution, poverty alleviation, and green jobs to advance equitable climate solutions at the local, state, and global levels. Arguing that environmental protection and improving public health are inextricably linked, Mendez contends that we must incorporate local knowledge, culture, and history into policymaking to fully address the global complexities of climate change and the real threats facing our local communities.

Placing climate change within the long histories of enslavement, settler colonialism, and resistance, Climate Change, Literature, and Environmental Justice: Poetics of Dissent and Repair examines the connections between climate disruption and white supremacy. Drawing on decolonial and reparative theories, Janet Fiskio focuses on expressive cultures and practices, such as dance, protests, and cooking, in conversation with texts by Kazim Ali, Octavia Butler, Louise Erdrich, Winona LaDuke, Mark Nowak, Simon Ortiz, Jesmyn Ward, and Colson Whitehead. Through an exploration of speculative pasts and futures, practices of dissent and mourning, and everyday inhabitation and social care, Climate Change, Literature, and Environmental Justice illuminates the ways that frontline communities resist environmental racism while protecting and repairing the world.

“Groundbreaking in its call to reconsider our approach to the slow rhythm of time in the very concrete realms of environmental health and social justice.” —Wold Literature Today The violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly. Using the innovative concept of "slow violence" to describe these threats, Rob Nixon focuses on the inattention we have paid to the attritional lethality of many environmental crises, in contrast with the sensational, spectacle-driven messaging that impels public activism today. Slow violence, because it is so readily ignored by a hard-charging capitalism, exacerbates the vulnerability of ecosystems and of people who are poor, disempowered, and often involuntarily displaced, while fueling social conflicts that arise from desperation as life-sustaining conditions erode. In a book of extraordinary scope, Nixon examines a cluster of writer-activists affiliated with the environmentalism of the poor in the global South. By approaching environmental justice literature from this transnational perspective, he exposes the limitations of the national and local frames that dominate environmental writing. And by skillfully illuminating the strategies these writer-activists deploy to give dramatic visibility to environmental emergencies, Nixon invites his readers to engage with some of the most pressing challenges of our time.

Although much contemporary American Indian literature examines the relationship between humans and the land, most Native authors do not set their work in the "pristine wilderness" celebrated by mainstream nature writers. Instead, they focus on settings such as reservations, open-pit mines, and contested borderlands. Drawing on her own teaching experience among Native Americans and on lessons learned from such recent scenes of confrontation as Chiapas and Black Mesa, Joni Adamson explores why what counts as "nature" is often very different for multicultural writers and activist groups than it is for mainstream environmentalists. This powerful book is one of the first to examine the intersections between literature and the environment from the perspective of the oppressions of race, class, gender, and nature, and the first to review American Indian literature from the standpoint of environmental justice and ecocriticism. By examining such texts as Sherman Alexie's short stories and Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Almanac of the Dead, Adamson contends that these works, in addition to being literary, are examples of ecological criticism that expand Euro-American concepts of nature and place. Adamson shows that when we begin exploring the differences that shape diverse cultural and literary representations of nature, we discover the challenge they present to mainstream American culture, environmentalism, and literature. By comparing the work of Native authors such as Simon Ortiz with that of environmental writers such as Edward Abbey, she reveals opportunities for more multicultural conceptions of nature and the environment. More than a work of literary criticism, this is a book about the search to find ways to understand our cultural and historical differences and similarities in order to arrive at a better agreement of what the human role in nature is and should be. It exposes the blind spots in early ecocriticism and shows the possibilities for building common groundÑ a middle placeÑ where writers, scholars, teachers, and environmentalists might come together to work for social and environmental change.

Environmental justice has increasingly become part of the language of environmental activism, political debate, academic research and policy making around the world. It raises questions about how the environment impacts on different people’s lives. Does pollution follow the poor? Are some communities far more vulnerable to the impacts of flooding or climate change than others? Are the benefits of access to green space for all, or only for some? Do powerful voices dominate environmental decisions to the exclusion of others? This book focuses on such questions and the complexities involved in answering them. It explores the diversity of ways in which environment and social difference are intertwined and how the justice of their interrelationship matters. It has a distinctive international perspective, tracing how the discourse of environmental justice has moved around the world and across scales to include global concerns, and examining research, activism and policy development in the US, the UK, South Africa and other countries. The widening scope and diversity of what has been positioned within an environmental justice ‘frame’ is also reflected in chapters that focus on waste, air quality, flooding, urban greenspace and climate change. In each case, the basis for evidence of inequalities in impacts, vulnerabilities and responsibilities is examined, asking questions about the knowledge that is produced, the assumptions involved and the concepts of justice that are being deployed in both academic and political contexts. Environmental Justice offers a wide ranging analysis of this rapidly evolving field, with compelling examples of the processes involved in producing inequalities and the challenges faced in advancing the interests of the disadvantaged. It provides a critical framework for understanding environmental justice in various spatial and political contexts, and will be of interest to those studying Environmental Studies, Geography, Politics and Sociology.

“Let this book immerse you in the many worlds of environmental justice.”—Naomi Klein We are living in a precarious environmental and political moment. In the United States and in the world, environmental injustices have manifested across racial and class divides in devastatingly disproportionate ways. What does this moment of danger mean for the environment and for justice? What can we learn from environmental justice struggles? Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger examines mobilizations and movements, from protests at Standing Rock to activism in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Environmental justice movements fight, survive, love, and create in the face of violence that challenges the conditions of life itself. Exploring dispossession, deregulation, privatization, and inequality, this book is the essential primer on environmental justice, packed with cautiously hopeful stories for the future.

Through various international case studies presented by both practitioners and scholars, Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene explores how an environmental justice approach is necessary for reflections on inequality in the Anthropocene and for forging societal transitions toward a more just and sustainable future. Environmental justice is a central component of sustainability politics during the Anthropocene – the current geological age in which human activity is the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Every aspect of sustainability politics requires a close analysis of equity implications, including problematizing the notion that humans as a collective are equally responsible for ushering in this new epoch. Environmental justice provides us with the tools to critically investigate the drivers and characteristics of this era and the debates over the inequitable outcomes of the Anthropocene for historically marginalized peoples. The contributors to this volume focus on a critical approach to power and issues of environmental injustice across time, space, and context, drawing from twelve national contexts: Austria, Bangladesh, Chile, China, India, Nicaragua, Hungary, Mexico, Brazil, Sweden, Tanzania, and the United States. Beyond highlighting injustices, the volume highlights forward-facing efforts at building just transitions, with a goal of identifying practical steps to connect theory and movement and envision an environmentally and ecologically just future. This interdisciplinary work will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners focused on conservation, environmental politics and governance, environmental and earth sciences, environmental sociology, environment and planning, environmental justice, and global sustainability and governance. It will also be of interest to social and environmental justice advocates and activists.

Climate Change, Justice and Future Generations is a valuable contribution to the debate on both theoretical and applied justice in climate change, and it fills a manifest gap in the current literature. Marco Grasso, International Environmental Agreements Page effectively marries the issues raised by climate change science with analytical philosophy to provide a perspective on why or why not measures should be taken to reduce climate change and the risks/harm it poses for future generations. . . a valuable book for politicians and policy makers who seek to change the world and manage its climate. Antoinette M. Mannion, Electronic Green Journal We are badly in need of ways of understanding global problems that go beyond the current economic paradigms. Climate Change, Justice and Future Generations helps us with this task by effectively linking climate change with some important mainstream work on political justice. It should be a very useful book not just for the classroom and the academy, but also for the realm of policy. Stephen Gardiner, University of Washington, US The book begins with a detailed account of the science of climate change that is user friendly for non-scientists without sacrificing depth. . . Page s analysis is impressive in both its scope and execution, and has a relevance and potential appeal in a number of fields. Kerri Woods, Political Studies Review Climate Change, Justice and Future Generations is an authoritative, analytical and extremely scholarly integration of scientific and technical information, empirical data and modelling concerning global climate change and high-level normative analysis. Page convincingly and patiently lays out the argument, including the ways in which climate change challenges settled modes of ethical thought, despite it being one of the most, if not the, important ethical issues of the age. As a book on both theoretical and applied ethics it makes an important contribution to the field. John Barry, Queen s University Belfast, UK What the climate change policy called Contraction and Convergence has lacked until now is an authoritative theoretical grounding. Here Ed Page puts this right. In masterful fashion, he dissects the issues at stake in designing climate change policy, and leaves his readers in no doubt that there is a fair and effective alternative to rising tides. This is a book for students, researchers and for anyone with the feeling that business as usual is no longer an option. Andrew Dobson, University of Keele, UK Global climate change raises important questions of international and intergenerational justice. In this important new book the author places research on the origins and impacts of climate change within the broader context of distributive justice and sustainable development. He argues that a range of theories of distribution notably those grounded in ideals of equality, priority and sufficiency converge on the adoption of the ambitious global climate policy framework known as Contraction and Convergence . Climate Change, Justice and Future Generations will be of great interest to academics and students specialising in environmental ethics, politics and environmental sustainability. It will also be of general interest to those concerned with climate change and the environment.