Organising Responses to Climate Change: The Politics of Mitigation, Adaptation and Suffering

Climate change is the most important issue now facing humanity. As global temperatures increase, floods, fires and storms are becoming both more intense and frequent. People are suffering. And yet, emissions continue to rise. This book unpacks the activities of the key actors which have organised past and present climate responses – specifically, corporations, governments, and civil society organisations. Analysing three elements of climate change – mitigation, adaptation and suffering – the authors show how exponential growth of the capitalist system has allowed the fossil fuel industry to maintain its dominance. However, this hegemonic position is now coming under threat as new and innovative social movements have emerged, including the fossil fuel divestment movement, Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion and others. In exposing the inadequacies of current climate policies and pointing to the possibilities of new social and economic systems, this book highlights how the worst impacts of climate change can be avoided.

Daniel Nyberg is a professor of management at the University of Newcastle Business School and an honorary professor at the University of Sydney. He has published widely in journals including Academy of Management Journal, British Journal of Sociology, Environment and Planning: A, and Organization Studies, and he is the co-author of Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations: Processes of Creative Self-Destruction (Cambridge University Press, 2015, with Christopher Wright). He is currently a Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council Discovery project (2022-2024) on climate change adaptation in Australian industries.

Christopher Wright is a professor of organisational studies at the University of Sydney Business School and key researcher at the Sydney Environment Institute. He has published in many of the leading management journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies, Research Policy, British Journal of Management and Human Relations. He is the author of several books including Management as Consultancy: Neo-Bureaucracy and the Consultant Manager (Cambridge University Press, 2015, with Andrew Sturdy and Nick Wylie) and Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations (Cambridge University Press, 2015 with Daniel Nyberg).

Vanessa Bowden is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Newcastle. She has published in journals including Global Environmental Change, Environmental Politics, and the Journal of Sociology. She is currently working on research projects exploring the social dynamics of climate adaptation amongst coastal communities and the role of the fossil fuel sector in shaping energy transition in Australia.