Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Introduction

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Climate Change Counter Movement

Abstract

Since the late fifteenth century, capitalism has been the hegemonic global economic system. In its more recent form, it is underpinned by the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources and subsequent ecological degradation (Foster et al., The ecological rift: Capitalisms war on the earth, Monthly Review Press, 2010), accompanied by a predominant worldview that shapes how humans, particularly in the West, interact with nature. In its simplistic terms under this view, nature’s worth has been based primarily on how it can be exploited and used to fulfill the needs of human populations in the Western industrialized world, where natural resources are of monetary value only when removed from nature (Schnaiberg, The environment: From surplus to scarcity, Oxford University Press, 1980).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    The Anthropocene is a geological age understood by the way humans have interacted with nature (Lewis & Maslin, 2015).

References

  • Arrhenius, S. (1896). XXXI. On the influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the temperature of the ground. The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 41(251), 237–276.

    Google Scholar 

  • Axelrod, R. M. (1970). Conflict of interest: A theory of divergent goals with applications to politics. Markham Publishing Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bogert, J., Ellers, J., Lewandowsky, S., Balgopal, M., & Harvey, J. (2022). Reviewing the relationship between neoliberal societies and nature: Implications of the industrialized dominant social paradigm for a sustainable future. Ecology and Society, 27(2), 7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brulle, R. J. (2014). Institutionalizing delay: Foundation funding and the creation of US climate change countermovement organizations. Climatic Change, 122(4), 681–694.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brulle, R. J., & Werthman, C. (2021). The role of public relations firms in climate change politics. Climatic Change, 169(1), 1–21.

    Google Scholar 

  • Callendar, G. S. (1938). The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 64(275), 223–240.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cotgrove. (1982). Catastrophe or Cornucopia. Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dorsey, M. K. (2007). Climate knowledge and power: Tales of skeptic tanks, weather gods, and sagas for climate (in) justice. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 18(2), 7–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dunlap, R. E., & Jacques, P. J. (2013). Climate change denial books and conservative think tanks: Exploring the connection. American Behavioral Scientist, 57(6), 699–731.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ekberg, K., Forchtner, B., Hultman, M., & Jylhä, K. M. (2022). Climate obstruction: How denial, delay and inaction are heating the planet. Taylor & Francis.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Elsasser, S. W., & Dunlap, R. E. (2013). Leading voices in the denier choir: Conservative columnists’ dismissal of global warming and denigration of climate science. American Behavioral Scientist, 57(6), 754–776.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Escobar, A. (2015). Transiciones: A space for research and design for transitions to the pluriverse. Design Philosophy Papers, 13(1), 13–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fast, T. (2014). Stapled to the front door: Neoliberal extractivism in Canada. Studies in Political Economy, 94(1), 31–60.

    Google Scholar 

  • Featherstone, D. (2015). The contested politics of climate change and the crisis of neo-liberalism. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 12(1), 44–64. https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/951. Accessed 24 Oct 2022.

  • Foster, J. B., Clark, B., & York, R. (2010). The ecological rift: Capitalisms war on the earth. Monthly Review Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Franta, B. (2022). Weaponizing economics: Big Oil, economic consultants, and climate policy delay. Environmental Politics, 31(4), 555–575. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2021.1947636

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fraussen, B., & Halpin, D. (2017). Think tanks and strategic policy-making: The contribution of think tanks to policy advisory systems. Policy Sciences, 50(1), 105–124.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Huber, M. T. (2009). Energizing historical materialism: Fossil fuels, space and the capitalist mode of production. Geoforum, 40(1), 105–115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.004

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • International Panel on Climate Change. (2014). Summary for policy makers. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2/summary-for-policymakers/. Accessed 24 Oct 2022.

  • Jacquet, J., Dietrich, M., & Jost, J. T. (2014). The ideological divide and climate change opinion: “Top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1458.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jylhä, K. M., Cantal, C., Akrami, N., & Milfont, T. L. (2016). Denial of anthropogenic climate change: Social dominance orientation helps explain the conservative male effect in Brazil and Sweden. Personality and Individual Differences, 98, 184–187.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lamb, W. F., Mattioli, G., Levi, S., Roberts, J. T., Capstick, S., Creutzig, F., Minx, J. C., Müller-Hansen, F., Culhane, T., & Steinberger, J. K. (2020). Discourses of climate delay. Global Sustainability, 3, e17.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Gignac, G. E. (2013). NASA faked the moon landing—Therefore, (climate) science is a hoax: An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science. Psychological Science, 24(5), 622–633.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, S. L., & Maslin, M. A. (2015). Defining the Anthropocene. Nature, 519(7542), 171–180.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McGann, J. G. (Ed.). (2007). Think tanks and policy advice in the US: Academics, advisors and advocates. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • McKie, R. E. (2018). Rebranding the climate change counter movement through a criminological and political economic lens [Doctoral dissertation, Northumbria University]. https://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/33466/. Accessed 24 Oct 2022.

  • McKie, R. E. (2019). Climate change counter movement neutralization techniques: A typology to examine the climate change counter movement. Sociological Inquiry, 89(2), 288–316.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McKie, R. E. (2022). Climate change counter movement organizations: An international deviant network? In Handbook of anti-environmentalism (pp. 173–191). Edward Elgar Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meyer, D. S. (1993, June). Institutionalizing dissent: The United States structure of political opportunity and the end of the nuclear freeze movement. In Sociological Forum (Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 157–179). Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meyer, D. S., & Minkoff, D. C. (2004). Conceptualizing political opportunity. Social Forces, 82(4), 1457–1492.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meyer, D. S., & Staggenborg, S. (1996). Movements, countermovements, and the structure of political opportunity. American Journal of Sociology, 101(6), 1628–1660.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norgaard, K. M. (2011). Living in denial: Climate change, emotions, and everyday life. MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M. (2011). Merchants of doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming. Bloomsbury Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pérez, F., & Esposito, L. (2010). The global addiction and human rights: Insatiable consumerism, neoliberalism, and harm reduction. Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, 9(1–2), 84–100.

    Google Scholar 

  • Petersen, A. M., Vincent, E. M., & Westerling, A. L. (2020). Addendum: Discrepancy in scientific authority and media visibility of climate change scientists and contrarians. Nature communications, 11(1), 553.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pirages, D. C., & Ehrlich, P. R. (1974). Ark II; social response to environmental imperatives [by] Dennis C. Pirages [and] Paul R. Ehrlich.

    Google Scholar 

  • Plehwe, D. (2015). Introduction. In P. Mirowski & D. Plehwe (Eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The making of the neoliberal thought collective, with a new preface (pp. 10–42). Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rajwani, T., Lawton, T., & Phillips, N. (2015). The “Voice of Industry”: Why management researchers should pay more attention to trade associations. Strategic Organization, 13(3), 224–232.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schnaiberg, A. (1980). The environment: From surplus to scarcity. Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Supran, G., & Oreskes, N. (2021). Rhetoric and frame analysis of ExxonMobil’s climate change communications. One Earth, 4(5), 696–719.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Staggenborg, S. (1986). Coalition work in the pro-choice movement: Organizational and environmental opportunities and obstacles. Social Problems, 33(5), 374–390.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stoll-Kleemann, S., O’Riordan, T., & Jaeger, C. C. (2001). The psychology of denial concerning climate mitigation measures: Evidence from Swiss focus groups. Global Environmental Change, 11(2), 107–117.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • United Nations. (1992). United Nations Conference on Environment & Development Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 3 to 14 June 1992. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf. Accessed 22 Nov 2022.

  • Van Liere, K. D., & Dunlap, R. E. (1981). Environmental concern: Does it make a difference how it’s measured? Environment and Behavior, 13(6), 651–676.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weidenbaum, M. (2017). The competition of ideas: The world of the Washington think tanks. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Winkler, H., & Beaumont, J. (2010). Fair and effective multilateralism in the post-Copenhagen climate negotiations. Climate Policy, 10(6), 638–654.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wright, C., & Nyberg, D. (2015). Climate change, capitalism, and corporations. Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

    Ruth E. McKie

Authors
  1. Ruth E. McKie
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ruth E. McKie .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

McKie, R.E. (2023). Introduction. In: The Climate Change Counter Movement. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33592-1_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33592-1_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-33591-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-33592-1

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation