This book is a theoretically rich and empirically grounded account of UK trade union engagement with climate change over the last three decades. It offers a rigorous critique of the mainstream neoliberal and ecological modernisation approaches, extending the concepts of Marxist social and employment relations theory to the climate realm. The book applies insights from employment relations to the political economy of climate change, developing a model for understanding trade union behaviour over climate matters. The strong interdisciplinary approach draws together lessons from both physical and social science, providing an original empirical investigation into the climate politics of the UK trade union movement from high level officials down to workplace climate representatives, from issues of climate jobs to workers’ climate action. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers in environmental politics, climate change and environmental sociology.

Essays that address the question: how can people and class agency change this destructive course of history? Capitalism’s addiction to fossil fuels is heating our planet at a pace and scale never before experienced. Extreme weather patterns, rising sea levels and accelerating feedback loops are a commonplace feature of our lives. The number of environmental refugees is increasing and several island states and low-lying countries are becoming vulnerable. Corporate-induced climate change has set us on an ecocidal path of species extinction. Governments and their international platforms such as the Paris Climate Agreement deliver too little, too late. Most states, including South Africa, continue on their carbon-intensive energy paths, with devastating results. Political leaders across the world are failing to provide systemic solutions to the climate crisis. This is the context in which we must ask ourselves: how can people and class agency change this destructive course of history? Volume three in the Democratic Marxism series, The Climate Crisis investigates eco-socialist alternatives that are emerging. It presents the thinking of leading climate justice activists, campaigners and social movements advancing systemic alternatives and developing bottom-up, just transitions to sustain life. Through a combination of theoretical and empirical work, the authors collectively examine the challenges and opportunities inherent in the current moment. This volume builds on the class-struggle focus of Volume 2 by placing ecological issues at the centre of democratic Marxism. Most importantly, it explores ways to renew historical socialism with democratic, eco-socialist alternatives to meet current challenges in South Africa and the world.

As climate change has increasingly become the main focus of environmentalist activism since the late 1990s, the global economic drivers of CO2 emissions are now a major concern for radical greens. In turn, the emphasis on connected crises in both natural and social systems has attracted more activists to the Climate Justice movement and created a common cause between activists from the Global South and North. In the absence of a pervasive narrative of transnational or socialist economic planning to prevent catastrophic climate change, these activists have been eager to engage with advanced knowledge and ideas on political and economic structures that diminish risks and allow for new climate agency. This book breaks new ground by investigating what kind of economy the Climate Justice movement is calling for us to build and how the struggle for economic change has unfolded so far. Examining ecological debt, just transition, indigenous ecologies, social ecology, community economies and divestment among other topics, the authors provide a critical assessment and a common ground for future debate on economic innovation via social mobilization. Taking a transdisciplinary approach that synthesizes political economy, history, theory and ethnography, this volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate justice, environmental politics and policy, environmental economics and sustainable development.

Greening Auto Jobs: A Critical Analysis of the Green Job Solution details current and problematic understandings of what constitutes a "green job." Adopting an approach grounded in critical political economy, this book presents a framework to scrutinize the green job solution and the theoretical framework which overwhelmingly informs contemporary green job creation efforts and ecological modernization. The text also explores the tensions that encircle the world of work and environmental action, often referred to as "jobs versus the environment," by detailing the conflicting commitments of political-economic actors to the idea of green job creation. These conflicts are outlined through an examination of the political-economic debate that has surrounded the Australian Government’s environmental plans from 2008 to 2012 and the conflicting positions of Australian trade unions on environmentally transitioning the world of work. Interviews with key political-economic actors provide in-depth and nuanced understandings of the varied perspectives of political and union leaders in Australia. The second part of the book presents a detailed case study of the posited green job solution within the specific context of the Australian automotive manufacturing industry. The case study is also informed by interviews with key industry, union, and policymakers. The automotive industry is scrutinized not only because it has expressed going green as important to its long-term economic future, but because the Australian Government declared that its $6.2 billion "New Car Plan for a Greener Future" policy would create green jobs. Therefore, the book engages with the task of examining the three multinational vehicle producers operating in Australia—Ford, GM Holden, and Toyota—and how they have responded and engaged with the idea of green jobs, greening the manufacturing process, and the vehicles they produce in Australia.