Navigating Bulkeley’s challenge on climate politics and human geography

Abstract

While agreeing with the major tenets of Harriet Bulkeley's timely and powerful argument for geographers (and social scientists more generally) to engage with climate change, this response raises three provocative challenges that arise from this intervention: the degree to which the epistemological and theoretical bases to these arguments are radical, the nature of the engagement problem in the discipline and, perhaps most importantly, how these arguments can be translated to a 'progressive politics'. The response argues that there is much further to go in explaining the utility of socio-natural understanding of climate change if those beyond the social sciences and in the wider realm of policy and politics are to be convinced of the power of the approach being advocated. It also argues that geographers are well-positioned to develop the bolder and more interdisciplinary approach needed to achieve the kind of ambitious shift in thinking Bulkeley seeks.

Reflections on Navigating Climate’s Human Geographies

“…At the heart of my argument is the observation that climate change has both an obvious presence and a curious absence within our discipline. While sharing many of the diagnoses of the current state of climate’s human geographies developed in my paper, the commentaries (Castree, 2019; Jones, 2019; Lovell, 2019; O'Brien and Leichenko, 2019; Paterson 2019) take up a variety of open questions and remaining concerns about what this might mean for the way in which we regard climate change as an issue, how knowledge systems might be changed to enable more diverse ways of knowing climate change to take root, and for its politics. Although there are many lines of thought opened up by these diverse responses – and for the depth of their engagement I am deeply grateful – it is on these three themes that I take the opportunity to reflect further.…”