Working-Class Environmentalism

Bell, Karen

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-29519-6_6

Cited by 5 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…As other studies have highlighted (e.g. Bell, 2020;Bell, 2021), these additional burdens to their, already limited time, income and health, were not welcomed and could alienate them from environmental policy.…”

Section: Interviewsmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…I think that's really, really important…My organizing around that was in working class communities and the industrialized towns and coastal areas where we went in and talked to ex-miners, workers from nuclear power plants, shop owners, schools. (Kate interview, 02/09/20) Outreach is important for the GND, given the history of working-class exclusion from mainstream environmentalism in the US and UK (Bell, 2020;. A strategy of meeting people where they are located seems to have worked, according to research participants who had been local GND organisers.…”

Section: Interviewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is a growing literature on the social impacts and inequality outcomes of climate change mitigation policies and other environmental policies (e.g. Bell, 2021;Bell 2020;Hallegatte & Rozenberg, 2017;Klinsky et al, 2016;Marcu & Vangenechten, 2018;Petrini et al 2017). It is apparent that the needs of working-class people have often not been considered when developing these policies (Bell, 2020) with harmful consequences for their health, incomes and wellbeing (Bell, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, environmental policies should be evaluated, not only for their efficacy in alleviating an environmental problem in a particular place, but also for their impact on inequality and whether they will reduce or worsen the inequities already faced by working-class people. While there is a huge potential to develop climate and other environmental policy that provides cobenefits for working-class people, prior environmental policies have often failed to do this (Bell, 2020). In general, they have tended to fail, and make life more difficult for, workingclass people.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In general, they have tended to fail, and make life more difficult for, workingclass people. There are many examples of this 'policy injustice', including with regard to street cleaning services (Hastings 2007(Hastings , 2009Hastings et al 2014;Bramley et al 2012); pollution policy (Bell, 2020); energy policy (McCauley et al 2013;Sovacool and Dworkin 2015;Jenkins 2018); waste policy (Bell 2020;Bell and Sweeting, 2013) and green jobs (Mason, 2009;Stevis, 2013), among other environmental policies. A first step in rectifying this injustice is to find out how working-class people view the policies on offer.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Failure of Lifestyle Environmentalism and the Promise of the Green New Deal for Working-Class People

Bell¹,

Bevan²

2021

JWCS

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There is an urgent need to address a range of environmental issues, including climate change, but the policies enacted to date have usually done nothing to address class inequities and have often led to increased working-class disadvantage. The causes of the climate and other environmental crises have often been located in problematic individual lifestyles, with little recognition of the time, economic and health constraints that make it difficult for working-class people to adopt green lifestyles. The Green New Deal (GND) presented an alternative policy paradigm that argued for environmental policies that, rather than increasing the pressure on disadvantaged groups, would have co-benefits for working-class people, low-income groups and communities of colour. However, the policy did not lead to electoral success for the political leaders that proposed it, in the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK), due to opposition representations of it as costly and threatening to working-class jobs. We interviewed 40 working-class people in the UK to find out how much they knew about the Green New Deal, what they thought about it as an environmental policy and how they felt about environmentalism, more generally. Our research indicates that there was a general lack of knowledge about GND, but great enthusiasm about it once explained, albeit with reservations about its implementation and limitations. The GND has huge potential to benefit the lives of working-class people but, we conclude, more, and better, outreach is needed for people to understand its potential to improve their lives.

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Section: Interviewsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Interviewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

The Failure of Lifestyle Environmentalism and the Promise of the Green New Deal for Working-Class People

Bell¹,

Bevan²

2021

JWCS

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Lived environmentalisms: Everyday encounters and difference in Australia's north

Pickerill

2024

Geography and Environment

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This paper focuses on everyday encounters between environmentalists and Indigenous activists during a dispute around a proposed gas hub development in the Kimberley, NW Australia, to explore the possibilities of practising environmentalism differently. It makes visible the complexity, contestations and dilemmas of putting environmentalism into practice in particular places and calls for the specificness of how environmentalisms are negotiated and developed through encounters to be more carefully attended to. It draws on 32 face‐to‐face in‐depth interviews conducted with activists from national Australian environmental organisations working in the Kimberley, Kimberley‐based environmental groups, Kimberley Indigenous organisations, participant observations at protest camp site visits and analysis of campaign literature. Closely interrogating lived environmentalisms—how environmentalists put into practice their values in everyday encounters—reveals not only evidence of white environmentalists expanding their conceptions of the environment beyond dualisms and engaging with multispecies justice, but also a hesitancy and complexity in supporting Indigenous self‐determination and a limited capacity to challenge colonial‐capitalist frameworks.

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International solidarity for a de-colonised Just Transition: electric vehicles and lithium in Mexico and Europe

Bell

2024

Contemporary Social Science

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Working-Class Environmentalism

Cited by 5 publications

References 32 publications

The Failure of Lifestyle Environmentalism and the Promise of the Green New Deal for Working-Class People

The Failure of Lifestyle Environmentalism and the Promise of the Green New Deal for Working-Class People

Lived environmentalisms: Everyday encounters and difference in Australia's north

International solidarity for a de-colonised Just Transition: electric vehicles and lithium in Mexico and Europe

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