Today, a piece that I wrote with Oscar Berglund and Colin Davis went live at Nature. In it, we look at the current state of the research on climate and other activism to understand how a movement best effects change and converts citizens’ concerns into policies that address the problem. To answer that question, we focus on three key questions that need to be answered: what motivates some people to join protests while others do not? What are the pros and cons of the tactics that protesters use? And what can researchers do to understand and counter the increasingly repressive measures being used against climate activists in many parts of the world? (I discuss some of these issues in Saving Ourselves, but much more research is needed).
As the world warms and the COP28 round of climate negotiations get underway, my hope is that the article will motivate interest in answering these extremely important questions. The piece will be published in the November 30th issue of the magazine that is set to come out on the first day of the climate negotiations in Dubai.
Dana R Fisher 