Tentative Book Title: Youth Activism and the Intergenerational Politics of Climate Change
Book Project Overview: Since Severn Cullis-Suzuki’s now famous speech at the first round of international climate negotiations in 1992, young people have sought creative ways to intervene in adult-dominated policy and lawmaking processes to safeguard their futures. Young people have taken to the streets, the halls of the United Nations and courts around the world to make their voices heard in decision-making processes from which they have historically been excluded, in the process, I argue, changing the trajectories and characteristics of these conversations. Through case studies of youth activism in the Fridays 4 Future Movement, Sunrise Movement, Our Children’s Trust and other climate litigation efforts and youth activism in the U.N. climate policy process, this book project seeks to understand the histories, possibilities, difficulties and outcomes of youth activism in contemporary U.S. and international climate politics. I use a range of qualitative methods including interviews with past and present activists involved in these movements, participant observation at key UN climate conferences from 2015-2022, climate case hearings, and protest events. I complement these methods with digital archival approaches, including social media analysis, to tell the story of an emergent generational force seeking to reshape the global politics of climate around principles of justice, equity and historical and future responsibility. I also describe some of the key moments of tension and fracture within these movements as they have sought to articulate their progressive politics apart from, but at times, in entanglement with dominant currents of neoliberalism, (neo)coloniality and white supremacy.