Pipeline populism and the climate struggle of cycles: 2010-20

How has the character and politics of the climate justice movement changed in the last decade, in the context of the growth of Indigenous-led struggles against oil pipelines? How have non-Indigenous settlers variously understood (or not) themselves in relation to Indigenous sovereignty?

This talk describes the rise and demise of a left-populist environmentalism as one tendency within the “cycle of struggles” over climate in the 2010s. This tendency can be found in Upper Midwest pipeline opposition movements, in moves towards mass mobilization such as the People’s Climate March, and in student and youth movements advocating for a Green New Deal. Seeing populist environmentalism can help us understand the specific organizational forms, affects, and strategies of contemporary social struggles and the political possibilities they open up or occlude.

Kai Bosworth is a geographer, and assistant professor of international studies in the School of World Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. The event is sponsored by the Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change at York University.

Everyone is welcome. Please register on Eventbrite. People can attend either online or onsite to the event.