Climate Activism in Europe I

Abstract

The specific focus of this panel is to examine the innovations and transformations brought about by newly formed groups within the environmental movement (such as Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, Letzte Generation). These actors aim to bring about societal change, influence politics and shape our fossil fuel free future according to what they believe to be right, and are increasingly willing to use what is often seen as extreme, disruptive action. The focus of this panel is to focus on the transformations of the environmental movements in relation to these developments in the context of Central Eastern Europe. Specifically, we hope to investigate how emotions, scientific evidence and disruptive action work in the framing strategy of these groups, how the public perceives them, what is the profile of participants etc. Overall, while there are differing opinions on the new climate movement tactics, it is clear that they have sparked a global conversation about the urgency of addressing the climate crisis. They have also opened up new possibilities and challenges for cooperation within the climate movements and stimulated a more intense debate among activists on their public impact. First, the panel focuses on the emotions associated with communicating about the climate crisis. The research showed that there is currently a distinct dominant narrative in the climate movement about how to reach the public. This narrative emphasises that the public already perceives climate change as a problem but suffers from being uninformed about the possibilities of concrete and constructive solutions of either adaptation or mitigation. Instead of raising its awareness about climate change, this narrative, therefore, proposes to focus on informing the public about concrete policy options and diverse solutions for addressing climate change. According to this narrative, there may be more effective approaches than fear-based messaging for promoting long-term behaviour change. Instead, providing individuals with positive motivation can promote their actions. At the same time, the newly mobilized groups have thus far opted for a different strategy to actually raise awareness about the problem. In the panel we will focus on the debate of this so-called activist dilemma. Second, the panel will provide the ground for discussing not only possible strategies, but also the profile of new climate activists and how it relates to what we have already known about the profile of environmental activists. Can we expect new people bringing a new action repertoire? In addition, can we see any specifics when we compare the data on the mobilization in Eastern Europe to Western Europe? Last but not least, can we expect any polarizing tendencies based on this type of new mobilization in relation to more traditional political cleavages in democratic societies?

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