Laurence Delina Publishes Paper on the Climate Action Movement

Laurence Delina, a post-doctoral associate at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, recently co-authored an article on the climate change action movement published in the journal Interface.

The article, titled “Strengthening the climate action movement: strategies from contemporary social action campaigns,” argues that climate activism must be bolstered in order to accelerate the transition to a sustainable energy system. The authors used a qualitative survey of 47 social action groups with a wide range of objectives to conclude that these groups agree on the core principles of effective campaigns: delivering a moral message; offering a regime alternative; including diverse participants; and using several different types of public communication channels. The paper recommends that climate activism efforts draw on these effective campaign strategies common across other large-scale social change movements and apply them to the climate action movement.

At the Pardee Center, Delina is leading a research project on sustainable energy transitions in developing countries. His recent book, Strategies for Rapid Climate Mitigation (Routledge 2016), applies the lessons learned from wartime mobilization to rapid deployment of sustainable energy technologies.