Climate deadlocks: the environmental politics of energy systems

After struggling for decades to get climate change mitigation onto the political agenda, environmentalists now not only find themselves enmeshed in internal conflict over how to proceed, but also find these conflicts themselves functioning to delay or forestall necessary action. Reframing climate change as an energy systems – rather than an emissions reduction – problem allows us to see why these conflicts have arisen and what is at stake in them. This argument is illustrated through an examination of climate and energy politics in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Taking an energy systems perspective reveals both the complexity and importance of the political terrain activated by climate change: how societies reshape energy systems in response to climate change will have profound implications not only for their ecological impact but also for their political and social character.