Graduation Year

2023

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Politics and International Relations

Reader 1

Tom Kim

Reader 2

Mark Golub

Rights Information

2022 Annie M DeVoe

Abstract

Environmental direct action campaigns of the past have historically experienced intense carceral suppression as a result of fossil fuel lobbying groups enhancing the criminalization of climate justice practices. As a result, in the early 2000’s the environmental justice movement was shifted towards adopting neoliberal reformist strategies to approach the climate problem. Now, the urgency of global warming has inspired the environmental movement to return to direct action approaches involving civil disobedience in order to enact change. To curb their resistance, the fossil fuel industry is counter organizing through a weaponization of the carceral state. By lobbying for new anti-protest legislation as well as financially and socially investing in the nations police foundations, oil and energy corporations are effectively neutralizing climate justice action across the nation. These strategies are protected and upheld by the carceral state, which additionally exists to protect extractive capitalist practices that inherently result in ecological degradation. In order to effectively combat climate change and dismantle capitalist structures of environmental harm, the environmentalist movement must adopt an abolitionist understanding of climate justice.

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This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

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