Climate turns structural violence.

There is a high-profile body of work asserting a link between anthropogenic climate change and increased rates of violence. There is also an expanding literature that is highly skeptical of this research. Critics point out that (1) this research has so far produced widely divergent findings, and that there is no consensus on a causal link between climate and the incidence of conflict. Critics also argue that much climate violence research (2) draws upon a longdiscredited environmental determinism, (3) rehashes colonial stereotypes of the global South, (4) naturalizes and depoliticizes inequalities within and between nations, and (5) potentially creates new rationales for militarism and intervention from more powerful states. In the following essay, I build on these critiques, arguing that orthodox climate conflict research also focuses unduly on the potential climate-related violence of the poor, overlooking the violence of the powerful. Drawing from a climate justice perspective, I advocate for more study on the structural violence of climate change. To make this case, I focus on the world’s largest publicly traded fossil fuel companies. Keywords: climate conflict, climate justice, fossil fuel corporations, fossil fuel divestment, structural violence Introduction Will climate change make the world a more violent place? This is one of the more important questions of our time. There are a growing number of warnings coming from influential places about the relationship between climate change and violence. The United States government, for instance, has increasingly labeled global warming a “threat multiplier” (Banusiewicz, 2014; CNA, 2007). 1 Author contact: ebonds@umw.edu. Human Ecology Review, Volume 22, Number 2, 2016 4 Additionally, prominent journalists and policy analysts at important think tanks and advocacy groups have worked to highlight potential connections between global warming and conflict (see for instance EJF, 2014; Friedman, 2013; Werrell & Fernia, 2013). And headlines at major newspapers, for example in the Washington Post, report “there’s a surprisingly strong link between climate change and violence” (Mooney, 2014). But how we answer the question—“will climate change create a more violent future?”—has much to do with the definitions we use. On one hand, the jury is very much out in terms of proving a causal relationship between climate change and increasing conflict. While some research, published in some of the world’s most prestigious journals, has found what the authors describe as a strong link between climatic changes and rates of violence (see Burke et al., 2009; Hsiang et al., 2013), other research, sometimes published in the same journals, has found no such correlation (Buhaug, 2010a, 2010b; Wischnath & Buhaug, 2014). There is, in fact, no consensus among quantitative researchers about the existence of a causal link between changes in temperature and rainfall and increasing violence (Buhaug, 2015; Selby, 2014). As the body of research on a potential climate violence relationship has grown, so too has the number of its critics. An increasing number of authors worry that quantitative climate conflict research, as the next reincarnation of a long-discredited environmental determinism, is simply old wine in a new bottle (Hartmann, 2014; Raleigh et al., 2014). Moreover, according to critics, this research draws upon colonial stereotypes of the global South, implying that its peoples are somehow more predisposed to violence than those of European ancestry (Livingstone, 2015; Raleigh et al., 2014; Selby, 2014; Verhoeven, 2014). Finally, this research implies that the violence of poor people in the most peripheral areas of the global economy is “natural,” hiding from view the ways that histories of colonialism and the contemporary global political economy have conditioned and produced violent conflict (Hartmann, 2010, 2014; Verhoeven, 2011, 2014). Why, given all these problems, has orthodox climate conflict research continued to flourish, and to enjoy such a high public profile? Critics warn that this is because the perspective so closely matches, and is so useful to, governments that are securitizing the issue of climate change and using it as a means to legitimate militarism and ongoing interventions in the global South (Hartmann, 2010, 2014; Selby, 2014; Verhoeven, 2014). Given all the problems with orthodox climate violence research, does this mean that it is safe to say that climate change will not make the world a more violent place? Hardly. I advance instead that anthropogenic climate change is itself a kind of violence (Solnit, 2014). After all, it will certainly cause early deaths and it will drive people from their homes and homelands, all of which will cause untold suffering. Drawing upon a climate justice perspective, I provide here a brief overview of orthodox climate conflict research and further describe its Upending Climate Violence Research 5 critics’ concerns. I add to their critique by arguing that this body of research, as a whole, focuses almost exclusively on the potential violence of the poor, overlooking the violence of the wealthy and powerful groups who benefit most from, and actively work to sustain, a fossil fuel–dependent neoliberal capitalism. To begin amending this bias in the climate violence literature, I draw upon work in sociology, green criminology, and geography to argue that major fossil fuel companies are disproportionately responsible for, and have disproportionately benefited from, the structural violence of climate change.