2.1 The relationship between politics and the climate crisis
An obvious place to start in any teaching about democratic participation and political engagement is to support students in exploring the actions of their governments. Governments can have both a positive and a negative impact on climate change, through the development (or lack of development) of policies and measures around:
- mitigation – actions intended to slow or halt the process of global warming and its related effects, or which could cause or exacerbate it
- adaptation – actions to defend against the negative impact of global warming
- climate engineering – direct intervention in the climate aimed at reducing average global temperature.
Other government policies and measures can have a less direct effect on the climate crisis, for example those relating to education, housing, transport and income tax.
The scope of political action in respect to climate change varies around the world. The European Environment Agency’s 2021 report ‘National greenhouse gas policies and measures in Europe [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] ’ identifies over 2200 policies and measures from European Union (EU) member states addressing mitigation across the following commonly used categories:
- energy consumption, e.g. efficiency improvements of buildings
- transport, e.g. improved transport infrastructure
- energy supply, e.g. switching to less carbon-intensive fuels
- agriculture, e.g. reduction of fertiliser/manure use on cropland
- land use, change and forestry, e.g. prevention of deforestation
- waste, e.g. improved landfill management
- industrial processes, e.g. improved control of emissions from industrial processes.
The Climate Action Tracker allows the impact of climate change mitigation policies and actions on emissions to be tracked for 38 of the countries responsible for the biggest emissions globally. Exploring this tool with your students, whatever their age, could be a catalyst for discussing the extent to which democratic participation and political action could help influence governments to act differently in respect to climate change.