SOCIAL NORMS AND CLIMATE CHANGE: INVESTIGATING CLIMATE INACTION

Climate change is a well-understood problem with well-understood solutions. Why, then, has there been so little effective climate change mitigation action? In this dissertation, I conceptualize climate change as a social, rather than a physical, problem and investigate possible reasons for climate inaction in three different contexts: international climate policy, academic research in sustainability science, and climate ethics. In Chapter 1, I argue that the widespread conceptualization of climate change as an international tragedy of the commons between nations is misguided and may be contributing to climate inaction in the international policy arena. In Chapter 2, I suggest that sustainability scholars’ efforts at clarifying the concept of “sustainability transformation” by developing a unified understanding of the term have been hindering the progress of practically applicable empirical research that might help to address the problem of climate inaction. In Chapter 3, I show that the inefficacy of our individual actions cannot serve as a justification for individual climate inaction.