current and likely impacts of climate change. On the U.S. side we have no such thing: we need to chronicle the
very first steps American localities are taking to build resilience and address the problem of climate change. For
developing nations, a small literature is developing on what will be required to respond to climate change: most of
these analyses describe a huge funding and technical capacity gap.^55 Multilateral (World Bank, GEF, ASDB, etc.),
bilateral (USAID, DFID, GTZ, etc.), and private aid agencies (Oxfam, ActionAid, Christian Aid, etc.) are starting
to think about “climate proofing” their billions of dollars of aid projects. There is great need for more research on
these issues, and it’s a big part of my agenda.^56
But so far, we have not really figured out how we are going to change enough to avert the disaster that
looms. To do so, the wealthy nations will have to cut our emissions of greenhouse gases by 80-95 percent by
mid-century, just 42 years away. A very recent piece in Nature by Roger Pielke Jr. argues that technology will
probably not come to our rescue.^57 We need to understand how to build mitigation capacity of nations and local
communities, and institutions small and large.
However we sociologists are largely MIA (missing in action) from policy and action discussions now
taking place in Washington, Brussels, and around the world. We environmental sociologists alone were never
adequate to the task, and this is more than ever the case. I look forward to speaking about this problem in the past
tense as we mobilize together to address this massive issue.
(^55) Benito Mueller has various pieces on this, the UNDP Human Development Report 2007/2008 is quite good, Oxfam’s Kate Raworth did a
piece in Spring 2007, etc.
(^56) My two major recent projects are A Climate of Injustice: Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy (2008, MIT Press,
with Bradley C. Parks); and Greening Aid? Understanding the Environmental Impact of Development Assistance (2008 Oxford University
Press, with Rob Hicks, Mike Tierney, and Brad Parks).
(^57) April 2008.