The influence of social movements on policies that constrain fossil fuel supply

ABSTRACT

Mounting evidence suggests that a large portion of the world's fossil fuel reserves will have to remain in the ground to prevent dangerous climate change. Yet, the fossil fuel industry continues to invest in new infrastructure to expand fuel supply. There appears to be a prevailing logic that extraction is inevitable, in spite of growing climate change concerns. Few political leaders seem to be willing to challenge this logic. The absence of adequate political action on climate change has sparked a burgeoning social movement focused on constraining fossil fuel supply. This article describes this movement, and explores the role that social mobilization may play in enabling policies that limit fossil fuel extraction. Drawing from literature on social mobilization and political change, this work: (1) discusses some of the social and political barriers to mobilization focused on restricting fossil fuel supply; (2) describes the pathways through which mobilization efforts may influence climate policy; and (3) highlights insights from studies of successful social movements that have relevance for the issue of fossil fuel extraction. The article concludes with directions for future research on social mobilization focused on supply-side climate policy.

Key policy insights

• Enacting policies to limit fossil fuel supply has proven challenging in many contexts.

• There is renewed interest in the role social movements may play in shifting the political landscape, to make it more likely that policies to restrict fossil fuel extraction may succeed.

• Effective social mobilization requires a combination factors aligning at the right time to influence policy outcomes, such as windows of political opportunity opening, and compelling framing that calls citizens to action.

• Critical examination of the factors that lead to movement success is necessary to understand the circumstances where social mobilization may influence supply-side climate policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Advocacy
• collective action
• mobilization
• social movement
• supply-side climate policy

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Michael Lazarus, Pete Erickson, Marion Davis, Harro van Asselt and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions for improving this article. Responsibility for any errors or omissions lies with the author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Georgia Piggot http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0553-0708

Notes

1. A note on terminology: The term ‘supply-side policy’ refers to climate policy aiming to limit the exploration, extraction and transportation of fossil fuels, as opposed to demand-side policies which focus on limiting the consumption of fossil fuels, including consumption by electricity producers (see Lazarus et al., 2015). The terms ‘citizen mobilization’ and ‘social mobilization’ are used interchangeably in this article; the two terms are not perfectly synonymous (e.g. social mobilization may encompass non-citizen actors), but are closely related in the context of mobilization to influence climate policy outcomes.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council Formas under the project ‘From Emissions to Extraction’.