Perspectives on Politics and Climate Change Mitigation

Chapter 2 explores a broad range of differing academic and policy views on politics in relation to climate change mitigation – organised according to whether they are more in favour of depoliticising or politicising the issue and/or how it is governed. One of the aims of the chapter is to illuminate how relevant perspectives on politics are to how climate mitigation is approached, which actors are considered to have agency to drive emissions down, and the extent to which dedicating political capacity and public resources to processes of mitigation is deemed necessary. Perspectives on politics also influence what policy is understood to be for, for example, mainly technical or also social change, how its costs are distributed, whom it benefits, and which aspects of human systems need to be altered.