The environment is one of the political issue areas identified earliest in the post-Cold War context as susceptible to securitisation (see Deudney 1990), defined as a way of treating an issue that emphasises existential stakes and licences exceptional ameliorative measures (Wæver 1995). In global environmental politics, such a quality has become unmistakable, amid developments increasingly represented as a climate emergency or crisis, deepening through inadequate response. This sense of crisis and a corresponding need for urgent action has ballooned as a topic of mass activism. In the past year, commutes in London and elsewhere have been disrupted by the direct action of Extinction Rebellion (XR), a transnational social movement organisation most active in the United Kingdom which campaigns for action against this ‘unprecedented global emergency’ (Extinction Rebellion 2019b).
University of Lincoln, College of Social Science
Mike Slaven, University of Lincoln, School of Social and Political Science
James Heydon, University of Nottingham, School of Sociology and Social Policy