Scholarship

Peer-reviewed articles

Adua, Lazarus and Brett Clark. Forthcoming. “Another Elephant in the Room? How Structured Lifestyles Undermine the Fight Against Climate Change.” Social Forces.

—–. 2019. “Even for the Environment, Context Matters! States, Households, and Residential Energy Consumption.” Environmental Research Letters 14(6): 064008. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab1abf.

—–. 2021. “Politics and Corporate-Sector Environmentally Significant Actions: The Effects of Political Partisanship on U.S. Utilities Energy Efficiency Policies.” Review of Policy Research 38(1): 31-48.

Adua, Lazarus, Brett Clark, and Andrew Jorgenson. 2022. “State Policy and Environmental Management: Examining the Intermediate Mechanisms of Ecological Modernization.” Environmental Research Communications 4: 025005. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/ac4c82.

Adua, Lazarus, Brett Clark, and Richard York. 2021. “The Ineffectiveness of Efficiency: The Paradoxical Effects of State Policy on Energy Consumption in the United States.” Energy Research & Social Science 71: 101806. DOI: 10.1016/j.erss.2020.101806.

Adua, Lazarus, Brett Clark, Richard York, and Chien-fei Chen. 2019. “Modernizing Our Way Out or Digging Ourselves In? Reconsidering the Impacts of Efficiency Innovations and Affluence on Residential Energy Consumption, 2005-2015.” Journal of Environmental Management 252: 109659.

Adua, Lazarus, Karen Xuan Zhang, and Brett Clark. 2021. “Seeking a Handle on Climate Change: Examining the Comparative Effectiveness of Energy Efficiency Improvement and Renewable Energy Production in the United States.” Global Environmental Change 70: 102351. DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102351.

Adua, Lazarus, Brett Clark, Daniel Auerbach, and Karen Xuan Zhang. 2025. “The Promises and Risks of Relying on Renewable Energies in the Fight Against Climate Change.” Discover Sustainability 6(988): https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-025-01844-z.

Basseches, Joshua A. 2024. “Who Pays for Environmental Policy? Business Power and the Design of State-Level Climate Policies.” Politics and Society 52(3):335-511. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00323292231195184

Basseches et al. 2022. “Climate Policy Conflict in the U.S. States: A Critical Review and Way Forward.” Climatic Change 170(3): 32. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-022-03319-w

Bertana, Amanda, Brett Clark, Tabitha M. Benney, and Cameron Quackenbush. 2022. “Beyond Maladaptation: Structural Barriers to Successful Adaptation.” Environmental Sociology 8(4): 448-458.

Brulle, Robert. 2019. “Networks of Opposition: A Structural Analysis of U.S. Climate Change Countermovement Coalitions 1989–2015.” Sociological Inquiry. 91(3), pp.603-624.

Clark, Brett, Andrew K. Jorgenson, and Daniel Auerbach. 2012. “Up in Smoke: The Human Ecology and Political Economy of Coal Consumption.” Organization & Environment 25(4): 452-469.

Clark, Brett, Andrew Jorgenson, and Jeffrey Kentor. 2010. “Militarization and Energy Consumption: A Test of Treadmill of Destruction Theory in Comparative Perspective.” International Journal of Sociology 40(2): 23-43.

Clark, Brett and Richard York. 2005. “Carbon Metabolism: Global Capitalism, Climate Change, and the Biospheric Rift.” Theory and Society 34(4):391–428.

Cunsolo, Ashlee, and Neville R. Ellis. “Ecological grief as a mental health response to climate change-related loss.” Nature Climate Change, 8(4):275.

Daggett, Cara. 2018. Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire. Millennium: Journal of International Studies. 47(1):25-44.

Ergas, Christina, Patrick Greiner, Julius McGee, and Matt Clement. 2021. “Does Gender Climate Influence Climate Change?: The Multidimensionality of Gender Equality and its Countervailing Effects on the Carbon Intensity of Well-Being.” Sustainability. 13(7): 3956; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13073956

Ergas, Christina and Richard York. 2012. “Women’s Status and Carbon Dioxide Emissions: A Quantitative Cross-national Analysis.” Social Science Research. 41:965-976.

Fisher, Dana, and Andrew Jorgenson. 2019. “Ending the Stalemate: Toward a Theory of Anthro-Shift.” Sociological Theory 37:342-362.

Fitzgerald, Jared B., Andrew K. Jorgenson, and Brett Clark. 2015. “Energy Consumption and Working Hours: A Longitudinal Study of Developed and Developing Nations, 1990 to 2008.” Environmental Sociology 1(3): 213-223.

Fitzgerald, Jared, Juliet Schor, and Andrew Jorgenson. 2018. “Working Hours and Carbon Dioxide Emissions in the United States, 2007-2013.” Social Forces 96:1851-1874.

Ford, Allison and Kari Marie Norgaard. 2020. Whose everyday climate cultures? Environmental subjectivities and invisibility in climate change discourse. Climatic Change, 163(1), pp.43-62.

Foster, John Bellamy and Brett Clark. 2022. “Socialism and Ecological Survival.” Monthly Review 74(3): 1-33.

Foster, John Bellamy and Brett Clark. 2021. “The Capitalinian: The First Geological Age of the Anthropocene.” Monthly Review 73(4): 1-16.

Foster, John Bellamy and Brett Clark. 2015. “Crossing the River of Fire: The Liberal Attack on Naomi Klein and This Changes Everything.” Monthly Review 66(9): 1-17.

Foster, John Bellamy, Brett Clark, and Richard York. 2009. “The Midas Effect: A Critique of Climate Change Economics.” Development and Change 40(6): 1085-1097.

Givens, Jennifer, Xiaorui Huang, and Andrew Jorgenson. 2019. “Ecologically Unequal Exchange: A Theory of Global Environmental Injustice.” Sociology Compass 13:e12693.

Givens, Jennifer, Orla Kelly, and Andrew Jorgenson. 2023. “Inequality, Emissions, and Human Well-Being.” Pages 308-324 in Handbook of Inequality and the Environment, edited by Michael Long, Michael Lynch, and Paul Stretesky. Edward Elger Publishing.

Grant, Don, Tyler Hansen, Andrew Jorgenson, and Wesley Longhofer. 2024. “A Worldwide Analysis of Stranded Fossil Fuel Assets’ Impact on Power Plants’ CO₂ Emissions.” Nature Communications 15:7517.

Grant, Don, Andrew Jorgenson, and Wesley Longhofer. 2020. Super Polluters: Tackling the World’s Largest Sites of Climate-Disrupting Emissions. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Jorgenson, Andrew. 2012. “The Sociology of Ecologically Unequal Exchange and Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 1960-2005.” Social Science Research 41:242-252.

—–. 2014. “Economic Development and the Carbon Intensity of Human Well-Being.”  Nature Climate Change 4:186-189.

—–. 2024. “Sociology and the Climate Crisis: A Momentum Surge and the Roots Run Deep.” Sociological Forum 39:153-156.

Jorgenson, Andrew K., Daniel Auerbach, and Brett Clark. 2014. “The

(De-)Carbonization of Urbanization, 1960-2010.” Climatic Change 127: 561-575.

Jorgenson, Andrew K. and Brett Clark. 2010. “Assessing the Temporal Stability of the Population/Environment Relationship in Comparative Perspective: A Cross-National Panel Study of Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 1960-2005.” Population & Environment 32(1): 27-41.

—–.  2012.  “Are the Economy and the Environment Decoupling? A Comparative International Study, 1960-2005.”  American Journal of Sociology 118:1-44. 

—–. 2013. “The Relationship Between National-Level Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Population Size: An Assessment of Regional and Temporal Variation, 1960-2005.” PloS One 8(2): e57107.

—–. 2016. “The Temporal Stability and Developmental Differences in the Environmental Impacts of Militarism: The Treadmill of Destruction and Consumption-Based Carbon Emissions.” Sustainability Science 11: 505-514.

Jorgenson, Andrew K., Brett Clark, and Vincentas R. Giedraitis. 2012. “The Temporal (In)Stability of the Carbon Dioxide Emissions/Economic Development Relationship in Central and Eastern Nations, 1992-2005: A Preliminary Analysis.” Society & Natural Resources 25(11): 1182-1192.

Jorgenson, Andrew K., Brett Clark, and Jeffrey Kentor. 2010. “Militarization and the Environment: A Panel Study of Carbon Dioxide Emissions and the Ecological Footprints of Nations, 1970-2000.” Global Environmental Politics 10(1): 7-29.

Jorgenson, Andrew K., Brett Clark, Ryan Thombs, Jeffrey Kentor, Vincent Giedraitis, and Taekyeong Goh. Forthcoming. “Militarizing the Climate Crisis: An Analysis of the Short-Run and Long-Run Effects of Militarization on Nations’ Carbon Emissions, 1990-2020.” Social Problems.

Jorgenson, Andrew, Brett Clark, Ryan Thombs, Jeffrey Kentor, Jennifer Givens, Xiaorui Huang, Hassan El Tinay, Daniel Auerbach, and Matthew Mahutga. 2023. “Guns Versus Climate: How Militarization Amplifies the Effect of Economic Growth on Carbon Emissions.” American Sociological Review 88:418-453.

Jorgenson, Andrew, Rob Clark, Jeffrey Kentor, and Annika Rieger. 2022. “Networks, Stocks, and Climate Change: A New Approach to the Study of Foreign Investment and the Environment.” Energy Research & Social Science 87:102461.

Jorgenson, Andrew, Taekyeong Goh, Ryan Thombs, Yasmin Koop-Monteiro, Mark Shakespear, Grace Gletsu, and Nicolas Viens. 2025. “Inequality is Driving the Climate Crisis: A Longitudinal Analysis of Province-Level Carbon Emissions in Canada, 1997-2020.” Energy Research & Social Science 119:103845.

Jorgenson, Andrew K., James Rice, and Brett Clark. 2010. “Cities, Slums, and Energy Consumption in Less-Developed Countries, 1990-2005.” Organization & Environment 23(2): 189-204.

Jorgenson, Andrew, Juliet Schor, and Xiaorui Huang. 2017. “Income Inequality and Carbon Emissions in the United States: A State-Level Analysis, 1997-2012.” Ecological Economics 134:40-48.

Jorgenson, Andrew, Hassan El Tinay, Jared Fitzgerald, Jennifer Givens, Taekyeong Goh, Xiaorui Huang, Orla Kelly, Annika Rieger, and Ryan Thombs. 2024. “Advances in Research on Anthropogenic Drivers of Climate Change.” Pages 60-76 in Routledge Handbook of Climate Change and Society, 2nd Edition, edited by Stephen Brechin and Seungyun Lee. Routledge Press.

Kashwan, Prakash, Lauren M. MacLean, and Gustavo A. García-López. 2019. “Rethinking Power and Institutions in the Shadows of Neoliberalism: (an Introduction to a Special Issue of World Development).” World Development. 120: 133-46.

Kashwan, Prakash, Frank Biermann, Aarti Gupta, and Chukwumerije Okereke. 2020. “Planetary Justice: Prioritizing the Poor in Earth System Governance.” Earth System Governance. 6:100075.

Kashwan, Prakash, and Jesse Ribot. 2021. “Violent Silence: The Erasure of History and Justice in Global Climate Policy.” Current History. 120: 326-31.

Liu, John Chung-En, and Andrew Szasz. “Now is the time to add more sociology of Climate Change to our introduction to sociology courses.” Teaching Sociology 47.4 (2019): 273-283.

Lengefeld, Michael. 2020. “Nuclear Weapons and the Treadmill of Destruction in the Making of the Anthropocene.” Journal of World-Systems Research 26(2): 203-230.

Lengefeld, Michael, and Chad L. Smith. 2013. “Nuclear Shadows: Weighing the Environmental Effects of Militarism, Capitalism, and Modernization in a Global Context, 2001-2007.” Human Ecology Review 20(1):11-25.

Longo, Stefano B. and Brett Clark. 2016. “An Ocean of Troubles: Advancing Marine Sociology.” Social Problems 63(4): 463-479.

MacGregor, Sherilyn. 2009. “A stranger silence still: the need for feminist social research on climate change.” Sociological Review. 57(2_suppl), pp.124-140.

McCright & Dunlap. 2003. “Defeating Kyoto: The conservative movement’s impact on US climate change policy.” Social Problems. 50(3):348-373. (Canvas)

—–. 2011. “Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States.” Global Environmental Change. 21(4):1163-1172.

McGee, Julius, Christina Ergas, and Matthew Clement. 2018. “Racing to Reduce Emissions: Assessing the Relationship between Race and Environmental Impacts from Transportation.” Sociology of Development. 4(2): 217–236.

Norgaard, Kari. 2012. “Climate Denial and the Construction of Innocence: Reproducing Transnational Environmental Privilege in the Face of Climate Change”. Race, Gender & Class. 19(1/2):80-103.

Oreskes, Naomi. 2004. “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.” Science. 306(5702):1686.

Overland, Indra and Benjamin K. Sovacool. 2019. “The misallocation of climate research funding.” Energy Research and Social Science. 62:101349.

Shove, Elizabeth. 2010. “Beyond the ABC: climate change policy and theories of social change.” Environment and Planning.42:1273-1285.

Shove, Elizabeth, & Walker. “What Is Energy For? Social Practice and Energy Demand.” Theory, Culture & Society 31.5 (2014): 41-58. 

Smith, Chad L., Gregory Hooks and Michael Lengefeld. 2024. “Linking the Treadmills of Production and Destruction to Disproportionate Carbon Emissions.” Climate Action 3(1):72-11. doi: 10.1038/s44168-024-00156-8. https://www.nature.com/articles/s44168-024-00156-8.pdf

Smith, Chad, and Michael Lengefeld. 2019. “The Environmental Consequences of Asymmetric War: A Panel Study of Militarism and Carbon Emissions, 2000-2010.” Armed Forces and Society.

Smith, Chad L., Greg Hooks, and Michael Lengefeld. 2014. “The War on Drugs in Colombia: The Environment, the Treadmill of Destruction and Risk-Transfer Militarism.” Journal of World-Systems Research 20(2): 185-206.

Thombs, Ryan, Andrew K. Jorgenson, and Brett Clark. 2025. “Reducing U.S. Military Spending Could Lead to Substantial Decreases in Energy Consumption.” PLOS Climate 4(7): e0000569.

Willox, Ashlee Consolo. 2012. “Climate change as the work of mourning.” Environment & Ethics.17(2):137-64.

York, Richard, Brett Clark, and John Bellamy Foster. 2009. “Capitalism in Wonderland.” Monthly Review 61(1): 1-18.

York, Richard, Lazarus Adua, and Brett Clark. 2022. “The Rebound Effect and the Challenge of Moving Beyond Fossil Fuels: A Review of Empirical and Theoretical Research.” WIRES Climate Change 13(4): e782. DOI: 10.1002/wcc.782.

Academic books and book chapters

Antonio, Robert J. and Brett Clark. 2015. “The Climate Change Divide in Social Theory.” Pp. 333-368 in Climate Change and Society: Sociological Perspectives, edited by Riley E. Dunlap and Robert J Brulle. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.

Auerbach, Daniel, Brett Clark, and Lazarus Adua. 2024. “The Jevons Paradox.” Pp. 387-393 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Environmental Sociology, edited by Christine Overdevest. Cheltenham, United Kingdom: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Bhavnani, Kum-Kum, John Foran, Priya A. Kurian, and Debashish Munshi, eds.. 2019.  Climate Futures: Re-imagining Global Climate Justice. ZED Books Ltd. London.

Corbett, Julia B. and Brett Clark. 2017. “The Arts and Humanities in Climate Change Engagement.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.392.

Dryzek, John S., Richard B. Norgaard and David Schlosberg, eds.. 2011. The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society. Oxford University Press. Oxford.

Dunlap, Riley E. and Robert J. Brulle, eds. 2015. Climate Change and Society: Sociological Perspectives. Report of the American Sociological Association’s Task Force on Sociology and Global Climate Change. Oxford University Press.  

Elliott, Rebecca. 2021. Underwater: Loss, flood insurance, and the moral economy of climate change in the United States. Columbia University Press.

Ergas, Christina. 2021. Surviving Collapse: Building Community Toward Radical Sustainability. Oxford University Press. New York, NY.

Feola, Giuseppe, Hilary Geoghegan and Alex Arnall, eds. 2019. Climate and Culture: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on a Warming World. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Flagg, Julia. 2024. Net Zero: Costa Rica’s Green Elite and the Struggle to Mitigate Climate Change. MIT Press.

Gareau, Brian J. 2013. From Precaution to Profit: Contemporary Challenges to Environmental Protection in the Montreal Protocol. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Grindsted, Thomas. Practicing SDG Strategies through Fieldwork – Climate Mitigation efforts in a former wetland [PDF]

Grindsted, Thomas, and Thomas Nielsen. 2022. “Spaces of learning – practising the SDGs through geographical fieldwork methods in a nature park”, International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Vol. 23 No. 8, pp. 105-119. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-04-2021-0132 [PDF]

Harrison, Jill Lindsey. 2019. From the Inside Out: The Fight for Environmental Justice within Government Agencies. MIT Press.

Heinz, Erin. 2025. Concrete Mirage: Governance, Equity, and Sustainable Cities in the United States Southwest. Bloomsbury.

Henson, Robert. 2019. The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate Change. Second Edition. University of Chicago Press. Chicago, IL. 

Hoffman, Andrew. 2015 How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate. Stanford Briefs, Stanford University Press. Stanford, CA.

Jerolmack, C. 2021. Up to heaven and down to hell: Fracking, freedom, and community in an American town. Princeton University Press.

Johnson, Ayana Elizabeth, and Katherine K. Wilkinson. 2020. All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. One World. New York.

Kimbro, Rachel. 2021. In Too Deep: Class and Mothering in a Flooded Community. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Leguizamón, Amalia. 2020. Seeds of Power: Environmental Injustice and Genetically Modified Soybeans in Argentina. Duke University Press.

Marino, Elizabeth. 2015. Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground: An Ethnography of Climate Change in Shishmaref Alaska. University of Alaska Press, Fairbanks.

Méndez, Michael. 2020. Climate Change from the Streets: How Conflict and Collaboration Strengthen the Environmental Justice Movement. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

Nagel, Joane. 2016. Gender and Climate Change: Impacts, Science and Policy. Routledge, New York & London.

Norgaard, Kari. 2011. Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions and Everyday Life. MIT Press.

Overdevest, Christine (ed.). 2024. Elgar Encyclopedia of Environmental Sociology. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Parenti, Christian. 2012. Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. New York: Bold Type Books.

Perkins, Tracy. 2022. Evolution of a Movement: Four Decades of California Environmental Justice Activism. University of California Press.

Prechel, Harland. 2023. “Organizational political economy, corporate power, and the great acceleration of environmental pollution in the United States,” Chapters, in: Michael A. Long & Michael J. Lynch & Paul B. Stretesky (ed.), Handbook on Inequality and the Environment, chapter 17, pages 288-307, Edward Elgar Publishing. [PDF]

Prechel, Harland. 2021. Neoliberal Organizational and Political-Legal Arrangements and Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the U.S. Electrical Energy Sector. The Sociological Quarterly, 62(2), 209–233. https://doi.org/10.1080/00380253.2020.1733450 [PDF]

Ray, Sarah Jaquette. 2020. A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: On How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet. University of California Press. Oakland.

Smil, Vaclav. 2006. Energy: A Beginner’s Guide. OneWorld Publications. 

Wallimann, Isidor:

• Environmental Policy Is Social Policy — Social Policy Is Environmental Policy : Toward Sustainability Policy. New York, NY: Springer. [PDF]
• Social and Solidarity Economy for Sustainable Development: The Social Economy Basel example
• The Great Sustainability Challenge
• Urban Agriculture as Embedded in the Social and Solidarity Economy Basel: Developing Sustainable Communities
• Can the World Industrialization Project Be Sustained?
• On the Edge of Scarcity: Environment, Resources, Population, Sustainability, and Conflict
• The Coming Age of Scarcity : Preventing Mass Death and Genocide in the Twenty-first Century
• Das Zeitalter der Knappheit – Ressourcen, Konflikte, Lebenschancen

Scientific reports and statements

National Climate Assessment: Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States Report Overview and Findings [select most recent edition]

IPCC 6th Assessment Report, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Past reports can be retrieved at https://www.ipcc.ch/

Anchorage Declaration – Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change. 2009. “Indigenous peoples’ representatives from the Arctic, North America, Asia, Pacific, Latin America, Africa, Caribbean and Russia attending the Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change call for greater government and international actions to address climate change and governmental and intergovernmental commitments to safeguard indigenous peoples’ rights in climate change mitigation and adaptation policies and programmes.

Bali Principles of Climate Justice. 2002. [developed in Bali by a coalition of environmental justice and human rights groups including CorpWatch, Third World Network, Oil Watch, the Indigenous Environmental Network, and others at the final preparatory negotiations for the Johannesburg Earth Summit.]

CDP and the Climate Accountability Institute. 2017. Carbon Majors Report. [Report documenting that 100 Oil, Coal and Gas producers  were responsible for 71% of industrial carbon emissions.] View data at Climate Accountability Institute’s website.