(co-authored with Mats Ahrenshop, Anthony Calacino and Hayley Pring)

Abstract:  The Global South faces existential impacts from anthopogenic climate change, yet most emerging economies are increasingly embedding themselves in climate-forcing fossil fuel production. How do communities exposed to both types of vulnerabilities relate to climate change? We argue that, in absence of strong fossil fuel stakeholders, exposure to extreme weather events can generate disruptions which, by consequence, raise the salience of climate change and the demand for climate response. However, this mobilisation is less likely when fossil fuel industries are strong, as economic dependencies here pacify local populations in the instance of climate shocks, consequently dampening climate politicization. We test our conjectures in two ways. First, we present cross-national fine-grained analyses of the Climate Vulnerability Database (2010-2023), which traces climate-relevant risks and concurrent public behavior at the municipality-monthly level in six emerging economies across three continents. Furthermore, we present text analyses of original focus group data from Brazil and Indonesia. Our empirical results reveal that climate shocks change public behavior and that, in the absence of fossil fuel production, this behavior reflects the politicization of the climate. However, these effects are systematically divergent in the presence of fossil fuels, which mute general mobilization and, consequently, the politicization of the climate. These findings highlight why the effects of climate change on political life in general, and public-driven mobilization on climate in particular, are inherently contingent on the political economy of the exposed communities.