Academics as Critics: How Can Critical Scholars and University Students Impact Climate Change?

• In Event: 50620 - Section on Environmental Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 17: Knowledge, Discourse, and the Environment

Abstract

The paper aims to investigate whether critical academia, which describes the capacity and tendency of scholars and university students to express criticisms of government policies, impacts carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The study attends to the role of researchers and university students as critical voices in society and explores how the ability to be publicly critical shapes government policies and priorities. The study specifically asks if the capacity of academic public criticism has any impact on CO2 emissions. Using data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset, the analyses show that there is a negative and significant relationship between academic criticism and CO2 emissions.

Authors

• Shumaila Fatima, University of South Florida

• Alphonse Ofoe Opoku, University of South Florida

• Jamilah Christensen, University of South Florida

• Jamie M Sommer, University of South Florida