“1,5℃ to Stay Alive” - Climate Justice Discourse and Climate Change Denial Discourse in Climate Change Politics

Abstract: Climate change as a global phenomenon threatens human rights and causes social injustices. This thesis examines the genealogies of climate justice discourse and climate change denial discourse in the context of international climate change politics. The aim is to understand the construction of and the correlation between the discourses and how the discourses relate to human rights. The thesis employs discourse analysis with a conception of climate justice and a neoclassical realist theory applied to climate change politics. Climate justice discourse is found to interact with chiefly moral and political terms, whereas the denial discourse interacts mainly with economic and scientific terms. Consequently, there is a lack of interaction between the discourses as they operate in different levels of communication and it has, to some extent, caused stalemate in climate change politics. Additionally, while climate justice discourse makes use of the human rights framework, the denial discourse undermines it.