Instructor

David Ciplet

David Ciplet is a sociologist focused on issues of global political economy, environmental inequality and climate justice. From negotiating the halls of the United Nations to community center meeting rooms, his research uses participatory qualitative methods to explore processes of power and social change in climate change, energy and adaptation politics. He is concerned with uncovering how related policies unequally impact socially marginalized groups, and the possibilities to achieve more environmentally just processes and outcomes.

His book, with Timmons Roberts and Mizan Khan, Power in a Warming World: The New Global Politics of Climate Change and the Remaking of Environmental Inequality (MIT Press, 2015), explores how we arrived at an inequitable and scientifically inadequate international response to climate change, and what is needed to shift course. He is a founding member of the CU Boulder Just Transitions Collaborative, which works to ensure that transitions to sustainable energy are rooted in the leadership and needs of those most directly impacted by forms of social and environmental inequality.