What’s the problem? Unpacking the problem-complex of coal extraction and climate action in Whitehaven, UK

We explore why and how problems related to climate action emerge in specific, sometimes peripheral, places. Diverse forms of socio-political contestation over both fossil fuels and low-carbon shifts imply that the problems that climate policy is positioned against are neither singular nor self-evident. Climate action intersects with complex socio-material settings, which can produce new problems and amplify or refract existing ones (e.g. job losses, inequalities, marginalization). Understanding how this occurs is an urgent challenge which requires interrogating the emergence and evolution of problems on the ground. We examine the case of a proposed coalmine in Whitehaven, Cumbria, the UK’s commitment to ‘consign coal to history’, and what it reveals about the challenges of climate action more broadly. Drawing on 47 in-depth interviews and detailed field observations, we explain how the proposed coalmine invoked, and was inseparable from, many other issues including austerity, old and new extractivisms, environmental degradation, nuclear development, socio-spatial disparities, planning system deficiencies, and a widespread sense of being left behind. This shows how attempts towards climate action are inextricably embedded in broader problem-complexes that evade established policy domains and agendas (e.g. energy security, net zero). Other (often peripheral) problems which may or may not become policy problems nevertheless structure opportunities and/or obstacles for ambitious climate action, challenging the compartmentalization of climate policy problems and solutions.