New Article: “Public Attitudes to Climate Change and Carbon Mitigation – Implications for Energy-Associated Behaviours”

Von Borgstede, C. (2013). Public Attitudes to Climate Change and Carbon Mitigation – Implications for Energy-Associated Behaviours. Energy Policy. 1-12.

Abstract: This work explores public opinions regarding climate change and mitigation options and examines how psychological factors, such as attitudes, norms, and willingness to pay, determine self-reported energy-efficient behaviour. The aim is to create knowledge for the design and implementation of policy measures. The results of an opinion poll conducted in 2005 and 2010 are compared. The number of respondents favouring new technologies as a way to reduce emissions was substantially lower in 2010 than in 2005, whereas there was an increase in the number of people who acknowledged that lifestyle changes are necessary to counteract climate changes. This indicates an increased awareness among the public of the need for lifestyle changes, which could facilitate implementation of policies promoting environmental behaviour. Renewable energy and energy saving measures were ranked as the top two measures for mitigating climate change in both polls. In determining which energy behaviours of the public are determined by psychological factors, an analysis of the 2010 survey revealed that respondents with pro-environmental attitudes towards global warming favour significantly increased use of renewable energy technologies and greater engagement in energy-efficient behaviours.

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New Article: ‘Multi-Level Governance: Opportunities and Barriers in Moving to a Low-Carbon Scotland’

Sugden, D. et al. (2013). Multi-Level Governance: Opportunities and Barriers in Moving to a Low-Carbon Scotland. Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 1-12

Abstract: In view of the challenge posed by climate change and the need to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, The Royal Society of Edinburgh Inquiry(2011) examined the barriers making it difficult for Scotland to change to a low-carbon society. The single most important finding is that, whilst widely desired, change is held back by the lack of coherence and integration of policy at different levels of governance. There is activity at the level of the EU, UK Government, Scottish Government, local authorities, local communities, households and civil society, but there is often a disconnection between policies at different levels. This impedes progress and also leads to mistrust among the general public. This paper brings together the background to ten primary recommendations featured in the Inquiry addressing the principal barriers. Above all, it is important to integrate the activities within city regions and to exploit opportunities in local communities. Reflecting on the Inquiry findings, we stress the economic, social and environmental opportunities to be gained from a low-carbon society and outline the step changes that need to take place within governance, city regions and local authorities and civil society.

Available for download with subscription here.

New Book: ‘Post-Kyoto Climate Governance: Confronting the Politics of Scale, Ideology and Knowledge’

Zia, A. (2013). Post-Kyoto Climate Governance: Confronting the Politics of Scale, Ideology and Knowledge. Routledge

Description: In the midst of human-induced global climate change, powerful industrialized nations and rapidly industrializing nations are still heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Even if we arrive at a Hubbert’s peak for oil extraction in the 21^st century, the availability of technologically recoverable coal and natural gas will mean that fossil fuels continue to be burned for many years to come, and our civilization will have to deal with the consequences far into the future. Climate change will not discriminate between rich and poor nations, and yet the UN-driven process of negotiating a global climate governance regime has hit serious roadblocks.

This book takes a trans-disciplinary perspective to identify the causes of failure in developing an international climate policy regime and lays out a roadmap for developing a post-Kyoto (post-2012) climate governance regime in the light of lessons learned from the Kyoto phase. Three critical policy analytical lenses are used to evaluate the inherent complexity of designing post-Kyoto climate policy: the politics of scale; the politics of ideology; and the politics of knowledge. The politics of scale lens focuses on the theme of temporal and spatial discounting observed in human societies and how it impacts the allocation of environmental commons and natural resources across space and time. The politics of ideology lens focuses on the themes of risk and uncertainty perception in complex, pluralistic human societies. The politics of knowledge lens focuses on the themes of knowledge and power dynamics in terms of governance and policy designs, such as marketization of climate governance observed in the Kyoto institutional regime.

For more information click here.

New Article: ‘”Green” Technology and Ecologically Unequal Exchange: The Environmental and Social Consequences of Ecological Modernization in the World-System’

Bonds, E. & Downey, L. (2012). ”Green” Technology and Ecologically Unequal Exchange: The Environmental and Social Consequences of Ecological Modernization in the World-System. American Sociological Association. 18 (2): 167-186.

Abstract: This paper contributes to understandings of ecologically unequal exchange within the world-systems perspective by offering a series of case studies of ecological modernization in the automobile industry. The case studies demonstrate that “green” technologies developed and instituted in core nations often require specific raw materials that are extracted from the periphery and semi-periphery. Extraction of such natural resources causes significant environmental degradation and often displaces entire communities from their land. Moreover, because states often use violence and repression to facilitate raw material extraction, the widespread commercialization of “green” technologies can result in serious human rights violations. These findings challenge ecological modernization theory, which rests on the assumption that the development and commercialization of more ecologically-efficient technologies is universally beneficial.

Available for download with subscription here.

New Article: ‘Deceitful Tongue: Is Climate Change Denial a Crime?’

Tucker, W.C. (2012). Deceitful Tongues: Is Climate Change Denial a Crime? Ecology Law Quarterley. 39: 831-892.  

Abstract: The consequences of global warming and associated climate changes are now apparent. No longer can there be any doubt that anthropogenic (human-caused) warming of the Earth is happening, caused mainly by greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide, from burning fossil fuels. Climate change poses a grave threat to humankind. The world is already experiencing the consequences of global warming: more frequent and prolonged droughts, increasingly severe and more frequent storms, rising sea levels worldwide threatening coastal and vulnerable island populations, the melting of mountain glaciers and polar ice sheets, increased intensity of tropical cyclones and hurricanes, and more frequent and widespread fires. Without immediate action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, climate change can only get worse. In the period since the issue of global warming was brought to the attention of the general public in the late 1980s, both the legislative and the executive branches of the United States government have launched a number of initiatives to assess the threat and formulate policies to address it. Nevertheless, two decades later the United States government has failed to take effective measures to address climate change domestically or to assert international leadership on achieving meaningful carbon emission reductions. It is now well-documented that a shift in public opinion and failure of political will on climate change took place at the turn of the millennium, a change which can be largely attributed to a sophisticated, nationwide public relations campaign designed to conceal the dangers of burning fossil fuels from the American public by deceiving it as to the true state of climate science. Yet this deception is arguably punishable as criminal fraud under several United States statutes: first, as defrauding the public under the generic mail/wire fraud statute; and second, as defrauding the United States government under the “conspiracy to defraud the United States” statute. This Article examines whether it can be regarded as a crime based not just upon the unethical motives of its perpetrators, but on its effects: the catastrophic, global devastation which is the likely outcome of its success.

Available for download with subscription here.

New Paper: ‘White Paper on Energy 2050: What Does It Take for Reality to Meet Aspirations?’

Description:  This white paper on energy 2050 raises 10 questions that must be addressed in the development of new energy architecture. Today there is a large disconnect between how people hope to live in 2050 and what the energy system is on track to deliver to help them get there. The white paper combines insights about potential visions for that future, with a focus on the types of solutions that are required to achieve change on the scale that is needed.

The energy 2050 paper emphasises the need to address the most relevant issues – those relating to the enjoyment of energy by people living in non OECD countries, both to fuel growth in living standards and also to ensure basic access to energy for billions of people. Solutions must be affordable and achievable in those countries.

New Article: ‘Marginalization of end-use technologies in energy innovation for climate protection’

Abstract: Mitigating climate change requires directed innovation efforts to develop and deploy energy technologies. Innovation activities are directed towards the outcome of climate protection by public institutions, policies and resources that in turn shape market behaviour. We analyse diverse indicators of activity throughout the innovation system to assess these efforts. We find efficient end-use technologies contribute large potential emission reductions and provide higher social returns on investment than energy-supply technologies. Yet public institutions, policies and financial resources pervasively privilege energy-supply technologies. Directed innovation efforts are strikingly misaligned with the needs of an emissions-constrained world. Significantly greater effort is needed to develop the full potential of efficient end-use technologies.

Full Citation: Wilson, C. et al. (2012). Marginalization of end-use technologies in energy innovation for climate protection. Nature Climate Change, 2: 780-788 (Available for download at: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n11/full/nclimate1576.html). 

Table of Contents Alert: Energy Policy 51 (1)

See below for some of the articles published in Energy Policy 51 (1) : Special Section: Renewable Energy in China 

China’s strategy for energy development and climate change mitigation
He Jiankuna, Yu Zhiwei, Zhang Da
Abstract: In recent years, China has made great efforts in energy saving and carbon emission reduction by pushing forward domestic sustainable development along with global climate change mitigation. The efforts have paid off with a dramatic decrease in carbon intensity. Nevertheless, China is still confronted with tough challenges in emission control due to the fast pace of industrialization, large total historical emission and high growth rate of emissions. Therefore, China should give priority to energy saving by improving energy efficiency and sectoral structure adjustment and upgrade, and develop sustainable and renewable energy to optimize energy mix and its carbon content. China should continue to regard significant reduction of energy intensity and carbon intensity as the main objective in the near future, strive to achieve peak emissions around 2030, and realize a relatively sharp emissions reduction by 2050 in order to address climate change to meet the goal of making the warming less than 2°.

New Article: ‘Promoting interactions between local climate change mitigation, sustainable energy development, and rural development policies in Lithuania’

Abstract: Lithuania has developed several important climate change mitigation policy documents however there are no attempts in Lithuania to develop local climate change mitigation policies or to decentralize climate change mitigation policy. Seeking to achieve harmonization and decentralization of climate change mitigation and energy policies in Lithuania the framework for local climate change mitigation strategy need to be developed taking into account requirements, targets and measures set in national climate change mitigation and energy policy documents.

The paper will describe how national climate change mitigation and energy policies can be implemented via local energy and climate change mitigation plans.

The aim of the paper is to analyze the climate change mitigation policy and its relationship with policies promoting sustainable energy development in Lithuania and to present a framework for local approaches to climate change mitigation in Lithuania, in the context of the existing national and supra-national energy, climate change, and rural development policies.

Full Citation: Streimikienea, D., Baležentisb, T., Kriščiukaitienėb, I. (2012). Promoting interactions between local climate change mitigation, sustainable energy development, and rural development policies in Lithuania. Energy Policy, Vol. 50: 699-710 (Available for download with subscription at  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421512006945). 

Table of Contents Alert: Global Environmental Change 22 (3)

See below for some of the articles that was published in the latest Special Issue: Global transformations, social metabolism and the dynamics of socio-environmental conflicts in Global Environmental Change 22 (3):

Hegemonic transitions and global shifts in social metabolism: Implications for resource-rich countries. Introduction to the special section
Roldan Muradian, Mariana Walter, Joan Martinez-Alier
Abstract: This introductory paper to the special section of Global Environmental Change entitled “Global transformations, social metabolism and the dynamics of socio-environmental conflicts” argues that the emergence of new global economic centers is inducing a major expansion in the global social metabolism—the flows of energy and materials into the world economy —, a transformation in the systems for the extraction and provision of natural resources, as well as setting the conditions for socio-environmental conflicts at the commodity frontiers, particularly in areas with a dense human occupation of the territory. We point out that we are currently experiencing global transformations that constitute the beginning of a new historical phase of modern capitalism. The aim of the paper is to draw an overall picture of such transformations, to discuss some of their implications for resource-rich countries, particularly in Latin America and Africa, and by doing so to provide an analytical framework that allow us to make explicit the linkages between the different papers that compose the special section.

Adaptive lives. Navigating the global food crisis in a changing climate
Jonas Østergaard Nielsen, Henrik Vigh
Abstract: Human adaptation to climate change is gaining increasing academic as well as political attention. Understanding how and what people around the world adapt to is, however, difficult. Climate change is often, if not always, only one of a multiplicity of exposures perforating local communities. In Biidi 2, a small Sahelian village in northern Burkina Faso, climate variability have had a great influence on inhabitants’ lives since the major droughts of the early 1970s and 1980s. Tracing the intertwinement of drought, diminishing agricultural production and the need to buy food, this article explores how villagers attempt to attract development projects and negotiate with political parties in order to negate the impact of the global food crisis on their livelihoods. In doing so the article attempts to show how adaptation to climate variability is related to multiple, intersecting processes, and in this specific case is a matter of navigating changing socioeconomic factors. Using recent theory from social anthropology, adaptation is explored as a matter of social navigation. It is suggested that this theoretical approach might help nuance and elucidate how, and to what, local people around the world adapt.

Deep uncertainty in long-term hurricane risk: Scenario generation and implications for future climate experiments
Nicola Ranger, Falk Niehörster
Abstract: Current projections of long-term trends in Atlantic hurricane activity due to climate change are deeply uncertain, both in magnitude and sign. This creates challenges for adaptation planning in exposed coastal communities. We present a framework to support the interpretation of current long-term tropical cyclone projections, which accommodates the nature of the uncertainty and aims to facilitate robust decision making using the information that is available today. The framework is populated with projections taken from the recent literature to develop a set of scenarios of long-term hurricane hazard. Hazard scenarios are then used to generate risk scenarios for Florida using a coupled climate–catastrophe modeling approach. The scenarios represent a broad range of plausible futures; from wind-related hurricane losses in Florida halving by the end of the century to more than a four-fold increase due to climate change alone. We suggest that it is not possible, based on current evidence, to meaningfully quantify the relative confidence of each scenario. The analyses also suggest that natural variability is likely to be the dominant driver of the level and volatility of wind-related risk over the coming decade; however, under the highest scenario, the superposition of this natural variability and anthropogenic climate change could mean notably increased levels of risk within the decade. Finally, we present a series of analyses to better understand the relative adequacy of the different models that underpin the scenarios and draw conclusions for the design of future climate science and modeling experiments to be most informative for adaptation.