ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that cross-scale circulation – of energy, people, policies and financing – are major sources and drivers of climate change risk and vulnerability in coastal cities. It suggests that the increasing extension, intensification and velocity of social activities surrounding climate change risks express the proliferation of spaces in and through which the politics of the 'urban' are constructed and contested. The concept of circulating risks draws attention to various paradoxical features of the relationship among urban politics and climate change risks. Viewing climate change in terms of circulation suggests that climate change impacts have spatial and temporal components that reflect and reinforce global-local relations and cross-scale interactions. Variations in individual, community and national vulnerability to the impacts of climate change across cities are only part of the structure of inequality in global climate change. Climate change mitigation involves attempts to slow the process of global climate change, usually by lowering the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
