ABSTRACT
Climate change is a defining theme for the 21st century. Changes in the climate permeate our lives in multifarious ways, affecting critical functions in economic, political and social systems upon which we base our lives and our well-being. Alluding to this dynamism and prominence, climate scientist and geographer Mike Hulme has commented, ‘climate change has more potency now as a mobilising idea than it does as a physical phenomenon’ (2009, 328). In response, the interdisciplinary nature of engagement here in The Politics
of Climate Change: A Survey reflects the contemporary conditions where climate politics penetrate all aspects of our lives. ‘Politics’ here are considered as the management and contestations of policies, through social relations infused with power, authority and varying perspectives. ‘Politics’ involve proposals, ideas, intentions, decisions and behaviours, with a focus on processes that prop up, challenge, lurk behind, support and resist explicit actions. By directing inquiries in this way, the authors in this volume unpack and examine varied influences that expand as well as constrict the spectrum of considerations for ongoing climate politics, deliberations and governance. Moving headlong into the 21st century, this period of time has been
dubbed the ‘Anthropocene Era’ due to the unprecedented scale of human influence on the environment (Crutzen 2002).1 Since the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s by way of iron smelting in the coal-rich Shropshire region in the United Kingdom (UK), heavy reliance on carbonbased sources for energy and materials in industry and society have contributed to substantial changes in the climate. In this contemporary milieu, anthropogenic sources of CO2 are primarily attributed to transportation, industry, household use/infrastructure, and land use and land-cover changes. Emissions from these activities thus contribute to increases in concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and associated climate changes (IPCC 2007). An expansive genealogy of the ‘discovery’ of climate change or global
warming in Western science begins with inquiries by German astronomer Frederick William Herschel in the 1700s. Herschel examined how sunspots may have an effect on cooling and warming periods of planet earth (Weart 2003). Histories of modern scientific inquiries more specific to anthropogenic climate change often look to work initiated by French physicist Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier, who examined the earth’s energy budget and worked to explain heat-absorptive processes in the atmosphere (Fleming 1998). Furthering this work, in the late 1800s British scientist John Tyndall experimented with
their unique heat-trapping capacities, while Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius looked specifically at the heat absorption of CO2 and the connections to (warming) atmospheric temperature (Bolin 2007). From these foundational observations and experiments, physical scientific examinations of changes in the climate continued through the mid-20th century by way of notable researchers such as Guy Stewart Callendar, Milutin Milankovic´, Gilbert Plass, Willard Frank Libby, Hans Seuss, Roger Revelle and Charles David Keeling. This edited volume is a collaborative effort that seeks to address associated
pressing and formidable questions in the area of climate politics. The collection draws on a vast array of authors’ experience, expertise and perspectives; contributors have backgrounds in climate science, environmental studies, geography, biology, sociology, political science and psychology. In this book, authors offer keen insights, observations and analyses as they work through salient questions along themes such as politics at the science-policy interface, the politics of markets and economics, the politics of climate ethics and justice, the politics of adaptation and development, and the politics of public engagement.2 Chapter authors interrogate the many webs of negotiations, from formal and codified policy actions to informal ways of understanding, considering and engaging with climate change. In the Foreword to the book, Tim O’Riordan points out how over the last
three decades we have seen concerns regarding human contributions to climate change move from obscure scientific inquiries to the fore of science, politics, policy and practice at multiple levels. These developments have been accompanied by growing recognition that physical science identification of ‘climate change’ in the 18th century has opened up over time to interdisciplinary challenges linking to social sciences and the humanities, in turn interacting with contemporary politics, governance and policymaking. It is here, in the interstices of human institutions and the environment – referred to by Simon Dalby as ‘Anthropocene Geopolitics’ (2007) – where critical decisions about a collective future rapidly unfold. Such decisions pose significant challenges for the resilience of institutions and society. In his recent book (with a similar name to this one), Anthony Giddens commented, ‘responding to climate change will prompt and require innovation in government itself and in the relations between the state, markets and civil society’ (2009, 94). Chapters in this volume demonstrate that while much more is needed, a great deal is already under way. In the aggregate, these endeavours are highly contentious as they cut to the heart of industry and society in the 21st century. From local adaptation strategies to international treaty development, the power-infused ‘politics of climate change’ are as pervasive and contested as ever. The first three chapters in the volume provide a solid foundation for
understanding these politics of climate change. Chapter 1, by Stephen H. Schneider and Michael D. Mastrandrea, begins by working through the tenets of climate science, such as climate cycles and processes, historical climate
of current climate change to human activities, and climate change models. They discuss how these aspects of the science are treated in politics and policymaking, as well as how climate science has become increasingly politicized in recent decades. In a section entitled ‘mediarology’, the chapter then focuses on the role of mass media as an important link between science, policy actors and the public. Drawing from a combination of prominent illustrations and personal experiences, the authors then offer suggestions as to how scientists and the media can improve representations of various dimensions of climate science. Chapter 2, by Heike Schroeder, situates these interactions in a 30-year his-
tory of climate politics and policy since the 1979 World Climate Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. She identifies four phases through which climate politics have moved up to the present negotiations unfolding through the United Nations Conference of Parties talks. These might be referred to in shorthand as the emergence of climate change in the political realm (through the formation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-IPCC), regime creation (through the development of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change-UNFCCC), regime strengthening (centred on the Kyoto Protocol), and regime maturation (by way of the development of a post-2012 architecture). Schroeder wades through the acronym soup that has developed in climate politics over time to clarify the key issues, processes and institutions involved in these arenas of international climate politics. She insightfully clarifies what have become increasingly murky waters, where international climate regimes and supporting institutions have grown in sophistication and complexity. Chukwumerije Okereke picks up these discussions in Chapter 3, in the
context of present political activities, and further delineates prominent issues in these high-profile and highly-politicized climate negotiations. Also, while Schroeder emphasizes on history through the institutions in Chapter 2, Okereke turns a critical gaze to the actors – particularly nation-states and coalition groups. He focuses on elements of leadership and trust as he lays out the details of how certain compromises have been vital to the functioning of ongoing climate negotiations in the theatre of treaty negotiations. Most prominently, Okereke discusses these politics through the constructions of affinity groups in ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries, of countries in the ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’. In Chapter 4, Hans von Storch examines how various features of the cli-
mate science-policy interface shape consequent dimensions of policy advice and public understanding. He describes two competing frames of knowledge he calls ‘cultural constructs’ and ‘scientific constructs’ in order to help analyse how misunderstandings and discrepancies have developed between the science and policy communities over time. Drawing on experiences primarily in the German context, von Storch analyses how to improve connectivity at the climate science-policy interface, particularly as we move into negotiations for a post-2012 international climate policy regime. He draws usefully on
and Peter Weingart, as well as the tenets of postnormal science (also discussed in Chapter 1) as they relate to environmental decision-making. In Chapter 5, Peter Newell and Matthew Paterson expand considerations
to those of political economy and finance as well as relations between the states and markets. They survey an increasingly hegemonic arena of climate politics governed by markets through the carbon economy. The authors characterize the carbon economy as an inter-related web of climate governance systems tied into processes of commodification of the atmosphere, and fetishization ofmarkets. This is manifested through emissions trading and carbon offsets (both voluntary and through the Clean Development Mechanism-CDM), as well as carbon disclosure schemes. They trace the history of the carbon economy to key developments in neoliberalism, concurrent to the institutional history outlined by Schroeder (Chapter 2). Their critical analysis is then cast upon what the future implications of this emergent form of climate governance might be, and whether and under what conditions the carbon economy might enable a transition to climate capitalism, in which capitalist imperatives of accumulation are achieved through low-carbon economic growth. They argue that it remains unclear whether the carbon economy will follow a path towards unregulated and privatized ‘cowboy climate capitalism’ or a more regulated, state-managed ‘climate Keynesianism’. None the less, they outline how these routes will have critical consequences for constraining or expanding possibilities for significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions and decarbonization in the post-2012 regime. In Chapter 6, Maria Carmen Lemos and Emily Boyd shift our attention
from climate mitigation to the multi-dimensional politics of adaptation. Mitigation and adaptation initiatives are often overlapping and inter-related in climate politics and governance. However, in general, mitigation activities tend to be those that protect the climate and environment from humans, while adaptation activities are those that protect humans from the environment. As Lemos and Boyd work through many pertinent elements of adaptation politics, they focus on the crucial questions of justice, resource distribution and development. The authors argue that for adaptation strategies to engage successfully with goals of vulnerability reduction and resilience capacity building, policy negotiators and leadership must commit financial resources that match the scale of need, agree upon a realistic conception of ‘additionality’, achieve a substantive accountability framework, and better co-ordinate these activities with the ongoing work in development communities. In this burgeoning web of governance, Lemos and Boyd effectively work through what might be seen as daunting complexities, and clearly delineate the vital issues at stake in these processes. Further along these discussions of vulnerability, risk and resilience, in
Chapter 7 Bradley C. Parks and J. Timmons Roberts interrogate questions of global North-South relations, and associated issues of responsibility, equity and justice. They focus their comments on the ambitious objective of a just
Their essay takes us through many reasons why it is important to account for equality and justice when formulating these policy agreements. In so doing, they point to many challenges that divergent viewpoints, perspectives and interests may pose on fostering an atmosphere of trust, which is fundamental to success. They posit that unconventional, heterodox and hybrid forms of climate politics and interventions are needed in order to overcome histories of troubled NorthSouth environmental relations. They argue that mitigation discussions to date have overlooked longer-term issues of inequality in global North-South relations. Therefore, they turn to adaptation in particular as a way to promote civic and co-operative norms, and to inspire poor country participation in a climate treaty. To finish, the authors offer hopeful words for building a global, just, trusting and long-term co-operative climate accord. The final two chapters emphasize interactions in the spaces of everyday.
Chapter 8, by Maxwell T. Boykoff, Michael K. Goodman and Ian Curtis, explores the workings of how formal climate science, policy and politics meet the everyday lived experience. The chapter looks to how these interactions are contested, negotiated and ever-changing in both the discursive realm (e.g. what political discussions on climate action are dominant and legible) and material spaces (e.g. how these activities relate to issues of consumption). The chapter addresses how climate phenomena are framed in various contexts and thus who effectively is authorized to ‘speak for the climate’. They trace how the range of ‘actors’ speaking out about climate change mitigation and adaptation has expanded – particularly into popular culture – as climate change has earned increasing attention in public and policy arenas. Like Chapter 1, this chapter also points out the importance of mass media. Boykoff, Goodman and Curtis specifically explore how mass media stitch together developments in art, music, sport and through a range of celebrity voices. The authors then ask questions about what these developments may have achieved so far in terms of keeping or taking GHGs out of the atmosphere, and related themes of consumption in increasingly ‘naturalized’ neoliberal contexts. Chapter 9, by Susanne C. Moser, addresses climate politics as they relate to
public understanding and engagement. Moser posits that no matter what treaty or accord is ultimately implemented, public support and engagement are critical to its ultimate success (or failure). In the chapter, Moser situates potential citizen action in a complex landscape of political economics, ideologies, structural forces, habitual behaviour, and the agency of nature across scales and places. She appraises the state of these interactions at present, and surveys awareness, understanding, concern, personal action and policy support across a number of social contexts. In so doing, the chapter assesses various ways that inspire or disillusion people to take part in mitigation or adaptation activities. Moser draws on research on climate communications through imagery, emotions and our ‘rational’ self in order to work through what communication strategies tend to empower people and inspire participation, as well as what information may overwhelm them and lead to
