Peter Christoff

Ecological modernisation, ecological modernities

The concept of ecological modernisation is increasingly being used in policy analysis to indicate deeply embedded and ecologically self‐conscious forms of cultural transformation. Its meaning varies significantly depending on author and context. Without further clarification, there is a danger that the term may serve to legitimise the continuing instrumental domination and destruction of the environment. The normative dimensions of different uses of the concept call for greater attention. These may be weak or strong, and they raise issues relating to the relationship of the term to its ecological and modernist references.

Policy autism or double-edged dismissiveness? Australia's climate policy under the Howard government

In June this year, while the Hollywood climate shock film The Day After Tomorrow was screening around Australia, Prime Minister John Howard launched his government’s long awaited Energy White Paper, Securing Australia’s Energy Future. The White Paper outlines an eight-year national plan that is audacious in its aims and orientation. It is brazen in its aggressive affirmation of continuing fossil fuel use, bold in its confrontation with the government’s established critics of its energy and climate change policies, and challenging for the renewable energy sector, which it antagonizes. The White Paper is also interesting for its treatment of the issue of climate change. The chapter on climate change and energy, which includes a section titled ‘Meeting the Kyoto Target’, suggests an act of policy schizophrenia by acknowledging and benchmarking itself against the Kyoto Protocol, which the Howard government has signed but also repeatedly opposed, undermined and refused to ratify. Publicly defending the White Paper a day after its launch, Prime Minister Howard argued that

The promissory note: COP 21 and the Paris Climate Agreement

ABSTRACT The 2015 UN climate negotiations in Paris resulted in an inclusive, binding treaty that succeeds the Kyoto Protocol. In contrast to the failure at Copenhagen in 2009, the Paris negotiations are therefore seen as a major diplomatic success that has regenerated faith in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as a forum for dynamic multilateralism. The Paris Agreement provides a robust framework for ratcheting up efforts to combat global warming. However, the Agreement’s value will remain unclear for some time. The historical path to the Paris accord is outlined, and a preliminary assessment is offered of its key elements and outcomes.

The Bali Roadmap: Climate change, COP 13 and beyond

Halfway through the Thirteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 13) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a major earthquake shook Bali. Perhaps it was a sign of what was to come. By the close of the conference a week later, the Earth’s geopolitical axis had shifted slightly. The Bush administration discovered that – despite unparalleled US military and economic power – its legitimacy and capacity as a global hegemon had been constrained by the force of international censure. This revelation, when it came, surprised US negotiators and others as well. Held in the Balinese resort village of Nusa Dua, COP 13 ran from 3 to 15 December 2007 and included nine days of meetings of scientific and expert groups followed by four days of ‘high level’ ministerial talks leading to its conclusion. It was attended by some 10,800 participants, including six heads of state, 3,500 government officials from 187 nations and 5800 registered participants from the UN and environmental, development, business and other NGOs, and some 1,500 members of the media. The conference followed a tightly intertwined dual track which included the work of COP 13 and, nested within this, a ‘second’ conference – known as the Third Conference of the Parties – serving as a Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP/MOP 3), which formally excluded non-ratifying parties such as the United States. The COP’s main task was to define the path by which a post-2012 climate regime could be established – including emissions reduction targets to succeed those of the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period (2008–12). Either the convention’s parties would agree to a process to conclude by 2009 (in time to establish targets that would enter into force by the second commitment period,

How geoengineering scenarios frame assumptions and create expectations

Geoengineering could remake environments and societies, and early governance can help to steer the development of technologies towards sustainable outcomes. In the absence of observational data, geoengineering research and discussions are increasingly informed by scenarios, which provide heuristic tools for ‘envisioning’ potential futures. Although designed for specific research goals, scenarios can have broader implications by influencing expectations about the societal role that emerging geoengineering technologies can play. Yet the design of geoengineering scenarios has gone largely unscrutinized. This study is a meta-analysis in which we evaluate geoengineering scenarios from the literature to identify emerging expectations and assess these in the context of sustainability science. We find that geoengineering scenarios can be classified into three types based on purpose and use: for scientific knowledge-building; as ‘structured conversation’ starters; or as exploratory research tools. The first category dominates the literature; these scenarios stem from physical science disciplines where scientific tradition dictates simplification and standardization, both of which may provide misleading images of the future and therefore hinder robust decision-making. In contrast, scenarios used as exploratory tools depict not one single image of why and how geoengineering might evolve, but many. Analysis of these exploratory scenarios reveal expectations that a geoengineered future may hinge on at least four key elements—the potential for a universal geoengineering agreement, public perceptions of geoengineering, technical controllability, and the severity of climate impacts. These elements were not studied in the scientific knowledge-building scenarios, suggesting the need for an additional category of scenarios. Aligning with concepts of sustainability science, new geoengineering scenario exercises would merge participatory practices of exploratory scenarios with deterministic practices of technical scientific scenarios.

Renegotiating nature in the Anthropocene: Australia’s environment movement in a time of crisis

ABSTRACT The Anthropocene raises two interrelated problems for the Australian environment movement. The first concerns the movement’s normative and political relationship to non-human nature: climate change in particular is forcing an urgent reconsideration of how nature is to be understood and managed. The second problem concerns the implications of full recognition of the rights of First Peoples for environmental justice. These issues may lead to crises of identity, legitimacy, and effectiveness for the Australian movement. The normative bases upon which Australian environmentalists may draw in order to ‘protect nature’ in the Anthropocene are discussed. Setting aside the simple emancipatory ambition of preservationist environmentalism and the Australian movement’s earlier Romantic protectionism, a new pragmatic, pluralistic environmental politics – based on precaution, the avoidance of pain and suffering, and protection of the most vulnerable – is suggested.

Symposium - Green Thinking - from Australia

JSD: I’d like to begin this exchange by noting that there is much to celebrate when it comes to both the field of Environmental Politics and its top journal – this one. The field is flourishing, as indicated by the presence now of several journals, book series by many major publishers, the fact that environmental politics courses are taught at most universities in the English-speaking world. It wasn’t always thus. In the mid-1980s I had a hard time finding a publisher for my Rational Ecology book; indeed, it only appeared because a publisher thought it wasn’t really about the environment (which nobody would be interested in), but about collective choice. The voices in this exchange are all from Australia (though two of us are not Australians, and we all care about global issues too), so I should note that in Australasia in particular the field has been enlivened by the Ecopolitics Association, spanning academia, activism, party politics, and policy, and which recently published the first issue of its own journal (Ecopolitics: Thought and Action).