Climate Change Politics

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, held in June 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, was probably the largest event in a long series of megasummits on environmental protection and sustainable development. Roughly 44 000 participants descended on Rio de Janeiro to take part in ten days of preparatory committee meetings, informal consultations, side events, and the actual conference. Yet despite this unprecedented high attendance by participants from governments and civil society, the outcome of the conference is less than many had hoped for. In this paper I review the outcomes of the 2012 Rio conference in detail, with a special focus on its contributions towards the reform of the institutional framework for sustainable development. Following this review, I discuss the way ahead and options for structural reform to restrengthen earth system governance.

The Paris Agreement has been hailed as a significant, but not sufficient, step on the path to halting anthropogenic climate change. Rather than allocating emissions based on a top-down limit, the Paris Agreement depends on bottom-up ‘Nationally Determined Contributions’. The success of the agreement has to a significant degree depended on the increasing acceptance by governments and even businesses of the idea that climate change mitigation and economic growth can converge. Much of the optimism regarding the outcome of the Paris Agreement, even in the face of the threat of US withdrawal, is based on the belief that technology and economics will bring about decarbonization of economies. This chapter examines the possible conflict between the climate change order of the Paris Agreement and an economic order that increasingly focuses on national interests which are often given priority over an open global economy. The EU, China and the US have varying and conflicting commitments to these orders.

What are the effects of capital’s restless attempts to appropriate unpaid cleanup work done by humans and the rest of nature? Neglect of this question has led to repeated confusions about what waste is and how it might better be approached. A refreshed perspective is especially important in an era in which discussions about solid waste have come to focus largely on landfills and climate discussions to focus on real or imaginary carbon sinks. Critiquing these discussions, and their intersection in carbon credit schemes involving landfill methane, is one foundation for moving forward across a wide range of issues in political ecology. This chapter has appeared in Spanish in Ecologia politica de la basura: Pensando los residuos desde el Sur (Abya Yala, 2017), edited by Ma. Fernanda Soliz T., and in English in the Lahore Journal of Policy Studies 8 (1), December 2019, pp. 79-88.

The two Koreas’ divergent growth and development paths resulting from political-economic or socioeconomic differences eventually have led to differences in environmental and ecological issues, North and South Korea typifying the problems facing poor and advanced countries respectively. Putting their differences aside, the two Koreas share certain environmental risks that derive from their common geographical location: the Korean Peninsula. The most representative of the many environmental risks they share is climate change. This report aims to explore North Korea’s domestic and foreign policies in response to the crisis of climate change. In particular, it focuses on North Korea’s climate change policy under the Kyoto Protocol system, which had set the first rules and norms for international cooperation coping with climate change since the launch of the UNFCCC.

Every climate policy is somewhat related to adaptation and mitigation, which the UNFCCC highlights as the two fundamental response strategies to address climate change issues. While mitigation looks at limiting climate change by reducing GHG emissions and by enhancing the use of clean and renewable energy resources, adaptation aims to lessen the adverse impacts of climate change through a wide-range of system-specific actions. The priority of North Korea’s policy toward climate change has been to minimize direct damage from natural calamities caused by extreme weather events and to address food shortages and water management, which are indirect offshoots of natural disasters. In short, North Korea’s approach to national capacity-building for climate change has been an adaptation policy rather than mitigation policy. A lack of mitigation policy in North Korea seems rational: North Korea’s GHG emission levels have been quite low due to its decrepit economy and absolute energy shortages. North Korea’s adaptation policy still appears to have focused on land management and restoration of a wrecked environment for the construction of basic infrastructure. North Korea has assumed an unusually active attitude toward international regimes and cooperation related to climate change. This was mainly because the Kyoto Protocol system under the UNFCCC-centered international climate change regime was driven by the principles of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) and Polluter Pays (PP). These principles of the Kyoto Protocol system made North Korea a beneficiary country that would receive financial and technological assistance from advanced economies, and the North Korean regime was able to transform its foreign policy to make good use of the international system under the name of the country’s climate change diplomacy.

North Korea’s impoverished economic conditions render the implementation of its climate change policy difficult without international cooperation or assistance. Hence, it has been heavily reliant on assistance and aid from international organizations or individual advanced economies in order to strengthen its national capacity-building. Yet, how sincere North Korea really was about promoting international cooperation on climate change, and whether it was truly in earnest about national capacity-building for climate change, does raise some questions. For one, while North Korea actively sought financial and technological assistance from advanced economies based on the principles of CBDR and PP, it is doubtful whether it faithfully fulfilled the “common responsibilities” that were due from Non-Annex I Parties. In addition, doubts linger over the role of the NCCE (National Coordinating Committee on Environment), which has been responsible for the North Korean diplomacy and international cooperation on climate change, as well as the distribution of foreign aid during the Kyoto Protocol era.

The ramifications of climate change have been more serious for North and South Korea, the co-occupants of the Korean Peninsula, compared to the global average. Although they are bound to share the same ecological destiny, they have yet to even launch a discussion on climate change cooperation. Inter-Korean cooperation on climate change, mostly South Korea’s assistance or aid to tackle climate change in North Korea as well as the Korean Peninsula, was neither sustainable nor long-term—it was more like a one-off deal. In fact, inter-Korean bilateral cooperation has focused more on the South providing the impoverished North with humanitarian assistance and afforestation funds—in other words, hefty funding—than on the two Koreas working together to achieve the common goal of responding to the threats of climate change on the Korean Peninsula. The two Koreas need to propose and pursue initiatives that are for the common good of the Korean Peninsula, rather than cooperation that is rooted in one side’s political and policy agenda. Only when this happens can the two Koreas build trust, and can South Korea truly be of help in North Korea’s national capacity-building to cope with climate change risks.

Climate change on the Korean Peninsula seems to have had more important implications than anywhere else in the world. For the two Koreas, which share the Korean Peninsula, climate change is both a threat and an opportunity. As long as North and South Korea both respond to climate change and remain firmly committed to guaranteeing the sustainability of the Korean nation and the ecosystem of the Korean Peninsula, they may reduce the threat of climate change and at the same time establish peace on the Korean Peninsula. Furthermore, inter-Korean cooperation on climate change, a low politics issue, may help to defuse tensions from North Korea’s nuclear threats and bring actual progress in the trust-building process of the Korean Peninsula.

Scientists are often wary of engaging in policy advocacy as they fear it may result in the perception of bias in their science or abuse of their position. Whilst advocacy need not always result in biased science or an abuse of position, the mere suspicion that it might can be enough to deter a scientist from engaging in it. For climate scientists, this tension is well known, especially given how politically polarising action on climate change can be.
This thesis identifies how, both in theory and practice, climate scientists can engage in policy advocacy in a way that is acceptable to them and their scientific community. By providing a new way of defining advocacy and the roles that scientists can engage in when communicating, I create an advocacy spectrum that maps different communication roles for scientists. Position on this spectrum is influenced by ‘contextual factors’ which determine how a scientist’s communication may be perceived. Depending on which contextual factors are at play, even silence may be interpreted as advocacy. The advocacy spectrum is informed by semi-structured interviews with 47 climate scientists in the UK and USA. In the interviews, I explore their concerns about advocacy and the practical methods they use for managing the tensions they experience when communicating. Analysis of this data helps to further develop arguments in the theoretical literature about science communication, the role of values in science, and the conceptions about scientists as citizens in society. As a result, I identify what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable forms of policy advocacy as perceived by scientists and the scientific community. Combining the experience of climate scientists with the understanding from the theory, I then establish eight methods scientists can use that allow scientists qua scientists to engage in policy advocacy whilst also preserving their scientific credibility and independence.

The Paris Agreement that was signed by 195 countries on December 2015 is considered both a success and a failure to the climate change politics.  It was another failure to the comprehensive integrated regime approach, but a success to the new dominant approaches “regime complex”.  There is a shift of approach of climate politics, from a comprehensive integrated regime to the ‘regime complex’ approach.    The same approach is also taken by the United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).  The initiative is ‘a microcosm of a larger crisis in contemporary governance’.  The UNGPs is not part of a comprehensive and integrated global regime, but they demonstrate that it is possible to achieve a level of convergence of norms, policies, and practices.  Both, the Paris Agreement and the UNGPs on Business and Human Rights, are examples of the polycentric governance.  They can be used as ‘tools’ for the affected people, to give a voice and demand the States and Businesses.  These tools could create ‘double’ pressure to demand people’s rights over environmental degradations that were caused by business operations and the government’s inabilities to prevent such violations.  The paper suggests that there should be an increase of climate action together with human rights movements, especially in Asia.  The new ASEAN Economic Community might lead to the increase of economic growth, however it might also increase adverse impacts in the environment and human rights, if the process does not concern to prevent such issues.  More pressure should be given to the government and businesses, in order to accelerate the pledges that were widely presented at the Paris Agreement.  Afterall, climate change issues is our human rights issues.

The case for degrowth is a case for stopping the pursuit of growth and for reorienting lives and societies toward wellbeing. This chapter impels moves to build good lives for all, and shows how existing resources can be shared and invested differently to secure good living with less money, less exploitation, and less environmental degradation. Readers will be familiar with the environmental damages and with the forms of inequality and exploitation presented in this book. What is different here is that we link these troubling phenomena to the imperative of modern economies to grow, and argue that overcoming them means moving away from the relentless drive for more.  (Book preface addressing COVID is also available on this site. )

[The Media Climate. Studies on climate change communication]
2012. 285 p. Including 10 illustrations and 15 tables. Paperback.

Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
ISBN: 978-3-531-17752-6
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-531-94217-9

For many people media representations are the central source of information on global climate change. Mass media illustrate the relevance of the topic, break down global climate change to regional contexts and show short-term consequences of long-term change. Therefore, scientists, politicians, NGOs and companies seek gaining voice in mass media. Consequently, an increasing number of studies focuses on media constructions of climate change, its drivers and impacts. This volume examines the existing literature, presents the current knowledge and identifies research perspectives.

This article provides a focused review of the current literature on global environmental governance. In the first part, we differentiate between three usages of the term " global environmental governance, " which we describe as analytical, programmatic, and critical. In the second part, we highlight three key characteristics of global environmental gover-nance that make it different, in our view, from traditional international environmental politics: first, the emergence of new types of agency and of actors in addition to national governments, the traditional core actors in international environmental politics; second, the emergence of new mechanisms and institutions of global environmental governance that go beyond traditional forms of state-led, treaty-based regimes; and third, increasing segmentation and fragmentation of the overall gover-nance system across levels and functional spheres. In the last section, we present an outlook on future study needs in this field.

With a focus on the novel, this chapter appraises three major themes that emerged in the embryonic corpus of climate change fiction. The first concerns the denial, avoidance, and acceptance of the magnitude of climate change in the present and recent past. The second presents cautionary fables of the Anthropocene (the current epoch in which humans act as a geologic force), extrapolating current trends into devastated, depopulated and denatured futures. The third advances this implicit rebuke to the present by exploring the eco-politics of resistance, reform and revolution. I conclude by identifying two rising themes for the next decade of climate change fiction: aiding the ongoing transition to life after oil and depicting the amplified global inequalities of climate injustice.

Average figures for the country, regional, or class emissions of greenhouse gases can be deceiving because some people and groups have much larger carbon footprints than others. In this policy brief, we focus on the super-rich, the billionaires whose fortunes have increased by over US$1 trillion during the COVID-19 pandemic. We ask what effect these super-emitters have on the everyday behavior of average citizens and address emissions as a commons-management issue. Our research indicates that billionaires have carbon footprints that can be thousands of times higher than those of average citizens, even in the richest countries.

What is the Paris Agreement and how does it account for refugees of climate change-induced migration? What contingencies does this document hold for climate refugees? The short answer is, nothing. The Paris Agreement does nothing for climate refugees, it barely acknowledges their existence.

This introduction to "Negotiating Climate Change in Crisis" positions the volume as an intervention, collecting together indicative contributions regarding what social scientists, humanities scholars and climate activists around the world think needs to be done in terms of both understanding why climate action has failed to dramatically reduce emissions to date, and proposing some routes towards radical climate change action now. That is, the book is intended to provide an affirmative set of ideas about what is to be done and how it can be done, to bring about radical climate change governance so that we have a chance of avoiding runaway climate change. We are publishing this collection of essays in the months leading up to the high-profile and eagerly awaited COP26 UN climate change conference, due to take place in Glasgow (Scotland, UK) in November 2021. At this conference, all the major stakeholders of the global climate change negotiation process will be present, including heads of state, large national government delegations, policy advisers, NGO and social movement activists, multinational corporations, industry associations, and inter-governmental institutions. There will be significant media interest in COP26, reaching millions of people around the world, linked, for example, with the re-entering of the agreement by the US, the newly entwined crises of COVID-19 and climate change, and negotiations around the form and content of Green New Deal proposals. We hope that this collection of essays will contribute to this discussion. Despite more than thirty years of high-level, global talks on climate change, we are still seeing emissions rising dramatically around the world. Whatever we have done on this planet in terms of climate mitigation over the past thirty plus years has not worked. Given that most climate scientists believe we are soon running out of time, the authors contributing to this volume ask what has gone wrong and what now needs to be done. We hope the essays collated here will help us move more radically and urgently in the direction needed.

Climate change is often discussed in terms of linear units of time. This essay covers the meaning of linear time and its implications for how climate change is narrated.  There are concerns about how narrating climate change in this way can eclipse issues of justice in the energy transition. There are of course different ways of telling time. This essay provides a narration of climate change inspired by particular Indigenous scholars and writers. These conceptions of time narrate time through kinship, not linearity. One implication is that issues of justice are inseparable from the experience of climate change.

El capítulo analiza algunos de los principales marcos normativos y políticas públicas en materia de migraciones ambientales en América Latina. Forma parte del volumen "(Re)pensando el vínculo entre migración y crisis. Perspectivas desde América Latina y Europa".

Changes in climate have causes and effects. Most of the world knew it that climate change is harmful for our planet, but to what degree it is harmful? Little known about this and entire climate change subject today remains semi-mystery. If everyone would realise how climate change affects our world in numerous ways, then there would be no doubt that humans would be more cautious

Now available in paperback. 30% discount with the code PAPER30
https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-animal-to-come.html

—Thinking the politics of animals and animality beyond the critique of anthropocentrism and the concerns of biopolitics

What happens to political thought if we take the problematic nature of the human-animal distinction, not as something to be demonstrated, but rather as a given? What sorts of animal-existential possibilities are derived by tracking not the animal but the animal-to-come through the inherited traditions and institutions that continue to shape prevailing concepts of culture and politics?

In THE ANIMAL-TO-COME, Robert Briggs lays out an original interpretation of Derrida’s work which takes the ‘question of the animal’ beyond the critique of political and philosophical anthropocentrism. Eschewing approaches grounded in animal vulnerability, Briggs reviews theories of power, politics and culture in terms of their capacity to enable novel images of ‘zoopolitics’. Along the way he engages with recently translated work in the emerging field of philosophical ethology, including Vinciane Despret’s What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions? (2016) and Dominique Lestel’s empirical and constructivist phenomenology of human-animal relations.

Through these and other interventions, THE ANIMAL-TO-COME departs from well-established positions in animal studies to develop new ways of thinking animal politics today.

La escasez del agua en México es un problema muy serio. Con el cambio climático el problema se acrecienta y empeora. Los días con agua entubada al año para las grandes poblaciones urbanas tienden a disminuir. La producción agrícola se “estresa”  por la falta de agua o por las grandes cantidades de agua que de repente inundan los campos. El precio de los alimentos se eleva y paulatinamente se convierte en una causa medular de inflación. El problema del agua en México implica no únicamente sequías, sino inundaciones, ambos de carácter épico. Aquí en San Xalostitlán de las Tunas puede que se esté sufriendo una severa sequía, mientras que a 600 kilómetros de distancia se están ahogando y se arruinan las cosechas…
El cambio climático provoca desequilibrios en la distribución y temporalidad de las lluvias. El cambio climático es un problema que afecta a todo el planeta y a estas alturas del partido hay cosas que se pueden hacer y cosas que no se pueden hacer en México a este respecto. Ciertamente, la indiferencia del Estado mexicano ante la magnitud creciente del problema es más o menos espeluznante.  La sociedad no tiene la educación necesaria para lidiar con el problema. El gobierno federal, en los hechos y en el mejor de los casos, se dedica a medir la magnitud y las consecuencias del desequilibrio climático. La indiferencia de los gobiernos estatales es brutal, no obstante como que han tomado el papel del que se queja y protesta conforme el problema les aprieta el pescuezo.

Many agents have failed to comply with their responsibilities to take the action needed to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change.  This pervasive noncompliance raises two questions of nonideal political theory.

First, it raises the question of what agents should do when others do not discharge their climate responsibilities. (the Responsibility Question)  In this paper I put forward four principles that we need to employ to answer the Responsibility Question (Sections II-V).  I then illustrate my account, by outlining four kinds of action that should be undertaken (Section VI).

Pervasive noncompliance also raises a second question: Given the lack of progress in combating climate change, should existing governance structures be maintained or changed (and if they should be changed, in what ways)? (the Governance Question).  The paper briefly outlines a methodology for addressing this question and outlines what a nonideal response to the existing institutional structures would be (Section VII).  It does so with reference to the Paris Agreement, and in particular the creation of a "global stocktake" (Article 14, Paris Agreement) and the "facilitative dialogue" (paragraph 20 of the ‘Adoption of the Paris Agreement’).

The aim, then, is to set out an account of a nonideal theory of climate justice.

A transição ecológica e a autonomia estratégica são dois eixos ao re- dor dos quais gravita um amplo programa de transformação da União Europeia, em seu próprio desenvolvimento social e econômico, e em relação ao restante do mundo. As relações entre a América Latina e a Europa deveriam se reorientar sobre essa base, em uma conjuntura caracterizada pela crise da globalização e pela contestação da ordem internacional liberal.

The international regime of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has resulted some agreements and policies which binding its countries member. The latest one was the mechanism of REDD (Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation). The implemetantion of these mechanism does not only bind and involve the countries member at the national level but also at local level (such as at province and regency level). Local aspect has a significant role as the basis for implementing these policy. This paper examines how instermestic perspective used for explaining the relation between international and domestic (local) aspect within the REDD-UNFCCC mechanism.
Abstrak Rezim internasional Konvensi kerangka Kerja PPB tentang Perubahan Iklim (UNFCC) menghasilkan beberapa kesepakatan dan kebijakan yang mengikat untuk negara anggotanya. Mekanisme terbaru adalah ditetapkannya REDD (Pengurangan Emisi dari Deforestasi dan Degradasi Hutan). Pelaksanaan dari mekanisme ini tidak hanya mengikat dan melibatkan negara angota dalam tingkat nasional, namun juga melingkupi tingkat lokal (provinsi, kabupaten). Aspek lokal memiliki peran signifikan sebagai landasan dalam pelaksanaan kebijakan ini. Tulisan ini membahas bagaimana perspektif intermestik digunakan dalam menjelaskan hubungan antara aspek Internasional dan lokal dalam mekanisme REDD-UNFCC.
Kata Kunci: rezim internasional, perubahan iklim, intermestik, Indonesia

Yeryüzü doğayı içeren insanın en anlamlı varlık alanıdır. Bu nedenle birçok düşünür doğayı algılamanın ve anlamanın insana motivasyon sağladığını savunmuştur (Kant, 1987). Aynı sebepten ötürü Aristotales, hocası Eflatun gibi önemli derslerini koruluk alanda ya da bir parkta vermiştir ya da Nietzsche ne zaman bir ağacın altında dursa derin düşüncelere dalmıştır. Hatta, Damond Young buna Nietzsche’nin düşünce ağacı der (Young, 2021). Doğa aslında evrenin görünmeyen sınırlarını ve katmanlarını insan gözünde ve zihninde anlaşılır kılar. Bu ilişki maddesel çevrenin ötesinde hissedilen bir birlikteliktir. Böhme’ye göre insan kendi özünde doğayı içerir ve bu nedenle bedeni ile yeryüzünü algılayabilmesi, insanın doğayı anlaması için önemlidir (Böhme ve Böhme, 1992). Jale Erzen’de yeryüzünü insan bedeninin bir devamı olarak tanımlar ve insanın doğayı doğru anlayabilmesi için sezgisel algıya ek olarak bilimsel ve nesnel müspet ilimlerin eklenmesi gerekliliğini vurgular (Erzen, 2019). 
Milyonlarca yıl yeryüzünde yaşam sürmüş olan insan aslında bu yerel sezgiye ve ekolojik bilgiye sahiptir. Bizden önceki nesillerden aktarılarak gelen ve aslında kolektif bilincimizde varolan bu bilgiler bizim doğada hayatta kalmamızı sağlar. Fakat, makineleşme ve endüstri devriminin getirileri ile bu doğal sistemler ve insan arasındaki, binlerce yıllık etkileşim yöntemleri değişmiştir. Daha da vahimi bu yerel bilgilerin artık yeni nesillere aktarılamadan kayboluyor olmasıdır. Bu yazı biraz  da ekolojik krize karşı üretilen sözde savaşı da eleştirerek probleme bakışımızın değişmesi gerektiğini vurgularken aslında üstü örtülü asıl soruna dikkat çekmektedir.

Bu makalede, çevresel güvenlik kavramının bir alt araştırma alanı olarak iklim güvenliği kavramı ele alınıp, bu kavramın Türkiye iklim politikasındaki yeri irdelenmektedir. Bu amaçla, makalenin ilk bölümünde "çevresel güvenlik" kavramının literatürdeki gelişimi ele alınmaktadır. Sonrasında, çevresel güvenlik kavramının alt araştırma alanı olan "iklim güvenliği" söylemini değerlendirilmektedir. İklim güvenliği kavramı Birleşmiş Milletler, Amerika Birleşik Devletleri ve Avrupa Birliği'nin tutum ve söyleminden örneklerle açıklanmaktadır. Makalenin gelişme bölümünde ise iklim güvenliği söyleminin Türkiye'nin iklim politikasındaki yeri araştırılmaktadır. İklim güvenliği söyleminin Çevre ve Şehircilik Bakanlığı'nın resmî belgelerinde, Türkiye'nin BM Güvenlik Konseyi'nde yaptığı konuşmalarda ve Türkiye'nin iki önemli gazetesinde çıkan haberlerdeki kullanılışı sözel içerik analizi metodu kullanılarak analiz edilmektedir.

U.S. climate change-related policy response is failing, despite scientific
consensus on core realities, in part because of comprehensive, simultaneous, yet incommensurable doctrines and political biases. Climate disruption is a critically important agenda for homeland security and emergency management, yet as framed today, the policy communication regime frequently requires many skeptics or deniers to abandon their opinions, cultural commitments and epistemic frameworks. Public opinion consensus would be optimal, but the traditional education/ information approach is flawed, and continued delays in significant mitigation and adaptation policy implementation will mean far larger future costs to protect civilian environmental security and national interests. Thus, effective response demands new messaging strategies, pursuing interim progress, leveraging overlapping consensus, enhancing risk analysis literacy, and constructing alternative, intermediary categories of multiple parallel discourse. These framings would center on security, economic interests, public health, religious stewardship, and other themes. Customized audience discourses may enable better public and opinion leader buy-in, partly transcending polarization, since such leaders have a unique ability to help translate and promote these various discourses. In addition, eventual construction of a multi-dimensional map could optimize effective messaging and supportive coalitions. Otherwise, stalemate on climate-related policy and environmental security will continue, with increasingly likely catastrophic implications.

We know that climate change is caused by the rise in earth's average temperature (which began with the massive extraction of fossil fuels) during the industrial revolution. We also know that this process has accelerated greatly in recent years (IPCC, 2021). This brief study will survey some general aspects of the recently passed Argentine climate change law (Law No. 27,520). Specifically, we will examine its three main objectives. Furthermore, we will pay particular attention to the objective related to mitigation, as well as how it could affect Argentina's industrial growth. We will also refer to some regulations related to the new law in order to frame it properly within our environmental legal system. We will conclude with a few reflections and conclusions regarding this topic.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, despite growing political, scientific, and popular concern about the prospect of melting glaciers, sea-level rise, and more generally, climate-induced societal instability, American high-level science advisers and administrators, scientific committees, national and international scientific organizations , and officials within the Carter administration engineered a politics of restrained management of climate risk. Adopting a strategy of restraint appeared optimal not because of a pervasive disinterest in or ignorance of the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change. Rather, this administrative decision was rooted in widespread skepticism of the public's ability to regulate their panic given popular dissemination of alarming scenarios of the future. Their concerns were not epistemic; they were sociopolitical. Broad-based appeals to moderation directly informed both scientists and the administration's eventual decision in 1980 to minimize executive involvement. Despite some environmentalists' and scientists' calls for a more proactive position aligned with their ethical perspectives about the future implications of climate change, these linguistic cues of moderation became powerful heuristics that helped shape and anchor assessments of climate risk, calibrate scientists' advice to policy makers, and regulate public apprehension about climate risk. Ultimately, officials within and outside the science community concluded that the likely short-term costs incurred from immediate action to curb fossil fuel emissions were greater than the social and political costs incurred from maintaining what was considered to be a tempered approach to climate governance in the near-term.

Alongside the climate change denial movement, a section of the capitalist class has been organizing to promote a project of “climate capitalism” that relies on carbon markets and other policies compatible with the neoliberal order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Like the denial movement, promoters of climate capitalism have constructed an extensive network of think tanks and policy-planning groups to foster adherence to their climate policy proposals. This paper uses social network analysis to map out the reach of these climate and environmental policy groups within the array of interconnected NGOs, inter-governmental organizations, philanthropic foundations, and other organizations that constitute the global polity. This analysis sheds light on the position climate capitalism — understood as a project of a section of the global corporate elite — occupies among international organizations. Overall, I find that climate and environmental policy groups: (1) maintain substantial ties to key organizations of the global polity, and (2) mediate a substantial amount of relations, bridging between central organizations and more peripheral ones, as well as among those located in Europe and North America. I thus argue that a global inter-organizational infrastructure exists that supports climate capitalism, which contributes to its dominant position in climate change politics.

In one of the first efforts in the social sciences to explore the political and economic as well as natural causes of climate change policy ambition, this article assesses nations' climate change policies by using ratings of the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) pledges made at the 2015 Paris meeting of the United Nations. Our exploratory analysis shows that some domestic determinants of NDCs address political interests rather than strictly responding to mitigation needs. Key policy insights include the following: 1) nations subsidizing energy have less ambitious NDCs, implying that more effort may be needed to diminish direct effects of energy lobbies on climate policy; 2) vulnerability measured as economic damage and human loss caused by extreme weather events correlates only weakly with NDC ambition, meaning that greater government responsiveness to extreme weather vulnerability may be necessary in setting the scope of climate change policy; and 3) higher carbon emissions intensity is actually associated with less ambitious mitigation pledges. In other words, high emitter nations are actually doing less than low emitters. We conclude that if nations are left to their own devices, more ambitious NDCs are less likely to emerge from more fossil fuel-dominated, higher emitter nations and that true mitigation of climate change effects requires stronger and more enforceable national actions.

The UN-IPCC Dogma dictates: "This chapter frames the context, knowledge-base and assessment approaches used to understand the impacts of 1.5°C global warming above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, building on the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty. Human-induced warming reached approximately 1°C (likely between 0.8°C and 1.2°C) above pre-industrial levels in 2017, increasing at 0.2°C (likely between 0.1°C and 0.3°C) per decade (high confidence). Global warming is defined in this report as an increase in combined surface air and sea surface temperatures averaged over the globe and over a 30-year period. Unless otherwise specified, warming is expressed relative to the period 1850-1900, used as an approximation of pre-industrial temperatures in AR5. For periods shorter than 30 years, warming refers to the estimated average temperature over the 30 years centered on that shorter period, accounting for the impact of any temperature fluctuations or trend within those 30 years. Accordingly, warming from pre-industrial levels to the decade 2006-2015 is assessed to be 0.87°C (likely between 0.75°C and 0.99°C). Since 2000, the estimated level of human-induced warming has been equal to the level of observed warming with a likely range of ±20% accounting for uncertainty due to contributions from solar and volcanic activity over the historical period (high confidence). {1.2.1} Warming greater than the global average has already been experienced in many regions and seasons, with higher average warming over land than over the ocean (high confidence). Most land regions are experiencing greater warming than the global average, while most ocean regions are warming at a slower rate. Depending on the temperature dataset considered, 20-40% of the global human population live in regions that, by the decade 2006-2015, had already experienced warming of more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial in at least one season (medium confidence). {1.2.1, 1.2.2}." Source: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-1/. A must read paper titled. "Human CO2 Emissions Have Little Effect on Atmospheric CO2."