Subprime catalyst: Financial regulatory reform and the strengthening of US carbon market governance
TL;DR: The 2008 financial crisis has had an important, but neglected, impact on carbon market governance in the United States as discussed by the authors, and it acted as a catalyst for the emergence of a domestic coalition that drew upon the crisis experience to demand stronger regulation over carbon markets.
Abstract: The 2008 financial crisis has had an important, but neglected, impact on carbon market governance in the United States. It acted as a catalyst for the emergence of a domestic coalition that drew upon the crisis experience to demand stronger regulation over carbon markets. The influence of this coalition was seen first in the changing content of draft climate change bills between 2008 and 2010. But the coalition's more lasting legacy was its role in shaping the content of, and supporting, the passage of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the Dodd–Frank bill) in July 2010. Although that bill was aimed primarily at bolstering financial stability, its derivatives provisions strengthened carbon market regulation in significant ways. This policy episode demonstrates new patterns of coalition building in carbon market politics as well as the growing links between climate governance and financial regulatory politics. At the same time, the significance of these developments should not be overstated because of various limitations in the content and implementation of the Dodd–Frank bill, as well as the waning support for carbon markets more generally within the US since the bill's passage.
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TL;DR: In this paper, intersectional analysis of climate change illuminates how different individuals and groups relate differently to climate change, due to their situatedness in power structures based on context-specific and dynamic social categorisations.
Abstract: Investigations of the interconnectedness of climate change with human societies require profound analysis of relations among humans and between humans and nature, and the integration of insights from various academic fields. An intersectional approach, developed within critical feminist theory, is advantageous. An intersectional analysis of climate change illuminates how different individuals and groups relate differently to climate change, due to their situatedness in power structures based on context-specific and dynamic social categorisations. Intersectionality sketches out a pathway that stays clear of traps of essentialisation, enabling solidarity and agency across and beyond social categories. It can illustrate how power structures and categorisations may be reinforced, but also challenged and renegotiated, in realities of climate change. We engage with intersectionality as a tool for critical thinking, and provide a set of questions that may serve as sensitisers for intersectional analyses on clima...
371 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the political economy of energy transition in South Africa and provide a rich empirical account of key policy developments aimed at enabling such a transition and provide reflections on how best to theorise the contested politics of energy transitions.
Abstract: This paper explores the political economy of energy transition in South Africa. An economic model based around a powerful ‘minerals-energy complex’ that has previously been able to provide domestic and foreign capital with cheap and plentiful coal-generated electricity is no longer economically or environmentally sustainable. The paper analyses the struggle over competing energy visions, infrastructures and political agendas in order to generate insights into the governance and financing of clean energy transitions in South Africa. It provides both a rich empirical account of key policy developments aimed at enabling such a transition and provides reflections on how best to theorise the contested politics of energy transitions.
277 citations
24 Mar 2016
TL;DR: In this article, a new mobilities paradigm emerged a decades or so ago in the context of significant theoretical shifts, methodological developments and novel research questions and approaches and examined many ways in which applied mobilities research over the past decade and how it might continue to reconfigure it.
Abstract: A new mobilities paradigm emerged a decades or so ago in the context of significant theoretical shifts, methodological developments and novel research questions and approaches. We begin by considering what is meant by the idea of a “paradigm” from Thomas Kuhn. We then examine many ways in which this new paradigm transformed applied mobilities research over the past decade and how it might continue to reconfigure it. The new paradigm and three interconnected theoretical approaches are set out, before turning to assess the impact of the new paradigm upon emerging fields of social science by using various quantitative and qualitative measures. We examine the transformed ecology of this significant emergent field. Finally, the article explores the paradigm’s important relevance for applied research in urban transportation, climate change and energy transitions.
239 citations
TL;DR: Although levels of concern and awareness about climate change have been rising in many nations over the past 20 years, climate change remains of low importance relative to other global or personal concerns as discussed by the authors.
190 citations
TL;DR: The concept of emotion-risk assemblage as discussed by the authors is introduced to denote a heterogeneous configuration of ideational and material, human and non-human elements that is subject to constant flux and change.
Abstract: While it is generally accepted in writings on the sociocultural aspects of risk that risk and emotion are interrelated, this relationship remains under-theorised. The literature on the affect heuristic model in psychology and research on voluntary risk-taking or edgework in sociology have dominated previous writings on risk and emotion. This essay draws on scholarship from affect theory, cultural studies and cultural geography to argue that both emotion and risk are inevitably and always configured via social and cultural processes and through interaction with others' bodies, material objects, space and place. Furthermore, both emotions and risk judgements and understandings, rather than being located within the individual, are fluid, shared and collective. The concept of the ‘emotion–risk assemblage’ is introduced to denote a heterogeneous configuration of ideational and material, human and non-human elements that is subject to constant flux and change. I illustrate this analysis with some observations a...
159 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the governance of international carbon offsets, analyzing the political economy of the origins and governance of offsets, and show how carbon offsets represent capital-accumulation strategies that devolve governance over the atmosphere to supranational and nonstate actors and to the market.
Abstract: This article examines the governance of international carbon offsets, analyzing the political economy of the origins and governance of offsets. We examine how the governance structures of the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism and unregulated voluntary carbon offsets differ in regulation and in complexity of the chain that links consumers and reducers of carbon, with specific consequences for carbon reductions, development, and the ability to provide “accumulation by decarbonization.” We show how carbon offsets represent capital-accumulation strategies that devolve governance over the atmosphere to supranational and nonstate actors and to the market.
529 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyzed the IPE of both food and finance and found that US domestic groups were able to boost their influence by allying with other domestic actors concerned about volatile energy prices and by linking their cause to the broader politics of financial reform in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
Abstract: The global food crisis of 2007–08 triggered an important US-led initiative to tighten regulations over agricultural derivatives markets. The lead role of the US reflected its structural power in global finance and the influence of societal interests within the US concerned about the rapid growth of financial investment in agricultural derivatives markets over the past decade. Encouraged by market developments and deregulation in the United States, these investments represented a “financialization” of agriculture that was blamed for contributing for global food price volatility. In their push for tighter regulation, US domestic groups were able to boost their influence by allying with other domestic actors concerned about volatile energy prices and by linking their cause to the broader politics of financial reform in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. This episode has important lessons for the literatures analyzing the IPE of both food and finance.
171 citations
TL;DR: In both cases, however, creating the abstract commodity framework necessary to make sense of the notion of "cost-effectiveness" has entailed losing touch with what was supposedly being costed, helping to engender systemic crisis as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Enormous new markets in uncertainty and in carbon have been created recently, ostensibly to enhance the cost-effectiveness of both finance and climate action. In both cases, however, creating the abstract commodity framework necessary to make sense of the notion of ‘cost-effectiveness’ has entailed losing touch with what was supposedly being costed, helping to engender systemic crisis. The new financial markets expanded credit and multiplied leverage by isolating, quantifying, slicing, dicing and circulating diverse types of uncertainty; the resulting unchecked pursuit of liquidity led to a catastrophic drying up of liquidity. The carbon markets, meanwhile, by identifying global warming solutions with reductions in an abstract pool of tradable pollution rights and linking them with ‘offsets’ manufactured through quantitative techniques, ended up blocking prospective historical pathways toward less fossil fuel dependence and thus exacerbated the climate problem. Unsurprisingly, both markets have provoked s...
124 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that there remains a strong normative consensus about carbon markets and a deepening set of transnational governance practices, and that these governance practices only partly depend on the interstate negotiations.
Abstract: Assessments of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009 have tended to see it as a ‘return to realism’ — as the triumph of hard interstate bargaining over institutional or normative development about climate change. This article contests that interpretation by showing how it focuses too closely on the interstate negotiations and neglects the ongoing development of carbon markets as governance practices and systems to deal with climate change. It shows that there remains a strong normative consensus about such markets, and a deepening set of transnational governance practices. These governance practices only partly depend on the interstate negotiations. Thinking about the future of global climate governance needs to start with the complexity of interactions between these transnational governance systems and the interstate negotiations.
107 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the total allocations under the EU ETS first phase and compare these against historical emissions, projections, and national Kyoto targets, and conclude that most Phase 1 allocations are excessive on all these measures, particularly the last.
83 citations