The Politics of Climate Change

by Anthony Giddens

  25. James Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren (London: Bloomsbury, 2009). The phrase actually appears in the subtitle of the book.

  26. Ibid., p. 236.

  27. Ibid., p. 269.

  28. James Lovelock, The Vanishing Face of Gaia (London: Penguin, 2010), p. 3.

  29. Ibid., p. 4.

  30. Ibid., p. 44.

  Chapter 2 Running Out, Running Down?

  1. Richard Heinberg, The Party’s Over (Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers, 2003), p. 31.

  2. Paul Middleton, A Brief Guide to the End of Oil (London: Robinson, 2007), ch. 3.

  3. David Strahan, The Last Oil Shock (London: Murray, 2007), p. 40.

  4. David Howell and Carole Nakhle, Out of the Energy Labyrinth (London: Tauris, 2007), pp. 88–92.

  5. International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2007 (Paris: OECD/IEA, 2007).

  6. Stephen Leeb, The Coming Economic Collapse (New York: Warner, 2007), p. 1.

  7. See, for example, Kenneth Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Paul Roberts, The End of Oil (London: Bloomsbury, 2004); Michael T. Klare, Resource Wars (New York: Holt, 2002); Matthew R. Simmons, Twilight in the Desert (New York: Wiley, 2005); Strahan, The Last Oil Shock. Strahan’s title unconsciously echoes that of Fred Pearce on global warming: The Last Generation: How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change (London: Eden Project Books, 2006).

  8. Strahan, The Last Oil Shock, p. 60.

  9. William Freudenberg and Robert Gramling, Blowout in the Gulf (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), p. 7.

  10. David Victor et al., Natural Gas and Geopolitics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

  11. David Strahan, ‘Lump Sums’, Guardian, 5 March 2008.

  12. Quoted in Dieter Helm, The New Energy Paradigm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 19.

  13. Ibid., p. 21.

  14. Speech of then-President Vladimir Putin, quoted in Edward Lucas, The New Cold War (London: Bloomsbury, 2008), p. 212.

  15. Strahan, The Last Oil Shock, p. 180.

  16. Reported in Times Online, 11 January 2008.

  17. Leeb, The Coming Economic Collapse, p. 77.

  Chapter 3 The Greens and After

  1. Nicholas Stern, The Economics of Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. xviii. The quote actually appears in the Stern Review in several slightly different formulations.

  2. William Morris, News from Nowhere (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1918), p. 280.

  3. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature – Conduct of Life (New York: Read, 2006). Originally published in 1836.

  4. Bradford Torrey, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Journal, vol. 14 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906), p. 205.

  5. Quoted in Robert Goodin, Green Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity, 1992), p. 30.

  6. Ibid., pp. 50ff.

  7. William Rees, ‘Ecological Footprints and Appropriated Carrying Capacity’, Environment and Urbanisation 4 (1992).

  8. See, for example, Ted Mosquin and Stan Rowe, ‘A Manifesto for Earth’, Biodiversity 5 (2004).

  9. Peter Bernstein, Against the Gods (New York: Wiley, 1996).

  10. Cass R. Sunstein, Laws of Fear (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 4.

  11. Ibid., p. 18.

  12. Donella H. Meadows et al., Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York: New American Library, 1972). See also Donella H. Meadows et al., Limits to Growth – The 30-Year Update (London: Macmillan, 2004), and many other publications by the same group of authors.

  13. World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).

  14. Ibid., p. 326.

  15. Richard North, ‘Sustainable Development: A Concept with a Future?’ Liberales Institute Occasional Paper (2005), p. 6.

  16. William Baue, ‘Rio+10 Series’, Sustainability Investment News, 23 August 2002. Simon Dresner puts the matter forcefully: ‘[Sustainable development] is a concept which combines post-modern pessimism about the domination of nature with almost Enlightenment optimism about the possibility to reform human institutions’: The Principles of Sustainability (London: Earthscan, 2002), p. 164.

  17. W. M. Lafferty and J. Meadowcroft, Implementing Sustainable Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 19.

  18. Wilfred Beckerman, ‘The Chimera of “Sustainable Development”’, Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development 1 (2008).

  19. Daniel Esty et al., The Environmental Sustainability Index (Davos: Global Leaders of Tomorrow Environmental Task Force, 2001).

  20. The website of the Global Commons Institute, led by Aubrey Meyer, provides detailed background information.

  21. See Avner Offer, The Challenge of Affluence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

  22. Both quotes from John Talberth and Clifford Cobb, The Genuine Progress Indicator 2006 (Oakland: Redefining Progress, 2006), p. 1.

  23. Offer, The Challenge of Affluence, p. 19.

  24. Sustainable Society Index, 2008, available online from the Sustainable Society Foundation.

  25. UK Government Office for Science, Foresight: The Future of Food and Farming (London: HMSO, 2011).

  26. The Future of Food and Farming, pp. 21–2.

  27. John Dryzek, The Politics of the Earth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 145.

  28. See Arthur Mol and David Sonnenfeld, Ecological Modernisation Around the World (London: Cass, 2000).

  Chapter 4 The Track Record So Far

  1. See Marcel Wissenburg, Green Liberalism (London: UCL Press, 1998), p. 7.

  2. David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy (London: Praeger, 2007), p. 133.

  3. Robyn Eckersley, The Green State (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), ch. 4 and passim.

  4. Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and Center for International Earth Science Information Network, Columbia University: 2008 Environmental Performance Index.

  5. Semida Silveira, ‘Sustainability in the Energy Sector – the Swedish Experience’, available from the Swedish Energy Agency, 2006.

  6. Paul Harris, Europe and Global Climate Change (London: Elgar, 2007).

  7. See Axel Michaelowa, ‘German Climate Policy Between Global Leadership and Muddling Through’, in Hugh Compston and Ian Bailey (eds), Turning Down the Heat (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

  8. Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety: Investments for a Climate-Friendly Germany (Synthesis Report, Potsdam, July 2008), available online.

  9. I am grateful to Olaf Corry for his help in providing the statistics that follow.

  10. Danish Commission on Climate Change Policy, Green Energy (Copenhagen, 2010).

  11. European Environment Agency, Annual EU Greenhouse Gas Inventory 1990–2008 (Brussels, 2010), p. 13.

  12. For a comprehensive analysis, see Irene Lorenzoni, Tim O’Riordan and Nick Pidgeon, ‘Hot Air and Cold Feet’, in Compston and Bailey (eds), Turning Down the Heat.

  13. Committee on Climate Change, Meeting Carbon Budgets – The Need for a Step Change (London: HMSO, 2009).

  14. The Climate Change Performance Index, 2010 (Bonn: Greenwatch, 2010).

  15. President Obama: State of the Union Address, 25 January 2011 (Washington: The White House), p. 4.

  16. Pew Research Center for The People and The Press, Little Change in Opinions about Global Warming, 27 October 2010.

  17. Center for Climate Strategies, Impacts of Comprehensive Climate and Energy Policy Options on the US Economy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 2010).

  Chapter 5 A Return to Planning?

  1. John Dryzek, ‘Ecology and Discursive Democracy’, in Martin O’Connor (ed.), Is Capitalism Sustainable? (New York: Guilford Press, 1994), pp. 176–7.

  2. Evan Durbin, Problems of Economic Planning (London: Routl
edge, 1949), p. 41.

  3. Friedrich von Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).

  4. See, for example, David Orrell, The Future of Everything (New York: Thunders Mouth Press, 2006). For a critique of environmental prediction, see Orrin Pilkey and Linda Pilkey Jarvis, Useless Arithmetic (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).

  5. Jaco Quist and Philip Vergragt, ‘Backcasting for Industrial Transformations’, in Klaus Jacob et al. (eds), Governance for Industrial Transformation (Berlin: Environmental Policy Research Centre, 2003), pp. 423–5. Many other examples are discussed in this text.

  6. Cynthia Mitchell and Stuart White, ‘Forecasting and Backcasting for Sustainable Urban Water Futures’, Water 30 (2003).

  7. R. Bord et al., ‘Public Perceptions of Global Warming’, Climate Research 11 (1998).

  8. Ipsos MORI, ‘Public Attitudes to Climate Change 2008’, available on the Ipsos MORI website.

  9. Irene Lorenzoni and Nick Pidgeon, Defining the Dangers of Climate Change and Individual Behaviour (Norwich: Centre for Environmental Risk, University of East Anglia, 2006).

  10. Quoted in Martin Patchen, Public Attitudes and Behavior About Climate Change (Purdue University Outreach Publication, 2006), p. 16. See also Sheldon Ungar, ‘Knowledge, Ignorance and the Popular Culture’, Public Understanding of Science 9 (2000); and John Sterman, ‘Risk Communication on Climate’, Science 322 (2008).

  11. HSBC, ‘International Survey of Public Attitudes Towards Climate Change’, reported on the HSBC website.

  12. Patchen, Public Attitudes, p. 14.

  13. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, A Framework for Pro-Environmental Behaviours (London: HMSO, 2008).

  14. Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder, The Clean Tech Revolution (New York: Collins, 2007), pp. 263–73.

  15. See Ithiel de Sola Pool, The Social Uses of the Telephone (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977).

  16. Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class (New York: Basic Books, 2004), pp. 34–5.

  17. Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point (London: Little, Brown, 2000).

  18. For a discussion of some of these practices, see Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (yes, the self-same destroyer of the precautionary principle), Nudge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).

  19. For this section I am heavily indebted to the work of Sarah Pralle, Branching Out, Digging In (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006), which was drawn to my attention by Hugh Compston. See also Sarah Pralle, ‘Agenda-setting and Climate Change’, in Hugh Compston (ed.), The Politics of Climate Policy, special book issue of Environmental Politics, 2009. As I do, Pralle draws heavily upon John Kingdon’s book, Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies (New York: Longman, 1995).

  20. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies.

  21. D. Wood and A. Velditz, ‘Issue Definition, Information Processing and the Politics of Global Warming’, American Journal of Political Science 51 (2007).

  22. Helen Clayton et al., Report of the First Inquiry of the All Parliamentary Climate Change Group: Is a Cross-Party Consensus on Climate Change Possible – or Desirable? (London: HMSO, 2006), p. 3.

  23. Quoted in ibid., p. 13.

  24. Robin Eckersley, The Green State (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), pp. 243–5. However, she adopts the precautionary principle, which I avoid, and I have somewhat modified her list while, I hope, still maintaining its spirit.

  25. Edelman Trust Barometer 2008 (London: Edelman, 2008).

  26. For an account going up to the late 1990s, see Peter Newell, Climate for Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), ch. 5. The quotation is from p. 98.

  27. Quoted in ibid., p. 104.

  28. Quoted in Peter Senge, The Necessary Revolution (London: Brealey, 2008), p. 77.

  29. Quoted in ibid., p. 77.

  30. Christine MacDonald, Green Inc (London: Lyons Press, 2008).

  31. Senge, The Necessary Revolution, ch. 13.

  32. Details of the company’s ‘2020 Strategic Framework for Sustainability’ is available on its website.

  33. Available on Citigroup’s website.

  34. Charles Prince, CEO of the company, quoted on the Citigroup website in the press release of the $50 billion programme, 8 May 2007.

  35. Senge, The Necessary Revolution, ch. 5.

  Chapter 6 Technologies and Taxes

  1. Jeremy Rifkin, The Hydrogen Economy (New York: Tarcher, 2002).

  2. Ibid., p. 9.

  3. For a caustic survey of hydrogen and other renewable technologies, see James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia (London: Perseus, 2007).

  4. ‘Stewart Brand, an Icon of Environmentalism, Talks About Embracing Nuclear Power’, Newsweek, 21 October 2009.

  5. IPCC, Mitigation. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 269.

  6. (No author): ‘Going Underground’, New Scientist (11 October 2008).

  7. Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder, The Clean Tech Revolution (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).

  8. ‘Dig Deep’, The Economist (21 June 2008).

  9. International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook, 25 November 2010, p. 11.

  10. The Royal Society, Geoengineering the Climate (London), September 2009.

  11. Wallace Broecker and Robert Kunzig, Fixing Climate (New York: Hill & Wang, 2008).

  12. Paul Hawken et al., Natural Capitalism (London: Little, Brown, 1999).

  13. Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala, ‘Stabilization Wedges’, Science 305 (2004), pp. 968–72.

  14. Christopher Freeman, The Economics of Hope (New York: Pinter, 1992).

  15. Nicholas Stern, The Economics of Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), ch. 16.

  16. See Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, The Smartest Guys in the Room (New York: Penguin, 2003).

  17. John Scott and Gareth Evans, ‘Electricity Networks’, in Dieter Helm (ed.), The New Energy Paradigm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

  18. Stern, The Economics of Climate Change, p. 403.

  19. Ibid., p. 402.

  20. Amory B. Lovins et al., ‘A Roadmap for Natural Capitalism’, Harvard Business Review 77 (May/June 1999), pp. 78–81.

  21. Scott and Evans, ‘Electricity Networks’, pp. 51–62.

  22. Swanbarton Limited, Status of Electrical Energy Storage Systems (London: Department of Trade and Industry, 2004).

  23. European Commission, European Union Technology Platform Smartgrids (Luxembourg: Office of Official Publications, 2006).

  24. UNEP, Green Jobs (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute, 2008).

  25. Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, The Death of Environmentalism (2005), p. 26; available at http://www.thebreakthrough.org/images/Death_of_Environmentalism.pdf. See also their subsequent book Break Through (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007).

  26. Van Jones, The Green Economy (Center for American Progress, September 2008).

  27. Robert Pollin et al., Green Recovery (Center for American Progress, September 2008).

  28. Mikael Skou Andersen et al., An Evaluation of the Impact of Green Taxes in the Nordic Countries (Copenhagen: TemaNord, 2000). See also Runar Brannlund and Ing-Marie Gren, Green Taxes, Economic Theory and Empirical Evidence from Scandinavia (Cheltenham: Elgar, 1999).

  29. Gilbert Metcalf, A Green Employment Tax Swap (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2007).

  30. Paul Ekins and Simon Dresner, Green Taxes and Charges (York: Rowntree Foundation, 2004).

  31. Ibid., p. 14.

  32. David Fleming, Energy and the Common Purpose (London: Lean Economy Connection, 2006).

  33. Richard Starkey and Kevin Anderson, Investigating Domestic Tradable Quotas (Norwich: Tyndall Centre, 2005).

  34. Mayer Hillman and Tina Fawcett, How We can Save the Planet (London: Penguin, 2004).

  35. Simon Roberts and Joshua Thumin, A Rough Guide to Individual Carbon Trading (London: Ce
ntre for Sustainable Energy, 2006), p. 3.

  36. Ibid., p. 31.

  37. See John Urry, Mobilities (Cambridge: Polity, 2007).

  38. Tom Vanderbilt, Traffic (London: Allen Lane, 2008).

  39. Jean Gimpel, The Medieval Machine (New York: Penguin, 1977).

  40. James Kunstler, The Long Emergency (London: Atlantic, 2006), p. 270.

  41. I am greatly indebted to John Urry’s Mobilities, referenced above, for this analysis.

  42. John Tiffin and Chris Kissling, Transport Communications (London: Kogan Page, 2007), p. 204.

  Chapter 7 The Politics of Adaptation

  1. European Commission, Adapting to Climate Change in Europe (Brussels: Commission of the European Communities, 2007).

  2. Gwyn Prins and Steve Raynor, The Wrong Trousers (Oxford: James Martin Institute, 2007), pp. 33–4.

  3. European Commission, Adapting to Climate Change in Europe. Green paper of the European Commission, Brussels, 2007.

  4. David Crichton, ‘Insurance and Climate Change’: paper presented at conference on Climate Change, Extreme Events and Coastal Cities, Houston, 9 February 2005, p. 17.