Climate change adaptation approaches with nomadic culture characteristics in Inner Mongolia grassland in China

Climate change adaptation is an important part of addressing climate warming. Inner Mongolia grassland is a sensitive and vulnerable area of climate and an important region for adaptation to climate change. New climate change adaptation approaches with nomadic culture characteristics should be exploded in the context of climate warming. In this paper, the different utilization pattern of grassland in different regions, the different modes of production and management and historical culture were analyzed first in Nenjiang–West Liaohe plain and Ke’erqin region, Inner Mongolia Plateau and Ordos Plateau. Then, nomadic culture on the grassland was discussed from the productivity to biodiversity, from local livestock variety to resource-used system. Finally, new approaches of climate change adaptation with inheriting the essence of nomadic culture were proposed, including protecting biodiversity and using resources reasonably, performing a practice of grazing suspension–rotational grazing system, fencing degenerated grassland to facilitate its growth, founding new farming and husbandry system on the grassland, and establishing an incentive mechanism favorable to grassland and ethical cultural protection.     

特朗普“去气候化”政策对全球气候治理的影响

美国特朗普政府宣布退出《巴黎协定》是当前全球气候治理中最受舆论关注的问题,对事态发展趋势的判断和事件影响的评估是最为亟需的。本文系统分析了特朗普政府上任后推行的一系列"去气候化"政策,以及其退出《巴黎协定》的主要动因和可能形式,同时量化评估了这些内政外交的"倒退"对美国实施国家自主贡献目标以及全球气候治理格局的实质影响,并据此提出了中国应对全球气候治理新形势变化的对策和建议。研究表明,特朗普政府"美国优先"的能源政策根植于复兴制造业和加大基础设施投资的经济利益动机,随着特朗普"去气候化"进程持续发酵,诸多气候政策面临存续风险,美国实施国家自主贡献将面临严峻挑战,"倒行政策"将有可能使美国温室气体排放出现反弹。如果不考虑中、高危气候政策,美国2025年温室气体排放也仅能相对2005年下降11.0%—14.9%,距离下降26%—28%的国家自主贡献目标相去甚远。同时,特朗普政府拒绝继续履行向发展中国家提供气候资金支持的义务,将有可能导致绿色气候基金拖欠资金总额上升117%,并进一步挫伤全球低碳投资的信心。没有美国的全球气候治理3.0时代将呈现出新的复杂特征,并不可避免地造成减排、资金和领导力缺口的持续扩大,也不排除后续会出现消极的跟随者,整体进程将可能进入一个低潮周期。虽然国际社会对中国引领全球气候治理充满期待,但中国仍应审慎对待,长远谋划应对气候变化的内政外交战略,而不应将"气候举旗"看作是一蹴而就的短期策略,对各种要求中国发挥"领导作用"的说法保持清醒头脑。在今后气候谈判中,美国仍有较大可能会二次"要价",中国作为排放大国的压力依然不容小觑,中美气候关系需要再定位。     

Dividing and Uniting Through Naming: The Case of North Carolina's Sea-Level-Rise Policy

Opponents of a proposed sea-level-rise policy in North Carolina, USA, reasoned rhetorically to promote a narrative claiming that the policy supporters’ efforts had failed to meet the criteria of “good” science and the American dream expectancy of “progress.” The critics worked to hinder policy adoption by naming as “villains” scientists who provided research to support the proposed policy. In addition, the opponents named their own efforts to prevent policy based on “bad” science that would “destroy” the American dream as “heroic.” To more effectively respond to such narratives, scientists and policy proponents need to shift away from reporting just climate change “facts” in the attempt to gain stakeholder support for mitigation and adaptation initiatives. They need to move toward reasoning rhetorically to construct narratives that encourage the public to name them as the “heroes” who will achieve the American dream by their actions to mitigate climate-change outcomes.     

Proposing of new building scheme and composite towards global warming mitigation for Malaysia

The building sector has been regarded as a potential sector where there is large capacity to reduce the climate change effect. This study has proposed solutions to mitigate environmental impacts and achieve low CO₂ emission from residential sector. Therefore, full life cycle assessment (LCA) has been run to assess the CO₂ emission and its effect on the atmosphere and climate change. Based on the result, timber scheme is the best choice due to releasing less CO₂ emissions to the atmosphere. However, house builders in Malaysia have almost completely neglected timber as a building material, with timber use as building components reduced to 5%. In this study, LCA Software was used to assess CO₂ emissions from different wall construction. The alternative building scheme has been made by reinforce steel stud, wooden beam and timber wall (S8) to improve the scheme deficiency while releasing less CO₂ emissions compared to other schemes. Therefore, S8 has a decreased CO₂ effect by 85% less than precast concrete frame and 90% less than brick over their lifetime. (S8) increased the load bearing compared to conventional timber beam. Thus, new scheme S8 could be replaced by current scheme and promote more adjustable scheme for Malaysian housing.     

Another avenue of action: an examination of climate change countermovement industries’ use of PAC donations and their relationship to Congressional voting over time

The political mobilization of American business elites in the 1970s and 1980s has been well studied by political scientists. Environmental sociologists have explored how industries in this elite countermovement have organized to prevent environmental legislation. The literature often focuses on the efforts of this movement to shape public opinion on climate change. However, political scientists argue business elites are running several parallel strategies simultaneously in order to protect their interests. FEC data are utilized in multilevel logit models to examine how donations from industrial Political Action Committees (PACs) relate to Congressional representative’s environmental voting behavior over a 20-year period. Industries associated with the environmental countermovement have increasingly used PAC donations over time, and every additional $10,000 a representative received from countermovement industries significantly decreased odds of their taking the pro-environmental stance even when controlling for representatives’ demographics, districts, Congressional polarization and time-period.     

Moral reasoning in adaptation to climate change

Moral foundations theory argues that moral reasoning is widely observed and fundamental to the legitimacy of relevant governance and policy interventions. A new analytical framework to examine and test how moral reasoning underpins and legitimizes governance and practice on adaptation to climate change risks is proposed. It develops a typology of eight categories of vulnerability-based and system-based moral reasoning that pertain to the dilemmas around adaptation and examines the prevalence of these moral categories in public discourse about specific adaptation issues. The framework is tested using data on climate change impact, adaptation, and societal responsibility, drawn from 14 focus groups comprising 148 participants across the UK. Participants consistently use moral reasoning to explain their views on climate adaptation; these include both vulnerability-based and system-based framings. These findings explain public responses to adaptation options and governance, and have implications for the direction of adaptation policy, including understanding which types of reasoning support politically legitimate interventions.     

Taming the Climate? Corpus analysis of politicians’ speech on climate change

The politics of climate change is much discussed, but there has been little investigation into how politicians themselves understand or articulate the issue. Corpus analysis, a method developed within linguistics, is used to investigate how UK politicians talk about climate change, using the example of the 2008 Climate Change Bill. Corpus techniques, including keyword analysis, collocation and semantic tagging, are used, alongside critical reading of the text. The analysis shows that politicians frame climate change as an economic and technical issue, and neglect discussion of the human and social dimensions. They are selective in their use of scientific evidence, with little mention of abrupt or irreversible change. In doing so, they attempt to ‘tame’ climate change, rather than confronting difficult realities. While this strategy has the benefit of political acceptability, it does not allow for discussion of the full political and social implications of climate change, and precludes more radical responses.     

Elite cues,media coverage,and public concern: an integrated path analysis of public opinion on climate change, 2001–2013

To analyze the factors affecting US public concern about the threat of climate change between January 2002 and December 2013, data from 74 separate surveys are used to construct quarterly measures of public concern over global climate change. Five factors should account for changes in levels of concern: extreme weather events, public access to accurate scientific information, media coverage, elite cues, and movement/countermovement advocacy. Structural equation modeling indicates that elite cues, movement advocacy efforts, weather, and structural economic factors influence the level of public concern about climate change. While media coverage exerts an important influence, it is itself largely a function of elite cues and economic factors. Promulgation to the public of scientific information on climate change has no effect. Information-based science advocacy has had only a minor effect on public concern, while political mobilization by elites and advocacy groups is critical in influencing climate change concern.     

Local air pollution and global climate change taxes: a distributional analysis for the case of Spain

Global climate change measures are difficult to implement. In this context, local air pollution measures may play an important role in the political agenda since their effects are felt more immediately by citizens. Distributional implications are one of the main barriers for implementing environmental policies. This paper explores the distributional implications of air pollution taxes and compares them to climate change taxes. For the comparison, both tax schemes were set to yield the same revenue. Methodologically, the study uses a top–down approach linking a macro model to a micro model. We find that taxes on local air pollutants are more regressive than those levied on CO₂. This is because the goods implicitly taxed have a greater weight in the consumer basket of low-income groups, even if the tax revenues are recycled. Furthermore, the revenue-neutral recycle scheme increases both taxes efficiency, but, at the same time, can increase regressivity.     

胶合竹材GluBam甲醛释放影响因素的气候箱实验与分析

胶合竹材GluBam的甲醛释放情况是现代竹结构住宅环保性的一个重要方面,也是竹结构住宅推广中最受关注的指标之一。采用1 m3气候箱对温度、相对湿度和封边情况与GluBam的甲醛释放量和释放速率的相关关系进行了测试,并以一阶单衰减模型为基础提出了GluBam的甲醛释放分析模型。测试和分析结果表明:GluBam板材在各模拟条件下甲醛浓度峰值均小于规范要求;初始甲醛释放量E0和衰减率常数k可以用来评价GluBam的甲醛释放特征;GluBam的醛释放量和释放速率随环境温度和湿度增加而显著增大,且温度因素的影响更大;封边处理可以有效降低GluBam板材的甲醛释放量。