Is renewable energy still green? Shaping Australia’s renewable energy enterprise in an age of ecological modernisation

ABSTRACT

Renewable energy (RE) illustrates well the logic of ecological modernisation (EM). This logic has successfully transformed RE from a fringe idea owned by largely environmental actors to a mainstream one embraced by a broader constituency. This mainstream embrace inevitably (re)shapes the renewables enterprise. Not all renewables actors today are driven by environmental goals. Instead, key actors, particularly in corporate or community domains, nurture competing norms and aspirations. How the renewables project is envisaged and the goals it is directed to serve can thus differ considerably. Understanding these differences is important since transformations in the energy domain will not only impact climate protection but shape social futures in significant ways. The analysis proceeds in two interrelated steps: first, empirically – conducting an exploration of some of the main projects and actors in the contemporary Australian RE space; and second, theoretically – considering these empirical developments through an EM lens.     

Prospects for a multi-stakeholder dialogue on climate engineering

ABSTRACT

Lessons from the literature on multi-stakeholder dialogue (MSD) that are relevant to the debate on climate engineering (CE) are examined. MSDs have been used to prod slow-to-develop intergovernmental regulatory processes on a range of transnational and global controversies. A CEMSD might push forward anticipatory governance of CE by promoting social learning, sharpening and legitimizing governance norms, and starting to arrange the political space for governance by states. However, significant challenges and risks are also identified, including questions about the ripeness of the issue for stakeholder dialogue; difficult trade-offs in the design of dialogues, particularly around issues of participation and knowledge-power; and inherent tensions in the various purposes a CEMSD might serve. Given these challenges, steps forward that would better prepare a space for legitimate and effective dialogue are recommended.     

Hannah Arendt’s turn to the self and environmental responses to climate change paralysis

Environmentalists have struggled with how to mobilize people to act in the face of widespread and now inevitable consequences of climate change. Significant responses to this challenge, such as incentivizing individual Green choices in the market and avoiding the rhetoric of catastrophe, continue the philosophical and political trends, identified by Hannah Arendt, that contribute to world alienation and the decline of politics. Environmental thinkers are invited to use Arendt’s theories of the turn to the self and political action to think critically about contemporary strategies to address climate change.     

Climate voting in the US Congress: the power of public concern

In the United States, few constituents know and understand climate policy, prioritize it as a political topic, or let their voting decisions depend on it. In these conditions, representatives would not be expected to pay heed to constituents’ climate concern in their voting decisions. Still, even after controlling for the presence of interest groups, campaign finance, and legislators’ party affiliation and ideology, there is a consistent link between public opinion and votes on cap-and-trade legislation in the House (and to a lesser degree in the Senate). The same is true when public opinion is simulated based on pre-vote district characteristics. Explanations for these findings are discussed.     

Do global climate summits influence public awareness and policy preferences concerning climate change?

A survey-embedded experiment implemented around the time of the 2014 annual Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (N ≈ 1200) examined whether such summits are able to increase citizens’ awareness of climate problems. This study finds that exposure to positive or negative cues about the COP increases climate change awareness, particularly among participants who start out with a low level of awareness. Neither positive nor negative cues about the COP significantly affect people’s policy preferences. Our finding resonates with Bernard Cohen’s observation that the mass media may not often be successful in telling people what to think, but they are successful in telling readers what to think about.     

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.     

Climate policy support under political consensus: exploring the varying effect of partisanship and party cues

By creating attitudinal rifts among partisan voters, political polarization is expected to negatively affect chances of effectively mitigating climate change. While such expectations generally have found support, less attention has been paid to the opposite claim that political consensus should eliminate the partisan dimension in climate change politics. This study tests this claim by studying how party identification, and party cues specifically, affects public policy attitudes in a context defined by political consensus. Using data from a large online access panel in Sweden, party identification and party cues are shown to matter for policy attitudes even in a consensus context. This effect is not limited to certain issues but is found across a wide range of policies, and the effect of party cues, for a given issue, varies across parties. The implications of this study and areas for future work are discussed.     

The News You Choose: news media preferences amplify views on climate change

How do choices among information sources reinforce political differences on topics such as climate change? Environmental sociologists have observed large-scale and long-term impacts from news media and think-tank reports, while experimental science-communication studies detect more immediate effects from variations in supplied information. Applying generalized structural equation modeling to recent survey data, previous work is extended to show that political ideology, education and their interaction predict news media information choices in much the same way they predict opinions about climate change itself. Consequently, media information sources serve as intervening variables that can reinforce and, through their own independent effects, amplify existing beliefs about climate change. Results provide empirical support for selective exposure and biased assimilation as mechanisms widening political divisions on climate change in the United States. The findings fit with the reinforcing spirals framework suggesting partisan media strengthens climate change beliefs which then influences subsequent use of media.     

The spillover of race and racial attitudes into public opinion about climate change

The relationship between racial attitudes and public opinion about climate change is examined. Public opinion data from Pew and American National Election Studies surveys are used to show that racial identification and prejudices are increasingly correlated with opinions about climate change during the Obama presidency. Results show that racial identification became a significant predictor of climate change concern following Obama’s election in 2008, and that high levels of racial resentment are strongly correlated with reduced agreement with the scientific consensus on climate change. These results offer evidence for an effect termed the spillover of racialization. This helps further explain why the public remains so polarized on climate change, given the extent to which racial grievances and identities have become entangled with elite communication about climate change and its related policies today.     

砂尘试验箱原理分析改进及相关标准探讨

结合砂尘的产生和运动机理,对砂尘试验箱的设计原理和应用特点进行了说明,着重对吹砂程中空气的温度和湿度、砂尘颗粒直径比例进行了分析,对气固两相流中颗粒浓度的均匀性进行了探讨。基于砂尘的运动特性,国内应用较普遍采用的闭式循环吹砂试验设备,无法实现砂的有效分离,导致吹砂试验箱试验过程中颗粒直径比例不满足GJB 150.12A要求。在MIL-STD-810H中,已经取消了对吹砂试验相对湿度≤30%的要求。基于吹尘和吹砂引起的不同环境效应,结合吹尘和吹砂试验设备原理和国内已有设备的现状,对现有试验方法和校准规范的完善、砂尘试验箱的改进设计提出了建议和意见。同时文中也介绍了国外开式、闭式循环、可变循环等几种不同类型的砂尘试验箱作为参考,基于砂尘试验的破坏机理提出了砂尘试验箱的分类和选型建议。