Thank you for your coverage of the impending Business & Climate Summit, by the ever-reliable Michael Stothard and Pilita Clark (April 21). They quote Jean-Pascal Tricoire, CEO of Schneider Electric and one of the organisers, as saying “The [carbon] price needs to be high enough to make a difference and not volatile, so companies can factor... Continue Reading →
Emancipating who from what? Risky business around “emancipatory catastrophism” and #climate change.
Beck, U. (2015) Emancipatory catastrophism: What does it mean to climate change and risk society? Current Sociology Vol . 63 (1) 75-88. Didn’t like this. Sorry to speak ill of the dead (and seriously, RIP Ulrich Beck), but this to me smacked of palimpsesting some wishful (millennial?) thinking onto the ugly “facts” (yes yes, Latour... Continue Reading →
Questions I ask myself about “Responsible Research”
What gets researched (and by extension, what doesn't) Who does the research? With what resources (and what strings attached – what's the accountability) How? When the results are “in,” how are they presented? When? Where? To who? Who is “allowed” to dispute the methodology, how? What is then DONE with the results? How do they... Continue Reading →
The bargaining phase and academics.
“Ecological Modernisation”, “(Ecologically) Sustainable Development,” “Stakeholder Engagement,” “Adaptive Governance,” “Co-design,” “Distributed Governance,” “Strategic Niche Management,” “New International Economic Order,” “New World Order,” “New Public Management,” “Social innovation,” “deliberate social-ecological transformations ,” “earth systems management,” “environmentally conscious manufacturing,” “closed loop” “circular economy” “steady-state”. I am sure you can come up with some of your own.... Continue Reading →
Of mobile phones and climate change – false hopes of transformative leaps…
Chances are you are reading this on a device that has a “QWERTY” keyboard. Is that the most ‘sensible’ format for fast and accurate typing? Probably not – the most common letters in English (AERTSNI) should surely be clustered around the (right) index and forefingers. Why do we have QWERTY? Because back in the day... Continue Reading →
The politics of socio-technical transitions #03
Here's the third post on this topic, ahead of a symposium on Monday. You can read the first one here and the second one here. Mostly I'll be extolling the virtues of; Newell, P. and Paterson, M. (1998) A climate for business: global warming, the state and capital. Review of International Political Economy Vo.. 5... Continue Reading →
Counter-rhetorics and sympathetic strategies…
This below is from page 62-4 TABLER, R. (2008 ) The social construction of a special needs program for hurricanes PhD thesis University of South Florida. It is, imho, a better way of thinking about state-corporate rhetoric and agenda denial, than the standard "legitimacy" framework devised by Lindblom and so on (though those are good!) Counterrhetorics... Continue Reading →
Niche to meet you, meet you niche… The Politics of SusTrans #02
Unless I win t'lottery on the weekend, I'll be at a symposium on Monday, about the politics of socio-technical transitions. My blog about the first two papers is here, fwiw. This one will cover the second two papers. There may be a third post before, on the fifth (optional) paper and some other stuff I... Continue Reading →
Stories we need to tell ourselves…. Politics of SusTrans #01.
Life, as Tom Lehrer said, is like a sewer; what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. With that in mind I am going to write two (three? four?) blogposts about a symposium on the politics of sustainability transitions that I'll be at next Monday. Two or three before, based... Continue Reading →
Of the Australian iron ore price plummet and mining’s “social licence to operate”
Iron Ore royalties leave, just when we needed them most… All is not well in the great Southern quarry that tourists know for its koalas and Ramsay St. For the last ten years selling iron and coal (and building infrastructure to sell ever larger tonnage) kept Australian mining companies busy, and rich. But since early 2011... Continue Reading →
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