Facing and managing climate change: Assumptions, science, and governance responses

Political Science

Volumn 60, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 133-149

  Weber, Edward P ^a,b,c  

^a Thomas S Foley Public Policy Institute

^b Department of Public Administration and Policy ^*

^c WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Assumptions; Authoritarian; Climate change; Democracy; Governance; Scientific uncertainty

Indexed keywords

EID: 57249086535     PISSN: 00323187     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/003231870806000111     Document Type: Article

References (82)

1. James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia: Earth s Climate in Crisis and the Fate of Humanity (New Y orK: Basic BOOKS, 2006).
2. Al Gore, 'At Stake is Nothing Less than the Survival of Human Civilization', Sunday Telegraph (19 November, 2006), www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/uknews/1534549/At-stake-is-nothing-less-than-the-survival-of-human- civilisation.html. (1 May 2008).
3. See also Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What it Means for Life on Earth (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005);
4. Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (New York: Bloomsbury Books, 2007);
5. Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (London, UK: Fourth Estate, 2007)
6. and David Shearman and Joseph W. Smith. The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2007).
7. Daniel B. Botkin, 'Global Warming Delusions,' Wall Street Journal (17 October 2007), p. A19
8. see also Juliet Eilperin, 'Global Warming Skeptics Insist Humans Not at Fault', Washington Post (4 March 2008a), p. A16.
9. 17,000 scientists, Petition Project at www.oism.org/pproject; (emphasis added) access redirected to http://www.petitionproject.org/index.html 20 May 2008.
10. Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What it Means for Life on Earth, pp. 290-300;
11. Shearman and Smim, The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy:
12. William P. Ophuls and A. Stephen Boyan Jr., Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity Revisited: The Unraveling of the American Dream (New York: W.H. Freeman, 1992).
13. Juliet Eilperin, 'Global Warming Skeptics Insist Humans Not at Fault';
14. Jon Jenkins, Jon. 2006. 'A Critique of "The Weathermakers" by Dr. Tim Flannery' (self-published), http://www.orp.org.au/myths/ GreenhouseHysteria.pdf (20 May 2008);
15. Klaus, Vaclav. Blue, Not Green Planet: What is in Danger, Climate or Freedom? (Washington D.C.: the Competitive Enterprise Institute 2007).
16. John Abatzoglou, Joseph F.C. DiMento, Pamela Doughman, and Stefano Nespor, 'A Primer on Global Cimate Change and Its Likely Impacts,' in J. DiMento and P. Doughman, (eds.), Climate Change (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press: 2007), pp. 11-44;
17. Kerry Emmanuel, What We Know about Climate Change (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press: 2007), pp. 23-36;
18. IPCC, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. The Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007;
19. Richard Kerr, 'Climate Change: Greenhouse Forecasting Still Cloudy' Science Vol. 276 (5315), 1997, pp. 1040-1042;
20. Richard S. Lindzen, 'Can Increasing Carbon Dioxide Cause Climate Change? 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 5, Vol. 94, No. 16, 1997, pp. 8335-8342;
21. William Gray, 'Hurricanes and Hot Air.' Wall Street Journal, 26 July 2007, p. A13.
22. As cited in Juliet Eilperin, 'Carbon Output Must Near Zero to Avert Danger, New Studies Say,' Washington Post, 10 March 2008, p. A1.
23. See Roger Pielke Jr., and Daniel Sarewitz, 'Bringing Society Back into the Climate Debate', Population and Environment Vol. 26, No. 3, January 2005, p. 255, but also the nascent efforts of Resilience Alliance researchers such as Carl Folke, Elinor Ostrom, Donald Kettl, Bronwyn Hayward and others. The Resilience Alliance is a loose school of systems theorists, ecologists and social researchers working in co-management that stresses the significance of fast and slow variables in planning and governance, along with the challenge of dealing with uncertainty at temporal and spatial scales. For a good example, see Folke, Hahn, Ollson and Norberg (2005).
24. See also Rayner and Malone (1998, 109) for ten policy suggestions that are alternatives to the idea that emissions reductions are the proper core strategy for coping with climate changes.
25. Walter F. Baber, and Robert V. Bartlett. Deliberative Environmental Politics: Democracy and Ecological Rationality (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005); Pielke Jr. and Sarewitz, 'Bringing Society Back into the Climate Debate', pp. 255-268.
26. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. The Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
27. This paper recognises that the impacts of climate change will be experienced on a regional as well as global basis and that some regions of the globe are more susceptible to the potential damaging effects of change than others. Yet the fact that more than one type of governance response will be needed is all the more reason to explore and elucidate the varying governance responses possible in the face of the differing dimensions of each set of regional outcomes.
28. James McCarthy, Osvaldo Canziani, Neil Leary, David Dokken, and Kasey White (eds.), Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001), p. 946.
29. A focus on societal resilience in the face of massive, rapid climate changes is of limited importance as a policy goal in this assumed scenario, given that rapid and catastrophic change is likely to overwhelm and make moot the resilience capacities of the areas of human society most directly affected by climate change (for example, if seas rise 20 feet or more, developing enhanced resilience in coastal areas subject to the rising, permanent floodwaters make no sense). If the rapid and catastrophic scenario is assumed, it means massive numbers of people and property need to be relocated relatively quickly into new areas. This means that disaster response, relocation, and protective infrastructure policies will almost certainly play more important roles here.
30. The concept of philosopher kings derives from Plato. It accepts that those most suited to ruling, or making governance decisions, are philosophical rulers who undertake a long and rigorous education because the vision of the Good (i.e., what is best for society or collective good) requires extensive preparation and intellectual discipline available only to some.
31. New Zealand Government, New Zealand's Climate Change Solutions: An Overview. (September, 2007) at www.climatechange.govt.nz/files/NZ-Climate- Change-Solutions.pdf (accessed 30 April 2008).
32. Resilience is 'the extent to which a system can absorb recurrent natural and human perturbations and continue to regenerate without slowly degrading or even unexpectedly flipping into less desirable states' (Carl Folke, Thomas Hahn, Per Olsson, and Jon Norberg, 2005. 'Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems', Annual Review of Environmental Resources, Vol. 30, 2005, pp. 442-443.
33. Molly Moore, 'In Northern France, Warming Presses Fall Grape Harvest into Summertime', Washington Post, 2 September 2007, p. A1.
34. Molly Moore, 'In Northern France, Warming Presses Fall Grape Harvest into Summertime'.
35. Donald Kettl, The Transformation of Governance: Public Administration for Twenty-first Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). See also: Pielke, and Sarewitz. 'Bringing Society Back into the Climate Debate', pp. 256;
36. Edward P. Weber and Anne M. Khademian. 'Wicked Problems, Knowledge Challenges, and Collaborative Capacity Builders in Network Settings,' Public Administration Review Vol. 68, No. 2, March-April 2008, pp. 334-349.
37. See Edward P. Weber and Anne M. Khademian, 'Wicked Problems, Knowledge Challenges, and Collaborative Capacity Builders in Network Settings', Public Administration Review, Vol. 68, No. 2, (March-April 2008), pp. 334-349.
38. Edward P. Weber, 'Bringing Society Back In: Grassroots Ecosystem Management, Accountability, and Sustainable Communities' (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003).
39. See also Martha S. Feldman, Anne M. Khademian, Helen Ingram, and Anne S. Schneider, 'Ways of knowing and inclusive management practices', Public Administration Review, 66, December 2006, pp. 89-99.
40. This is a key tenet of the emerging field of sustainability science. See Robert W. Kates, William C. Clark, Robert Corell, J. Michael Hall, Carlo C. Jaeger, Ian Lowe, James J. McCarthy, Hans Joachim Schnellhuber, Bert Bolin, Nancy M. Dickson, Sylvie Faucheux, et al., 'Policy Forum: Environment and Development; Sustainability Science', Science, Vol. 292 (27 April 2001) and Pielke, and Sarewitz, 'Bringing Society Back into the Climate Debate'.
41. Carl Folke, Thomas Hahn, Per Olsson, and Jon Norberg, 'Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems,' Annual Review of Environmental Resources, Vol. 30 (2005), pp. 441-73;
42. Kates et al., 'Policy Forum: Environment and Development; Sustainability Science', pp. 641-42.
43. IPCC, The Physical Sciences Basis, pp. 749 and 752.
44. Eilperin, 'Carbon Output Must Near Zero to Avert Danger, New Studies Say';
45. Flannery, The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What it Means for Life on Earth;
46. Gore, 'At Stake is Nothing Less than the Survival of Human Civilization';
47. Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate in Crisis and the Fate of Humanity.
48. Jenkins, 'A Critique of "The Weathermakers" by Dr. Tim Flannery';
49. see also Richard S. Lindzen, 'Can Increasing Carbon Dioxide Cause Climate Change?' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 5 August 1997, Vol. 94, No. 16, pp 8335-8342.
50. G.A. Meehl, T.F. Stocker, W.D. Collins, P. Friedlingstein, A.T. Gaye, J.M. Gregory, A. Kitoh, R. Knutti, J.M. Murphy, A. Noda, S.C.B. Raper, I.G. Watterson, A.J. Weaver and Z.C. Zhao, 'Global Climate Projections', in, S.D. Solomon, Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.), Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 749.
51. Flannery, The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What it Means for Life on Earth;
52. Gore, 'At Stake is Nothing Less than the Survival of Human Civilization'.
53. Botkin, 'Global Warming Delusions'.
54. IPCC, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science, p. 751.
55. The worst case scenario associated with the melting of Greenland-based ice and snow, according to the IPCC is a total of eight inches of sea level rise, and this is predicated on a model where carbon dioxide levels increase anywhere from two to four times more than expected by the SRES 3-Model Subset for the year 2100 (IPCC, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis).
56. Meehl et al., 'Global Climate Projections', p. 752.
57. Meehl et al., 'Global Climate Projections', p. 752.
58. Bjorn Lomborg, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (New York: Knopf Publishers, 2007), pp. 90-92.
59. Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate in Crisis and the Fate of Humanity;
60. see also Flannery, The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What it Means for Life on Earth;
61. Shearman and Smith, The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy.
62. This is also cited as A. McMichael, D. Campbell-Lendrum, C. Corvalan, K. Ebi, A. Githeko, J. Scheraga, and A. Woodward, (eds.), Climate Change and Human Health: Risks and Responses, (Geneva: WHO/WMO/UNEP, 2003). It is the most comprehensive of the data sources employed by the IPCC 2007 (407) to estimate disease and death due to changes in cold and heat events.
63. See IPCC, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science, p. 107.
64. WHO and WMO Climate Change and Human Health: Risks and Responses 2003;
65. U. Confalonieri, B. Menne, R. Akhtar, K. L. Ebi, M. Hauengue, R. S. Kovats, B. Revich, and A. Woodward. 2007. 'Human Health', in Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. The Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 391-431.
66. Lomborg, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, pp. 93-94.
67. The failure to factor in lives saved by fewer extreme cold events was also a key omission in the IPCC 2007 report, which relied on the same 2003 WHO/WMO/UNEP for its heat and cold death figures, yet chose to only report the extra deaths from warming.
68. The other reason the net population increase qualifies as a positive trend is that the most recent United Nations projections for global population growth in the 21" century show greater population stability and even a declining global population by the end of the century rather than confirming the long-held conventional wisdom of an exponentially exploding human population.
69. See William Gray, 'Hurricanes and Hot Air', Wall Street Journal (26 July 2007), p. A13; Greenpeace, 'Global Warnings' (2004), accessed 20 April 2007, from www.greepeace.org/international/news/extreme-weather-wamings;
70. Kerry Emmanuel, 'Increasing Destructiveness of Tropical Cyclones', Nature Vol. 436 (2005), pp. 686-688;
71. P.J. Webster, G.J. Holland, J.A. Curry, and H.R. Chang, 'Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration and Intensity in a Warming Environment', Science, Vol. 309 (2005), pp. 1844-1846;
72. and see Gray 'Hurricanes and Hot Air' for a science-based skeptics response.
73. Emmanuel, What We Know about Climate Change, p. 50;
74. Pielke and Sarewitz, 'Bringing Society Back into the Climate Debate'.
75. IPCC, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, p. 107.
76. IPCC, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, p. 107 (emphasis added).
77. Emmanuel, What We Know about Climate Change, pp. 26-27;
78. Richard S. Lindzen, M.D. Chou, and A.Y. Hou, 'Does the Earth have an adaptive infrared iris?, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Vol. 82 (2001), pp. 417-432.
79. IPCC, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, p. 95.
80. Emmanuel, What We Know about Climate Change, p. 53.
81. Baber and Bartlett, Deliberative Environmental Politics: Democracy and Ecological Rationality;
82. Pielke and Sarewitz, 'Bringing Society Back into the Climate Debate'.