COP 21 Charades: Spin,Lies and Real Hope in Paris

Abstract

UN Climate talks have become an annual fixture on the global diplomatic calendar since 1995. Some have been praised, others denounced, but the levels of greenhouse gas emissions have risen regardless year-on-year. This essay and eyewitness account argues that the Paris COP 21 talks like its predecessors failed to deliver a meaningful result, judged from either a scientific or social justice point-of-view. However it did reveal the presence of a growing and increasingly sophisticated and powerful climate justice movement that heralds the most hope for a just response to the global climate crisis     

The Road Through Paris: Climate Change,Carbon, and the Political Dynamics of Convergence

Abstract

This article tracks the key events that set the stage for the 21st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris, particularly as they relate to politics of convergence. One side of this coming together is an intersection of issues, where new terrestrial and aquatic carbon sequestration programs have blurred the margins of climate change mitigation and resource grabbing. These programs, enclosing forests, farmlands, and oceans, are likewise fused together in what can be described as an emerging ‘carbon complex’ that is part of the wider blue/green economy. On the reverse side, the clear intersection of issues as witnessed by radical, and historically sectoral, agrarian/social justice movements is causing them to intertwine in resistance. The realm of climate change has proven to be an exceptional space of struggle and countermovement building. Political interactions between movements have become increasingly sophisticated—requiring frameworks that address environmental, agrarian, and oceanic issues at once, as the issues have become ever more complex. Agrarian/social justice movements maintain that their agendas for food sovereignty and climate justice hinge upon exposing fault lines in the system and advocate overall system change. COP21 and its parallel side events were together a landmark moment, but part of a much more involved process, ‘the road through Paris’, along which movements had carved out transnational and local spaces of convergence against the backdrop of a global carbon complex.     

Global Climate Emergency: after COP24, climate science,urgency, and the threat to humanity

ABSTRACT

This Special Editorial on the Climate Emergency makes the case that although we are living in the time of Global Climate Emergency we are not yet acting as if we are in an imminent crisis. The authors review key aspects of the institutional response and climate science over the past several decades and the role of the economic system in perpetuating inertia on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Humanity is now the primary influence on the planet, and events in and around COP24 are the latest reminder that we live in a pathological system. A political economy has rendered the UNFCCC process as yet a successful failure. Fundamental change is urgently required. The conclusions contain recommendations and a call to action now.     

Russia and the Kyoto Protocol: The Long Road to Ratification

The Russian Federation played a crucial role in the Kyoto Protocol's ratification. Indeed, after the United States withdrawal, its ratification turned out to be indispensable for the Protocol to become legally binding. In early 2002, Russia decided to initiate the ratification process. However, the country long hesitated to fulfil its promises, and for the last two years it sent numerous contradictory signals with respect to its position on climate policy. Consequently, the factors that shape Russia's behaviour in the context of climate negotiations have received increasing attention. The main focus has been on the economic and international aspects motivating the Russian strategy. This paper attempts to complete this analysis by concentrating on a further feature that significantly contributed to Russia's final decision, namely, domestic forces. These factors have often been overlooked in the discussion of the Russian strategy. In order to fill this gap, this paper reconstructs the Russian ratification process, trying to identify the main domestic players and their role.     

The Right Turn in Economic Policy: Business Elites and the New Conservative Economics

Sociological Forum - What was the role of business elites in the development of the new conservative economic policies? Corporate elite and class fraction arguments have been invoked to explain...     

A University-Community Partnership to Change Public Policy

Abstract

This paper describes a project aimed at promoting major change in government policy toward the growing problem of food insecurity in Israel. The project was initiated by Ben-Gurion University in collaboration with community service and social advocacy organizations. This joint action led to a dramatic change in government activity. The problem of food insecurity moved from a state of obfuscation to the establishment of a special ministerial committee mandated to develop policy guidelines for a national school lunch program. For higher education to contribute to the community, necessary preconditions must exist: Is the faculty committed to promotion of social change? Do the organizational and community environments legitimize university-sponsored activity for such purposes? Is the faculty competent to act effectively in the community and adopt strategies for political influence? Are there organizational mechanisms, action frameworks, and community contacts that enable collaboration for the purposes of social change? This case discussion uses the analytical framework developed by Taylor (1985) to evaluate the preconditions for action and the processes involved in facilitating university-community collaboration for promoting policy change.     

Going Green: Environmental Protest,Policy, and CO2 Emissions in U.S. States, 1990–2007

A major goal of the environmental movement is to conserve or improve the natural environment, but evidence showing that environmental mobilization produces positive environmental outcomes is mixed. This article addresses a fundamental question about the relative impact of pro‐environmental mobilization and the scope of an environmental policy regime on the natural environment. Using panel data at the state level from 1990 through 2007, we explore how environmental protest and environmental policies independently (or jointly) reduce CO₂ emissions in U.S. states. We find that the level of emissions in a state declines in states with increases in pro‐environmental protest, net of the effects of the range of environmental policies enacted, gasoline taxes, liberal attitudes, reliance on the fossil fuel industry, number of registered lobbyist organizations, gross state product, and population size.     

Social Change and Social Policy in China: National Adaptation to Global Challenge

As a part of designed human intervention against social problems, social policy has to respond and adapt to social changes. In this article, the author aims to discuss social changes that occurred in the past decade in China (including economic, demographic, and cultural changes) and relate them to relevant social policies formulated by the Chinese government to address the concerned social issues. To interpret the roles of the state, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the community in tackling social problems in the changing context of the market economy and globalization, the author attempts to provide a theoretical explanation on the emergence of social policy in China in a new era and to further re-assess the concept of the welfare regime in East Asian countries.     

World Elder Abuse Awareness Day: The Concept,the Reality,and the Promise

This commentary traces the origins and evolution of the World Elder Abuse Awareness Day (WEAAD) initiative and provides recommendations for increasing WEAAD’s impact as a catalyst for a coordinated movement within the United States.     

The NOICC/SOICC Network: Policy,Programs, and Partners, 1976–2000

This historical and reflective account of the National Occupational Information Coordinating Committee's (NOICC) and the State Occupational Information Coordinating Committees’ (SOICCs) significant development of a national infrastructure that shaped career development policy, practice, and training from 1976 to 2000 offers key lessons for future development practice and potential in the United States and beyond. The establishment of the NOICC/SOICC network marked a turning point in the systematic development and delivery of standardized occupational information and supporting resources designed to meet the needs of career development, education and training program design, and employer information requirements. NOICC's core occupational information activities and national career development guidelines and programs are discussed. Public policy that supports career information and counseling services is suggested.     

The Importance of GLBT Think Tanks to Our Agenda of Equality and Liberation

SUMMARY

The gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) movement should support research, policy analysis, and strategy development to advance greater understanding and equality of GLBT people. Most public policy frameworks affect GLBT people in particular ways, but we have not yet developed analyses of these frameworks, let alone articulated perspectives in critical policy debates affecting us. This article illustrates how the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force works on identifying the concerns of GLBT people through research and policy analysis to provide the basis for more effective and proactive organizing.     

中国区域公共服务水平均等化差异演变:1997-2007

基于我国31个省区公共服务各方面的统计数据,利用主成分分析法,定量考察了1997-2007年间各省区教育水平、公共卫生、社会保障、基础设施、科学技术、环境保护、公共安全水平的差异变化情况。     

Rethinking the policy influence of experts: From general characterizations to analysis of variation

This paper first surveys the four principal positions in the debate about the policy influence of professional experts — technocracy, extensive mandates, limited mandates, and servants of power — and finds none entirely satisfactory. While the limited mandates position is the best general characterization of the policy influence of experts, many instances reveal more extensive influence. The papers argues for shifting the discussion from general characterizations to the systematic analysis of variation in the extent and significance of professional influence. A framework for analyzing this variation is proposed. The framework highlights the importance of depoliticization, the framing of issues as narrowly technical or involving the protection of a central cultural value, political situations that encourage the informal capture of power by professional experts or the delegation of power to experts, and the differing level of legitimacy enjoyed by professional occupations, based on their centrality in social regulation.     

Climate change: a complex societal process; analyzing a problem according to the Compram methodology

Abstract

In this article some issues about the theory of societal complexity are explained: what are complex societal problems and how should these be handled. The problem of climate change is used as an illustration. The Compram methodology is a methodology based on the theory of societal complexity that gives guidelines to handle reallife complex societal problems such as climate change. Handling according to the Compram methodology supports defining and changing a complex societal problem in a sustainable way. In this article the focus of the methodology is on the relation between the steps in the Compram methodology and the problem-handling phases.     

The Bumpy Road to a Tobacco-Free Community: Lessons from Well City

Over 880 communities have put regulations in place to reduce or eliminate tobacco use in buildings used by the public. This study examines the experience of one such community—Well City, Ohio. The nonsmoker protection efforts in Well City help us identify and discuss eight important considerations affecting policy development and implementation: (1) anticipate community opposition, (2) identify and collaborate with a support network, (3) control the community hearing process, (4) anticipate outside interests, (5) recognize the potential for legal challenges, (6) address life with legal limbo, (7) start strong, and (8) watch the mix of politics and public health. Current clean indoor air efforts seem to focus on establishing coalitions and encouraging employers to voluntarily establish tobacco-free workplaces and restaurants. These efforts certainly need to continue but as a basic part of a comprehensive program which recognizes the importance and fosters the development of strong nonsmoker protection regulations developed at the local level by health boards, county boards of supervisors, and/or city councils.     

The end(s) of immanence in the anthropocene: militarized ecologies and the future of Deleuzian thought

Two features bear down fundamentally on our current historical occasion: structures of security, and breakdowns of planetary ecosystems. This essay argues that Deleuze is not only tracing a “geophilosophy” (that is, a nonhuman-centered theory of history that includes a geohistory of the planet) that moves from nomadic through State and finally through neoliberal forms that extend beyond the power of the State, but that he is also moving toward a theory of “control” that can teach us a great deal about the rise of the security society and its relation to the anthropocene. More specifically, this essay argues that philosophy is at a moment when the stakes of Deleuze’s conceptualizations of “immanence” have changed. This change hinges on the ecological circumstances of the twenty-first century – a set of conditions considerably underway, involving a course unlikely to change in time to reverse the seriousness of the situation (due in part to the supremacy of a self-destructive international neoliberal politics). The essay concludes by more sharply defining the workings of security in relation to immanence in the anthropocene.     

Sovereignty in a Changing World: From Westphalia to Food Sovereignty

This article traces the shifting meaning of the notion of sovereignty from the modern age to the age of globalization and its aftermath, envisaging new constellations of sovereignty taking shape across the globe. Observing the term's centrality in the configuration of the modern nation-state and its epochal semantic shifts, it briefly examines the concept's ‘decline’ during the era of globalization. It then introduces the notion of ‘liquid sovereignty’ in the context of rapidly changing ideas of territoriality, power, and inter-dependence. This in turn, it is argued, is connected with the surfacing of new forms of sovereignty centred on aliments, nutrition, and survival, encapsulated in the notion of ‘food sovereignty’. The article suggests that the food sovereignty movement has helped in the recovery of basic aspects of sovereignty in a world threatened by climate change and neo-liberal globalization, as the cosmopolitical dimension merged with ethno-political claims, particularly amongst Indigenous Peoples in the Americas and, to a lesser extent, Western sub-state nationalist movements.     

The Shelf Life of a Disaster: Post‐Fukushima Policy Change in The United States And Germany

How can large‐scale disasters prompt policy change beyond the local environment in which they occurred? Working at the intersection of political sociology, disaster studies, and cultural sociology, we introduce the concept of the shelf life of a disaster to analyze the short and limited impact of Fukushima Daiichi on U.S. nuclear energy policy and its vitality within Germany. American media, nuclear industry representatives, regulators, and policy makers contributed to a tepid political environment for policy change by expanding symbolic distance from Fukushima, focusing on U.S. superiority to Japanese infrastructures. While this technicist orientation was evident in Germany as well, its distancing effects were offset by a conjunction of mechanisms that packaged Fukushima as a precursor to an inevitable German nuclear catastrophe.