Climate and Market Solutions / Collapse

Climate and Market Solutions

These readings encompassed a lot of discussion on how markets impact the climate change discussion, and how they influence emissions and policy decisions as well.  Rood and Thoumi discussed how the economy influences carbon emissions, specifically discussing the "carbon market".  Carbon production seems to indicate economic success, at least in the minds of economists.  Carbon emissions indicate a thriving energy system.  All of the articles seemed to emphasize a cap on emissions, which would allow companies that are regular emitters to have a certain amount that they can emit, and if they use under their allotted amount, they can sell their emission credits to bigger emitting companies.  One of the drawbacks to any change in the policies, especially those that just limit emissions without trying to stop it in total, is that the effect of cutting emissions is not realized until years after the action is taken, making companies and countries delay action until their reign is over.

Jasanoff reading:

This reading emphasized the problems with climate science.  One issue with it, is that it goes against social institutions and ethical commitments in four different concrete ways: (1) communal, (2) political, (3) spatial, (4) temporal.  It tends to deny anything to do with social science, focusing instead on graphs and diagrams and predictions that distance itself from anything that a lay person would be able to relate to.

Science used to mirror nature, but now it has become impersonal, distanced from meaning.  Those meanings would have been derived from shared experiences and glimpses of a shared environment.  However, science paints the environment as a system that seems to need science and technology, while distancing itself from social and cultural settings, thus creating a dichotomy between natural and cultural worlds.

Climate change, as mentioned in the economic papers, does not exist over lenths of time that we perceive.  

(1) Community: Science does not relate to human existence, or living.  Instead, it distances itself from everything to do with social sciences.

(2) Politics: People live in defined territorial boundaries, with different governments, different regulations that have different rates of production, power, pollution, etc.

(3) Space: People have gradually come to realize private property, spawning the "not in my back yard" movement.  However, climate change encompasses whole earth, not bending or dividing itself between nations, spaces or political factions.

(4) Time: People seem to only think in near-future, and short-term time increments, not in longer, earth-like times.

Rees:

The ability of planet to sustain life should not be taken for granted.  This article emphasized that humans are products of evolution, with ingrained behaviors that we evolved to solve problems, which also end up not being helpful to todays world.  Genetically, we are inclined to expand to occupy all habitats and use all available resources.  Through energy use, biomass consumption, etc. we have exceeded our original constraints and taken over the planet in remarkable and destructive ways.  We have exercised our evolved need to keep up with others, using evolving technology.  Now, everything is accessible, we are beyond carrying capacity.  The article ended with the dichotomy of a conflicted humanity: reason/moral justifications for saving the earth and inborn, destructive survival mechanisms.