Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Spanish

French

Emphasis has shifted in climate change politics from fear to dreams and opportunities. This article demonstrates that many social science analyses of anthropogenic climate change are characterized by utopian presumptions, including technological mastery of nature, and that key concepts such as post-carbon society, decarbonization, low-carbon transitions, ecological direction of travel, and ecological modernization have not been defined in terms of the absolute amount of emissions appropriate for anthropogenic global warming. It shows that time-cost discounting is erroneous. These misleading conceptions give false positives for improvement and sustain wishful thinking in societies that have locked themselves into carbon-based infrastructures where default options are fossil fuels leading to an emerging path-dependent hypercarbon world. The article explains how those concepts can be reconceptualized to increase validity and also suggests accurate concepts like time-cost exacerbation, low-carbon and decarbonization transition searches, and ecological modernization niches. By comparing longue durée emitting societies, it documents the superiority of (1) social democracy over neoliberalism in transitioning to low-carbon economies while enhancing democracy, equity, and prosperity, and (2) multitasking of international mitigation commitments with local mitigation, adaptation, and resilience. The article seeks to stimulate research into learning from better performing societies to innovate transitions of institutions and culture to robustly defined low-carbon economies.

Keywords

Climate change ecological modernization niches low-carbon societies post-carbon utopias social democracy

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Archer

. (2009) Atmospheric lifetime of fossil fuel carbon dioxide. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 37: 117–134.

ASA (American Sociological Association) (2012) Real utopias: Emancipatory projects, institutional designs, possible futures. Available at: www.asanet.org/AM2012/meeting_theme.cfm (accessed 1 November 2012).

Bloch

(1995 [1954]) The Principle of Hope. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Burawoy

(2011) Response to Russel Jacoby. Dissent, February. Available at: www.dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=445 (accessed 17 November 2012).

Butler

(2012) Global Gini Index. Available at: www.mongabay.com/reference/stats/rankings/2172.html (accessed 2 July 2012). (All data from the CIA World Factbook. Last updated 25 January 2010).

Campbell

(2013) The Petro-Path not Taken. Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Available at: www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2013/01/Petro%20Path%20Not%20Taken_0.pdf (accessed 22 October 2013).

Chung

Muntaner

(2007) Welfare that matters. Health Policy 80: 328–339.

Clarke

Stanford

Gibson

Haley

(2013) The Bitumen Cliff. Ottawa: Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Davidson

Andrews

(2013) Not all about consumption. Science 339(6125): 1286–1287.

10.

Davidson

Gismondi

(2011) Challenging Legitimacy at the Precipice of Energy Calamity. New York: Springer.

11.

Devall

Sessions

(1985) Deep Ecology. Salt Lake City, UT: Peregrine Smith.

12.

Dietz

Jorgenson

(2013) Structural Human Ecology. Pullman: Washington State University Press.

13.

Dryzek

. (2003) Green States and Social Movements. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

14.

Edwards

(2010) A Vast Machine. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

15.

Environment Canada (2010) Overview of the Reported 2009 Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Ottawa: Ministry of the Environment. Available at: www.ec.gc.ca/Publications/84468072-E951–45AD-A63E-EA8BEB26F1BC/OverviewOfTheReported2009GreenhouseGasEmissions.pdf (accessed 30 September 2010).

16.

Environment Canada (2011) National Inventory Report 1990– 2009 Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks in Canada. Ottawa: Environment Canada. Available at: www.ec.gc.ca/Publications/A07097EF-8EE1-4FF0-9AFB-6C392078D1A9/NationalInventoryReportGreenhouseGasSourcesAndSinksInCanada19902009ExecutiveSummary.pdf (accessed 8 June 2011).

17.

Environment Canada (2013) National Inventory Report 1990– 2011 Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks in Canada. Ottawa: Environment Canada. Available at: www.ec.gc.ca/Publications/A07ADAA2-E349-481A-860F-9E2064F34822NationalInventoryReportGreenhouseGasSourcesAndSinksInCanada19902011.pdf (accessed 1 November 2013).

18.

Esping-Andersen

(1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

19.

Foster

Clark

York

(2010) The Ecological Rift. New York: Monthly Review Press.

20.

Freudenburg

(2006) Environmental degradation, disproportionality, and the double diversion. Rural Sociology 71(1): 3–32.

21.

Germanwatch (2012) The Climate Change Performance Index Results 2012. Available at: germanwatch.org/klima/ccpi.pdf (accessed 5 November 2012).

22.

Giddens

(2009) The Politics of Climate Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.

23.

Hannigan

(2006) Environmental Sociology. London: Routledge.

24.

Hughes

(2009) The energy issue. In: Homer-Dixon

(ed.) Carbon Shift. Toronto: Random House, pp. 58–95.

25.

IEA (International Energy Agency) (2012) World Energy Outlook 2012: Executive Summary. Paris: OECD/IEA. Available at: www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/English.pdf (accessed 22 November 2012).

26.

IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) (2013) Fifth assessment report climate change 2013: The physical science basis summary for policymakers. Available at: www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5-SPM_Approved27Sep2013.pdf (accessed 28 September 2013).

27.

Isaacson

(2011) Steve Jobs. New York: Simon and Schuster.

28.

Jaccard

(2009) Peak oil and market feedbacks. In: Homer-Dixon

(ed.) Carbon Shift. Toronto: Random House, pp. 96–131.

29.

Kautto

(2002) Investing in services in West European welfare states. Journal of European Social Policy 12(2): 53–65.

30.

Korpi

Palme

(1998) The paradox of redistribution and the strategy of equality. American Sociological Review 63: 662–687.

31.

Latin

(2012) Climate Change Policy Failures. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.

32.

Legatum Institute (2010) The 2010 Legatum Prosperity Index. London: Legatum Institute. Available at: www.prosperity.com/summary.aspx (accessed 25 October 2011).

33.

Lomborg

(2001) The Skeptical Environmentalist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

34.

Lomborg

(2007) Cool It. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

35.

Mol

APJ

Sonnenfeld

Spaargaren

(2009) The Ecological Modernisation Reader: Environmental Reform in Theory and Practice. London: Routledge.

36.

Murphy

(1994) Rationality and Nature. Boulder, CO: Westview.

37.

Murphy

(2002) The internalisation of autonomous nature into society. The Sociological Review 50: 313–333.

38.

Murphy

(2011) The challenge of anthropogenic climate change for the social sciences. International Review of Social Research 1(3): 167–181.

39.

Murphy

(2012) Managing risk under uncertainty. In: Measham

Lockie

(eds) Risk and Social Theory in Environmental Management. Collingwood, Australia: CSIRO Publishing, pp. 17–26.

40.

Murphy

(2013) Uncertainty and claims of uncertainty as impediments to risk management. In: Lockie

Sonnenfeld

Fisher

(eds) The Routledge International Handbook of Social and Environmental Change. London: Routledge, pp. 221–230.

41.

Murphy

(forthcoming) The media construction of climate change quiescence: Veiling the visibility of a super emitter. The Canadian Journal of Sociology.

42.

Pielke

Jr (2010) The Climate Fix. New York: Basic Books.

43.

Piketty

(2014) Capital in the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Harvard.

44.

Prins

Rayner

(2007) The Wrong Trousers. Oxford: LSE/Oxford University Press.

45.

Prins

. (2010) The Hartwell Paper. Oxford: LSE/Oxford University Press. Available at: eprints.lse.ac.uk/27939/1/HartwellPaper_English_version.pdf (accessed 29 October 2013).

46.

Rayner

(2010) How to eat an elephant. Climate Policy 10: 615–621.

47.

Rayner

(2012) Uncomfortable knowledge. Economy and Society 41(1): 107–125.

48.

Rayner

Malone

(1998) Human Choice and Climate Change, Vol. 4. Columbus, OH: Battelle Press.

49.

Redclift

(2009) The environment and carbon dependence. Current Sociology 57(3): 369–388.

50.

Reusswig

(2011) Sociological tasks in view of the transition to post-carbon societies. International Review of Social Research 1(3): 189–195.

51.

Schnaiberg

(1980) The Environment. New York: Oxford University Press.

52.

Schneider

(2009) Science as a Contact Sport. Washington, DC: National Geographic.

53.

Scott

(1998) Seeing like a State. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

54.

Shackley

. (1998) Uncertainty, complexity and concepts of good science in climate change modelling. Climate Change 38: 159–205.

55.

Simon

(1981) The Ultimate Resource. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

56.

Simon

(1995) What does the future hold? In: Simon

(ed.) The State of Humanity. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, pp. 642–660.

57.

Simpson

(2011) Do we care that ours is an unequal society? Globe and Mail, 20 July: A15.

58.

Simpson

Jaccard

Rivers

(2007) Hot Air. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.

59.

Strauss

(1954) Speech to the National Association of Science Writers. New York Times, 17 September.

60.

Swedish Energy Agency (2010) Energy in Sweden: Facts and figures 2009, 10. Available at: www.energimyndigheten.se/en/Facts-and-figures1/ (accessed 30 September 2010).

61.

SWF (2012) Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. Available at: www.swfinstitute.org/fund-rankings/ (accessed 8 November 2012).

62.

Trading economics (2012) Available at: www.tradingeconomics.com/unemployment-rates-list-by-country (accessed 7 July 2012).

63.

UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) (2012) The Emissions Gap Report 2012. Nairobi: UNEP. Available at: www.unep.org/pdf/2012gapreport.pdf (accessed 23 November 2012).

64.

UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) (2010) Flexible GHG data queries, data for 2008. Available at: unfccc.int/di/FlexibleQueries/Event.do?event=go (accessed 30 September 2010).

65.

United Nations Statistical Division (2010) Environmental indicators: Greenhouse gas emissions. Available at: unstats.un.org/unsd/environment/air_co2_emissions.htm (accessed 7 November 2012).

66.

Urry

(2011) Climate Change and Society. Cambridge: Polity.

67.

USEIA (US Energy Information Administration) (2010) Annual energy review 2009. August. Available at: www.eia.gov/overview_hd.html (accessed 30 September 2010).

68.

Van der Sluijs

(2012) Uncertainty and dissent in climate risk assessment. Nature and Culture 7(2): 174–195.

69.

Van der Sluijs

Van Est

Riphagen

(2010) Beyond consensus. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2: 409–415.

70.

Verweij

. (2006) Clumsy solutions for a complex world. Public Administration 84(4): 817–843.

71.

Whitington

(2013) Fingerprint, bellwether, model event: Climate change as speculative anthropology. Anthropological Theory 13(4): 308–328.

72.

Wright

(2010) Envisioning Real Utopias. London: Verso.

73.

Wynne

(2010) Strange weather, again. Theory, Culture, and Society 27(2–3): 289–305.

74.

Yale University (2012) Environmental Performance Index 2012. Available at: epi.yale.edu (accessed 8 November 2012).

75.

York

(2012) Do alternative energy sources displace fossil fuels? Nature Climate Change 2: 441–443.

76.

York

Rosa

Dietz

(2003) A rift in modernity. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 23(10): 31–51.

The emerging hypercarbon reality,technological and post-carbon utopias,and social innovation to low-carbon societies

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References