Short listed for the 2016 Philip Abrams Memorial Prize
Alongside a critical analysis of how the idea of a single dangerous limit has shaped our understanding of what sort of problem climate change is, the book explains how the public have been kept out of that decision making process, the implications of this marginalisation for climate policy and why the dangerous limit idea is undermining our ability to mitigate climate change. The book concludes by exploring possibilities for a deliberation about the future of the two degree limit which allows for public participation in the decision making process. This book illustrates why, at this critical juncture in the climate policy debate, the two degree limit idea has failed to achieve any of the policy goals intended. 'This book deserves a wide readership'. Amitav Ghosh, Award Winning Author of The Great Derangement. 'Important and exquisitely timed' Hudson, M. Environmental Politics 'A well-researched and provocative interrogation of policy claims made about climate change.' Derek Wall. LSE Review of Books 'Fascinating', 'insightful', 'important'. Oliver Geden, Issues in Science and Technology .Available here |
Excerpt 1
Whatever the science can or cannot tell us about the future impacts of climate change, deciding which of those impacts constitutes an acceptable level of risk is a value choice, to be decided by the citizens of democratic societies. Danger is a contested term (Lorenzoni, Pidgeon and O’Connor, 2005:1388) shaped by uncertainties in our knowledge of the future and the acceptability of risk, and vulnerabilities of individual or community concerned. So, given the diversity of values and vulnerabilities across the globe, and the uneven rate of warming masked by the two degree average, there cannot be one measure of dangerous climate change for the whole of humanity and the planet. |
Excerpt 2
Climate change is, as one senior politician recently described it to me, ‘bad politics’. No party is going to campaign for votes on the promise of a programme for the radical reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Talk of climate change is virtually absent from the media. Instead the talk is of green jobs, green growth, energy security and fuel poverty. Yet climate impacts are accelerating and the need for cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases is increasingly urgent. In March 2015 the UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change suggested that the 80% cuts by 2050 target set out in the UK Climate Change Act may not be ambitious enough (Carbon Brief, 2015). |
Excerpt 3
Up to this point the two degree limit had reduced climate change policy climate change to a symbolic politics, a performance (Blündhorn, 2007). However now the objective reality of the immediate need to radically reduce emissions to meet two degree limit has arrived, mere performance is no longer sufficient. Moving to a substantive and meaningful way of life which no longer relies on untrammelled use of fossil fuels will require a new, more inclusive and more democratic way of talking about climate change. That means coming to terms with a world in which we can no longer pretend limiting warming to a global average of two degrees centigrade is going to make all our climate change problems go away. |