Documents Global Environmental Politics 9 results

"The contributions of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and social media to the climate crisis are often underestimated. To date, much of the focus has been on direct emissions associated with the life cycle of tech products. In this forum article, we argue that this narrow focus misses the adverse and indirect impacts of generative AI and social media on the climate. We outline some of the indirect ways in which generative AI and social media undermine the optimism, focus, creativity, and veracity required to address the climate crisis. Our aim is twofold. First, we seek to balance the tide of optimism about the role of digitalization in addressing the climate crisis by offering a skeptic's perspective. Second, we outline a new research agenda that moves beyond counting directly attributable carbon emissions and proposes a more comprehensive accounting of the indirect ways in which social media and generative AI adversely impact the sociopolitical conditions required to address the climate crisis."

"The rise of right-wing populist (RWP) parties across democracies who disparage and seek to dismantle international (environmental) agreements poses a grave threat to the liberal international order. Yet we know surprisingly little about how RWP parties influence the design of international agreements, including international environmental agreements (IEAs). This article addresses this lacuna by exploring the link between RWP parties and a key outcome in the design of IEAs—flexibility provisions used by democracies to reduce their obligations to curb environmental pollution. The theoretical framework first posits that RWP parties allege that IEAs hurt ordinary people to garner support from domestic constituents adversely affected by IEA environmental mandates. When a RWP party holds a majority of seats in its country's legislature, it employs its legislative leverage in the international arena to negotiate and obtain maximum flexibility provisions from other member states to safeguard their constituents. Statistical results provide robust support for my theoretical predictions."

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"The COVID-19 pandemic is the largest public health crisis in recent history. Many states have taken unprecedented action in responding to the pandemic by restricting international and domestic travel, limiting economic activity, and passing massive social welfare bills. This begs the question, why have states taken extreme measures for COVID-19 but not the climate crisis? By comparing state responses to COVID-19 with those to the climate crisis, we identify the crisis characteristics that drive quick and far-reaching reactions to some global crises but not others. We inductively develop a conceptual framework that identifies eight crisis characteristics with observable variation between COVID-19 and climate change. This framework draws attention to under-considered areas of variance, such as the perceived differences in the universality of impacts, the legibility of policy responses, and the different sites of expertise for both crises. We use this structured comparison to identify areas of leverage for obtaining quicker and broader climate action."

"As the urgency for green transformation grows, the question of whether finance capital can be harnessed to promote green transformation has been raised. Public pension funds are of particular interest since they are publicly governed, have long-term interest, and are growing in proportion to the global investment capital. However, transformative change demands a reprioritization of fundamental values in terms of trade-offs among economic, environmental, and social ends. This article identifies shifts in value judgments in public pension fund investments and particularly focuses on the institutional constraints by which value (re)priorities are resisted by investigating Swedish public pension funds. While there are signs of environmental embedding of the economy, I also note neutralization of the role and investment strategies of the funds, which has a stabilizing rather than a transformative function. The neutralization constrains deep green transformation, which demands politicization of the role of institutional investors."

"The rise of green industrial policy has injected purpose and competition into global environmental politics. Efforts to build green industry have raised the economic and geopolitical stakes of environmental issues as states seek to position their firms in global value chains and reshore strategic industries. This could help to generate the technologies and political momentum needed to accelerate global decarbonization. At the same time, these green interventions confront status quo interests and a variety of industrial policies that support fossil fuel-based industries. To help make sense of this new landscape, this introduction to the special issue defines green industrial policy and situates it within domestic political economy, social policy, and global geopolitics. We present six new studies that demonstrate and explore the global politics of green industrial policy. To illustrate the kinds of effects and implications of green industrial policy we are interested in exploring, we show how green industrial policy has transformed climate politics. Changes in state practice, ideas about the environment and economy, and technological cost declines came together to produce a new opportunistic and competitive climate politics. We then identify areas for further investigation as we call for a new climate politics research agenda, integrating green industrial policy more intentionally into studies of global environmental politics."

"Industrial policy has begun to move into the center of debates on climate policy. This represents a shift away from climate policy as we know it—as classic environmental policy. Industrial policy and environmental policy differ in their policy goals, policy instruments, and distributional effects, one primarily concerned with economic development, the other with cutting greenhouse gas emissions. This raises questions about policy interactions between industrial and environmental policy in broader climate policy mixes and how these affect global decarbonization. This article identifies complementary and conflictual dynamics between industrial policy and environmental policy in both domestic and international climate politics. It shows how green industrial policy can advance climate goals and cooperation but can also present challenges to deepening climate cooperation and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Developing an understanding of policy interactions is central to leveraging the potential of industrial policy to accelerate global decarbonization."

"There is increasing evidence that right-wing populist parties (RWPPs) and their supporters are hostile to climate and low-carbon energy policies. In this article, we provide a quantitative analysis of the effects of RWPP representation in the legislature and executive on climate and renewable energy policy for a number of countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development over the period 2007–2018. After controlling for other political, economic, and environmental factors, we find evidence for a significant and large negative effect of RWPPs in power on climate policy. Importantly, we also show that these negative effects vary with the proportionality of the electoral system and European Union membership. Both of these factors significantly moderate the negative influence of RWPPs. In countries with majoritarian electoral systems, the effects of RWPPs on climate policy work through both indirect legislative and direct executive routes. In contrast to climate policy, there is no overall significant relationship with renewable policy. ..."

"The political economy of lithium, a “critical mineral” for the renewable energy transition, is marked by two striking developments. First, Global North governments that have historically offshored mining are onshoring lithium to enhance “supply chain security.” Second, these governments have committed to “sustainably sourcing” lithium. In this article, I theorize both developments in terms of a novel security–sustainability nexus: an interlocking set of policies and justifications that promote lithium extraction and emphasize the environmental credentials of Global North mining. The security–sustainability nexus evidences an alignment between state and corporate interests. For public officials, onshoring policies counter China's “dominance” over battery supply chains. For mining and auto firms, onshoring translates into lucrative incentives, supply security, and reputational benefits. However, despite this state–corporate alignment, the tensions within the security–sustainability nexus illuminate the contradictions of green capitalism. I conclude that the geopolitical and socioenvironmental conflicts over the material foundations of the energy transition are reshaping the inequalities linked to extractive sectors."

"Hard climate policy (e.g., regulation, taxes/pricing, phaseouts) is needed to meet ambitious climate targets, but when such policy is introduced, it can sometimes trigger backlash. Backlash involves an abrupt and forceful negative reaction by a significant number of actors seeking to reverse a policy, often through extraordinary means that transgress established procedures and norms. Yet, explanations of policy backlash remain nascent and fragmented. I synthesize insights from within and beyond climate politics to argue that contested legitimacy is central to climate policy backlash, which provokes attempts toward delegitimation. I develop a conceptual pathway to explain the occurrence of climate policy backlash and generate hypotheses about how practices of delegitimation occur, and their effects. This contributes to explaining why backlash occurs, highlighting ideational factors alongside interests and institutions. Overall, I suggest the need for a contextually embedded approach to understanding the volatile dynamics of backlash, bringing political sociology into conversation with political economy."