Documents Oxford Open Climate Change 4 results

"The inclusion of ‘just transition' in the Paris Agreement in 2015 have inspired subsequent attempts, and hopes, to bridge a jobs. vs. climate-divide in attempts to decarbonise industrial society. But what are the imperatives for a just transition of the workforce? And what are the nationally defined development priorities for the creation of decent work and quality jobs? Through interviews with Swedish trade union representatives from Sweden's three largest industrial emitters (steel, petroleum refining, cement) along with representatives at the central level, this study illustrates contrasting interpretations of what constitutes a just transition. The main tensions concern the time a climate transition is allowed to take; if policies should support local inhabitants or global concerns over climate change; why allegiances are limited to the industrial town or encompasses a wider trade union movement; and whether national politics or European coordination is what makes a transition ‘just'. While central levels of Swedish trade unions understand just transition in international and intergenerational terms, local level trade unions advocate for an emplaced understanding of just transition. Given the risk of growing conflicts between different segments of trade unions over the issue of climate transition policies, a progressive alliance between the labour- and climate movement is improbable as matters stand at present."

"Climate stabilization pathways reviewed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change depict the transformation challenges and opportunities of a low carbon world. The scenarios provide information about the transition, including its economic repercussions. However, these calculations do not account for the economic benefits of lowering global temperature; thus, only gross policy costs are reported and discussed. Here, we show how to combine low carbon pathways' mitigation costs with the growing but complex literature quantifying the economic damages of climate change. We apply the framework to the scenarios reviewed in the Special Report on 1.5°C of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Under a probabilistic damage function and climate uncertainty, we show that Paris-compliant trajectories have net present economic benefits but are not statistically different from zero. After mid-century, most scenarios have higher benefits than costs; these net benefits are most prominent in developing countries. We explore the robustness of results to an extensive set of damage functions published in the literature, and for most of the specifications examined, we cannot reject the null hypothesis of net benefits. Future research could improve these results with a better understanding of damage functions with greater coverage of damages and including adaptation and its cost."

"Adaptation to climate change, in terms of both academic and policy debates, has been treated predominantly as a local issue. This scalar focus points towards local agency as well as the contested responsibilization of local actors and potential disconnects with higher-level dynamics. While there are growing calls for individuals to take charge of their own lives against mounting climatic forces, little is known about the day-to-day actions people take, the many hurdles, barriers, and limits they encounter in their adaptation choices, and the trade-offs they consider envisaging the future. To address this gap, this article draws on 80+ interviews with urban and rural residents in Western Australia to offer a nuanced analysis of everyday climate adaptation and its limits. Our findings demonstrate that participants are facing significant adaptation barriers and that, for many, these barriers already constitute limits to what they can do to protect what they value most. They also make visible how gender, age, and socioeconomic status shape individual preferences, choices, and impediments, revealing compounding layers of disadvantage and differential vulnerability. We argue that slow and reflexive research is needed to understand what adaptation limits matter and to whom and identify opportunities to harness and support local action. Only then will we be able to surmount preconceived neoliberal ideals of the self-sufficient, resilient subject, engage meaningfully with ontological pluralism, and contribute to the re-politicization of adaptation decision-making."

"In 2017, the Swedish parliament adopted a new climate policy framework that lays the foundations for an ambitious decarbonization of all sectors in Swedish society. To live up to the Paris Agreement's temperature targets, the parliament decided that Sweden should arrive at net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by year 2045 and thereafter aim for net negative emissions. This progressive climate policy agenda is embedded in a strong collaborative discourse. To begin the transition to a fossil-free society, the Swedish government has invited a wide array of actors to join forces in the formulation and implementation of low carbon initiatives. In this article, we examine the fossil-free society as a powerful socio-technical imaginary that underpins this collaborative effort. We trace the promise attached to this future dreamscape and how it is mobilized by the government initiative fossil-free Sweden (FFS) to gain support for industrial decarbonization in the present. Our study draws upon roadmaps produced by FFS together with the Swedish steel, cement and petroleum industry, as well as semi-structured interviews with selected industry actors. We find that the FFS roadmaps work as powerful ‘techniques of futuring' that invite industry actors to anticipate the risks and opportunities attached to the fossil-free society and at the same time contribute to shaping that society. While effectively involving incumbent actors in the political project of decarbonization, our study suggests that the roadmaps consolidate around an imagined future that is a techno-optimistic extension of the fossil-intensive present."