Tackling Climate Change, Breaking the Frame of Modernity

Exploring economic dimensions of social ecological crises: A reply to special issue papers

“…A prominent example is Nicholas Stern, who recognises a range of problematic issues, and whose highly publicised report on climate economics Claudia Carter references as using 'a multi-criteria approach rather than narrowly CBA'. However, as I have explained, he actually focussed and headlined the CBA chapter from the report in public talks, press releases and debates, and this remains as flawed as the work of others whom he has criticised (Spash, 2006b(Spash, , 2007b(Spash, , 2007c. He has also consistently promoted growth as good for the climate (Spash, 2014a).…”

“…There are many lessons in the failure of public policy on greenhouse gas mitigation and not least amongst them is the role of an unscientific and deeply flawed climate economics (Spash, 1993a, 1994a, 1994b, 1996, 2002a: 3091, 2007b, 2007d, 2007c, 2008b; Baer and Spash, 2008; Spash and Gattringer, 2017). There has been slow, but increasing, recognition that climate economists who focus public policy on growth, investment, rates of return to capital and discounting are acting without any regard to the actual phenomena they are supposedly addressing.…”

Climate of Arrogance, Disengagement and Injustice

“…At the time of writing the Paris COP21 conference is a few weeks away. Maybe they will agree to a robust framework of emissions reduction and adaptation motivated by a precautionary ethical principle (Hartzell-Nichols 2014), development assistance (Light and Taraska 2014) and maintaining social ecological stability (Shockley 2014). It is hard to be optimistic about that or the overall climate change situation (Spash 2015).…”

Climate of Arrogance, Disengagement and Injustice

“…they will agree to a robust framework of emissions reduction and adaptation motivated by a precautionary ethical principle (Hartzell-Nichols 2014), development assistance (Light and Taraska 2014) and maintaining social ecological stability (Shockley 2014). It is hard to be optimistic about that or the overall climate change situation (Spash 2015).…”