“The Ultimate Environmental Dilemma”: Making a Place for Historians in the Climate Change and Energy Debates

Sabin, Paul

doi:10.1093/envhis/emq019

Cited by 29 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…This is for instance the case in a 'technological lock-in', where the relatively open futures of development are curtailed or closed down by the historical development and domination of carbon-based technology. 49,50 The logical result of such a lock-in is the absence of political or technical support for change. Thus, current-day struggles over technological fixes in climate change policy are historically situated 51 and highlight that previously adopted technological innovations can create significant obstacles to institutional change.…”

Section: Path Dependencementioning

confidence: 99%

Institutional inertia and climate change: a review of the new institutionalist literature

Rosenschöld

Rozema

Frye-Levine

2014

WIREs Climate Change

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Climate scientists and policy analysts alike have repeatedly called for urgent mitigating action to avoid the most adverse effects of climate change. However, within the political arena this action is largely lacking. In order to understand this discrepancy, we consider the institutions in climate change policy to be of central importance. Renewed interest in institutions has been generated to a great extent by 'new institutionalism', a field of research combining economics, political science and sociology, and which has become increasingly popular since the 1980s. The tendency of institutions to resist change and thereby stabilising policy can be understood by using the concept of institutional inertia. Our review of the new institutionalist literature on climate change identifies five main mechanisms that generate institutional inertia: costs, uncertainty, path dependence, power and legitimacy. Means of addressing these mechanisms are proposed by referring to the work on institutional entrepreneurship and institutional work. A focus on the mechanisms that generate and regenerate institutional inertia is beneficial for future research on institutions and climate change, as it can be used to study bottlenecks for action and address more clearly the urgency of necessary policy interventions.

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Section: Path Dependencementioning

confidence: 99%

Institutional inertia and climate change: a review of the new institutionalist literature

Rosenschöld

Rozema

Frye-Levine

2014

WIREs Climate Change

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“…51 Likewise, climate scientists also engage in historical research of a kind in their studies of past climates that shed light on current and projected trends. 52 Lest environmental historians are thought to be scientifically under-cooked, there are many among us who have qualifications in the sciences, and draw on this training and experience in their historical work. 53 Establishing baseline data for fisheries research, interpreting historical climate data and providing empirical examples of past fire behaviour are just a few cases where historians and historical thinking have proven productive in applied settings.…”

Section: Situating Australian Environmental Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Doing environmental history in urgent times

2020

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The human/nature relationship is at the heart of one of the most urgent crises of our time: climate change. What does this mean for environmental historians, trained as we are to examine the culture/nature relationship, its changing temporal expressions, to challenge the binary which underpins the discipline of history itself? This article is framed as a conversation between three environmental historians as we respond to key questions about environmental history and the climate crisis. Together we ponder the skills we bring to understanding it, the stories we have found to move us forward and our thoughts about the interface between history, science and activism.

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“…As with all science, climate science does not speak for itself, it is always interpreted and, therefore, simultaneously political and cultural. Recognizing this, and opening spaces for humanistic scholarship on climate and climate change, thus, seeks to complicate climate discourses and inspire new social understandings, criticisms, and practices (see Howe, 2011; Sabin, 2010). Some scholars aim their critique of climate change discourse squarely at a capitalist system that on the one hand demands the unending economic growth that drives climate change, while on the other hand obscures the uneven landscapes of human vulnerability that the system largely created, all the while supporting technical fixes that commodify the atmosphere and address neither the drivers of climate change nor those most vulnerable to its effects (Liverman, 2009; see also Cupples, 2012; Head and Gibson, 2012; Parenti, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical geography III

Offen

2013

Progress in Human Geography

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My third report covering recent research in historical geography focuses on climate, and particularly scholarship that explores how the meaning of climate and climate change varies in distinct cultural and temporal contexts. Viewing climate science, and more specifically interpretations of climate science, as a discourse amenable to cultural criticism suggests that notions of climate are and have always been a physical and social phenomenon. Reviewed research suggests that ideas of climate and climate change are intertwined with social mores, politics and institutions, philosophies of civilization and progress, and inseparable from the cultural expressions that give them meaning and, thus, are far too important to be left to climate scientists to narrate or interpret.

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“The Ultimate Environmental Dilemma”: Making a Place for Historians in the Climate Change and Energy Debates

Cited by 29 publications

References 11 publications

Institutional inertia and climate change: a review of the new institutionalist literature

Institutional inertia and climate change: a review of the new institutionalist literature

Doing environmental history in urgent times

Historical geography III

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