When you wish upon a (GWP) star: Environmental governance and the reflexive performativity of global warming metrics

Abstract

The metrics used in environmental management are performative. That is, the tools deployed to classify and measure the natural world interact with the things they were designed to observe. The idea of performativity also captures the way these interactions shape or distort the governance activities that metrics are used to inform. The performativity of metrics reveals how mundane practices of measurement and auditing are inscribed with substantial power. This has proven particularly true for the global warming metrics, like GWP100, that are central to the management of anthropogenic climate change. Greenhouse gases are materially heterogenous, and the metrics used to commensurate their various warming impacts influence the distribution of both culpability and capital in climate policy and markets. The publication of a new warming metric, GWP* (or GWP Star), has generated a modest scientific controversy, as a diverse cast of stakeholders recognize this performativity seek to influence the metrological regime under which they live. We analyse this controversy, particularly as it unfolded in the fractious discourse around sustainable food and farming, to develop the concept of reflexive performativity: where actors are anticipatory and strategic in their engagement with the metrics that are used to govern their lives. We situate this idea in relation to, and in tentative evidential support of, the concept of reflexive modernization.

Can Bitcoin Stop Climate Change? Proof of Work, Energy Consumption and Carbon Footprint (SoK)

“…According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Global Warming Potential (GWP) "of methane are about 60, 28, and 5, respectively, for time horizons of 20, 100 and 500 years" [55, p. 15] (see also [3], [11], [19], [29], [102]). However, the standard way of accounting for GWP (GWP100) has been challenged with because it fails to account for GHG emission rates, leading to alternative metrics such as GWP* [103], which has an "exculpatory" effect on some methane emissions, relative to GWP100 [104]. These disagreements cannot be solved through scientific inquiry, as the underlying controversy is a political contention about attribution of responsibility, which depends on value judgments [104].…”

“…However, the standard way of accounting for GWP (GWP100) has been challenged with because it fails to account for GHG emission rates, leading to alternative metrics such as GWP* [103], which has an "exculpatory" effect on some methane emissions, relative to GWP100 [104]. These disagreements cannot be solved through scientific inquiry, as the underlying controversy is a political contention about attribution of responsibility, which depends on value judgments [104]. Statements about methane relative to other GHGs should hence be made with care.…”