Month: May 2018

Jacobson, Brynna (2018): Constructing Legitimacy in Geoengineering Discourse. The Politics of Representation in Science Policy Literature

Jacobson, Brynna (2018): Constructing Legitimacy in Geoengineering Discourse. The Politics of Representation in Science Policy Literature. In Science as Culture, pp.[nbsp]1–27. DOI: 10.1080/09505431.2018.1465910.

“Geoengineering science policy reports reflect this shift and influence the subsequent trajectory of research and potential deployment. The two most notable geoengineering policy reports are those by the Royal Society in 2009 and the National Research Council (NRC) in 2015. Discursive strategies recurrent in these reports construct notions of legitimacy and normalcy in regard to geoengineering. These strategies include relative legitimation of actors and approaches, differentiating research from deployment, elevating particular geoengineering methods through comparative evaluation, and normalizing novel geoengineering proposals through analogy.”

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Nisbet, Matthew C. (2018): Strategic philanthropy in the post-Cap-and-Trade years. Reviewing U.S. climate and energy foundation funding

Nisbet, Matthew C. (2018): Strategic philanthropy in the post-Cap-and-Trade years. Reviewing U.S. climate and energy foundation funding. In WIREs Clim Change 54 (3), e524. DOI: 10.1002/wcc.524.

“Funding has favored “insider” groups that push for policy action by way of negotiation, coalition building, and compromise, rather than “outsider” groups that specialize in grassroots organizing. Philanthropists have also placed less priority on funding for other low‐carbon energy sources such as nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, or natural gas, nor have they invested in actions intended to boost societal resilience, protect public health, or to address questions of equity and justice. But in the years following the failure of the 2010 Federal cap and trade bill, a review of available grants from 19 major foundations indicates that philanthropists responded to calls for new directions.”

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Inside Philantropy: Skewed Priorities? How Philanthropy Has Shaped Debates Over Climate Change

“That’s the gist of a new research paper from Matthew Nisbet, a communications professor at Northeastern University, who hopes to invite more scrutiny of climate philanthropy. Nisbet is especially concerned about the lack of funder support for nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, and geoengineering. But more broadly, he’s examining how philanthropy can fuel a kind of orthodoxy of ideas and grantees, a criticism the sector’s fielded from multiple sides over the years.”

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Cox, Emily M.; et al. (2018): Blurred Lines. The Ethics and Policy of Greenhouse Gas Removal at Scale

Cox, Emily M.; Pidgeon, Nick; Spence, Elspeth; Thomas, Gareth (2018): Blurred Lines. The Ethics and Policy of Greenhouse Gas Removal at Scale. In Front. Environ. Sci. 6, p.[nbsp]898. DOI: 10.3389/fenvs.2018.00038.

“We propose moving beyond classifying climate strategies as a set of discrete categories (which may implicitly homogenize diverse technologies), toward a prioritization of questions of scale of both technology and decision-making in the examination of social and ethical risks. This is not just a theoretical issue: important questions for policy, governance and finance are raised, for instance over the future inclusion of GGR in carbon markets.”

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Nemet, Gregory F.; et al. (2018): Negative emissions—Part 3. Innovation and upscaling

Nemet, Gregory F.; Callaghan, Max W.; Creutzig, Felix; Fuss, Sabine; Hartmann, Jens; Hilaire, Jérôme et al. (2018): Negative emissions—Part 3. Innovation and upscaling. In Environ. Res. Lett. 13 (6), p.[nbsp]63003. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aabff4.

“We assess the literature on innovation and upscaling for negative emissions technologies (NETs) using a systematic and reproducible literature coding procedure. To structure our review, we employ the framework ofsequential stages in the innovation process, with which we code each NETs article in innovation space.”

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