The workings of fossil capital extend beyond energy into our material world.
We have a new paper out on how and why that is.
We consider the overlaps between fossil fuels and synthetic materials, analysing global plastics governance from a neo-Gramscian perspective.
Has the Danish government quietly abandoned its commitment to the Paris Agreement? 🇩🇰 In this piece for @klimamonitor.dk, Jens Friis Lund, @jptilsted.bsky.social, and I call on the government to reiterate their support for the Paris goals. (English in the replies) klimamonitor.dk/nyheder/deba...
We do not claim to have all the answers, but our hope is that this perspective provides a productive entry point for debates on the stability-change dialectic in transitions research.
The paper is open access and available here: doi.org/10.1016/j.er...
3) Backlash and retraction in transitions occur, and why actors give up on green initiatives, such as corporations abandoning climate targets. When attending to the political function such initiatives play as a means of diluting social pressure, we see the potential for backlash in another light.
2) What appears as transformative might not be when redrawing the system. Divesting oil and gas assets, for example, can actually prolong fossil infrastructure, as long as those assets are sold to others with the intention to maintain extraction.
More specifically, we contend that these questions help navigate debates on how:
1) Socio-technical reconfigurations that look like system change in one analysis constitute system reproduction in political economic terms.
The concept invites us to ask analytical questions about transition processes, namely, "what is (being) (de)stabilised, how, by whom, and for what purpose?"
What does this mean in practice and for research?
Well, it forces us to consider social relations and distributions of political power.
We therefore introduce a dynamic understanding of the notion of trasformismo, conceptualizing a process of reproduction through reconfiguration.
In short, trasformismo theorises "stability through change" or "change in the pursuit of stability."
The change-stability dialectic is not an arm wrestle with one winner in the end - stability and change are both always there. Change in the absence of stability would be collapse. In the paper, we suggest neo-Gramscian thinking constitutes a promising entry point to these matters.
We think this issue is really important, because getting it wrong risks driving us to be either overly optimistic about radical change or overlooking the openings that do occur for reforms that pave the way for transformative pathways.
In discussing sustainability transitions, we often treat stability and change as opposing forces - like an arm wrestle where one side eventually prevails.
But what if this is wrong?
What if change is actually stability in disguise?
In a new perspective paper, @peternewell.bsky.social, Oliver Bugge Hunt and I argue that we should not understand change as the opposite of stability. Rather, we can think of change and stability as co-constitutive of one another.
As put in the conclusion: "We should engage with the consequences and governance of synthetics alongside the contestations and sources of power that shape such governance."
Global relations and the inequities they reflect are produced by a set of social structures. In those terms, we can think of defining features of the global order - the causes of socio-ecological injustices - such as extractivism, militarism, oil hegemony, colonial modernity, or growthism.
What would degrowth imply for petrochemicals?
A multilateral treaty enforcing a cap on global production, yes - as forcefully argued by many brilliant voices - but that is not all. In a new paper, I reflect on what remains in place also after a seemingly ambitious policy.
doi.org/10.1177/0963...
Wow. Speculating about something is one thing, but knowing that it is taking effect is another.
Ever wondered why there is no accessible book-length introduction to ecological economics and the political economy of transitions in Danish?
I know I have, so I tried to write one. It is out tomorrow, asking how we analytically should approach whether it is too little, too late and who benefits.
Det er i morgen, der er deadline på at ansøge til okonomiskolen.dk
Kom og vær med når vi sammen med en masse dygtige forskere konfronterer de store spørgsmål om verdens kriser og disses uretfærdighed.
Why is it that capping the production of plastics is so contested?
Got to provide some input to this great piece by @katharinamau.bsky.social
Klimamonitor sætter i dag sat ord på vigtigheden af en global plastiktraktat for klimadagsordenen.
Giver selv lidt perspektiv fra min ph.d.: »Kemiindustrien er fuldkommen sammenfiltret med olie-, gas- og kulindustrien. Dermed er deres skæbner også forbundne.«
Interesting developments... The contradiction on which the initiative is founded could not be contained.
The city of Beit Hanoun in the north east edge of Gaza is seen from above. It is completely destroyed, not a single building is standing. It is all rubble, as though the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. The city had a population of 52,000
Gaza is now single deadliest conflict for journalists in history.
This is not only an attempt to extinguish a whole people, it is also an attempt to extinguish the story of their genocide.
“One day, everyone will have always been against this.” - Egyptian-Canadian writer, Omar El Akkad.
#Gaza
On a global scale, the claimed overcapacity does not lead to oil demand for petrochemicals peaking – the IEA expects demand for oil for petrochemicals to continuously increase throughout the decade.
The IEA has published its yearly report on the state of oil—a key publication when following trends in petrochemicals and oil as a material.
It confirms the increasing importance of synthetics in energy transitions: "Demand growth [is] underpinned almost exclusively by petrochemical[s]."
Ethvert folkedrab retfærdiggøres på samme måde: netop denne befolkningsgruppe er unik farlig og kan ikke behandles efter normale regler. Armenerne var forræderiske, tutsierne magtsyge, jøderne konspiratoriske. Nu er det så palæstinensere, der alle er terrorister eller ikke elsker deres børn.
Detoxification alongside defossilisation changes how we should think of and approach climate change
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...
Just learnt that the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change is now also calling for a climate agenda beyond decarbonisation, including both defossilisation and detoxification.
🔹Humanitarian aid and supplies have not entered the #Gaza Strip for over 50 days now. Critical humanitarian supplies are rapidly depleting. UNRWA flour supplies have run out.
📍Full report on the situation in Gaza and the #WestBank: www.unrwa.org/resources/re...
Notatet er tilgængeligt her.
Hovedresultatet er, at vi bør styre efter kraftige reduktioner frem mod 2035.