Command-and-control: Alternative futures of geoengineering in an age of global weirding

In July 2012, Russ George, the founder of Planktos Inc., organized efforts to dump 100 tons of iron sulfate off the coast of Canada to engineer a plankton bloom that would, ostensibly, absorb carbon dioxide and store it in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. As George's geoengineering experiment is one of the largest and first of its kind, many were quick to denounce his rogue action while others were delighted to see that he succeeded as a large algae bloom was reported to have emerged. Using the George event as a point of entry for exploring alternative futures of geoengineering in an age of global weirding, this project fuses the 2 × 2 scenario modeling technique with the “Mānoa School” four-futures method by situating command and control, along X (control) and Y (command) axes as two critical uncertainties and key drivers of change that will impact the design, development, and diffusion of climate mitigation engineering initiatives, which some see as holding the only solution to avert global catastrophe and others condemn as a postnormal remedy.     

Bounding the future: The use of scenarios in assessing climate change impacts

This paper investigates the contribution of socio-economic scenarios to improve decisions and policies in climate assessments. We specifically looked at adaptation projects in the Dutch Climate changes Spatial Planning programme. Based on the four decision failure criteria neglect of internal information, bounded rationality, insufficient expansion of existing mental models and stickiness and lack of friction of information and knowledge, it was concluded that in these projects, socio-economic scenarios appear to generate useful data, but that their full potential to reduce decision failure is not likely to be exploited. Therefore adaptation options suggested by these studies may not be ‘future-proof’: they may be appropriate in some future societies, but fail in others. We believe similar results would be obtained in other contexts. Possible decision failures are caused by neglecting socio-economic developments, limiting the number of storylines generated by scenario studies to one or two, lack of stakeholder involvement in the scenario development and ignoring discontinuities.     

Risk regulation,community pressure and the use of management accounting in managing climate change risk: Australian evidence

This exploratory study is amongst the first to investigate how companies perceive the regulation of carbon emissions and the pressure exerted by the community in an environment characterised by risk and uncertainty. Semi-structured interviews were conducted among 39 executives who were directly involved in carbon emissions management in 18 large listed Australian companies. Consistent with Prospect Theory, we find that decision-makers are threat biased and are more likely to take immediate actions when climate change issues are framed as threats as opposed to opportunities. From the interview data, it is seen that managers use management accounting techniques as a risk management tool in mitigating risks associated climate change issues. Furthermore, this use of management accounting appears to be driven primarily by the protection of economic interests, regulatory pressure and reputational pressure. The study provides insights into how perceptions of climate change uncertainties and external pressure for disclosure of emissions information influence companies to use management accounting in managing climate change risk.     

Drivers of flood and climate change risk perceptions and intention to adapt: an explorative survey in coastal and delta Vietnam

Abstract

This article contributes to current research about determinants of climate change and flood risk perception, and intentions to take adaptive measures. We propose a research model that distinguishes between vulnerability and severity components of perceived risks, and adds perceived adaptive capacity as a third factor to predict the intention to take adaptive measures. We used this combined model as a conceptual lens for an explorative survey among 1086 residents of coastal and delta communities in Vietnam. Pairwise analyses revealed a significant association of flood and climate change risk perceptions with individual’s flood experience, climate change knowledge, frequency of community participation and socio-demographic factors. However, in multivariate analysis, the influence of most socio-demographic factors became weak or patchy. Flood experience was the most influential driver of flood-related risk perceptions but weak for climate change-related risk perceptions and behavioural intentions. Knowledge strongly increased the intention to adapt to flood and climate risks and the perceived vulnerability to and severity of climate change risks, but reduced the perceived capacity to adapt to climate risks. Frequency of community participation increased the perceived vulnerability and severity of climate change risks, the intention to adapt to both climate and flood risks and the perceived capacity to adapt to flood risks, but reduced the perceived capacity to adapt to climate risks. Our research confirms earlier findings that individuals’ knowledge, place-specific experience and social-cultural influences are key predictors of both flood and climate change risk perceptions and intentions to take adaptive measures. These factors should therefore receive ample attention in climate risk communication.