Office for Environmental Programs - Theses
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ItemThe US climate litigation assemblage: examining a provisional governance form( 2014)Climate litigation has emerged as a strategy to pressure federal agencies of the United States of America to act on climate change (Osofsky and Peel 2013). Indeed, an 'administrative' approach to reducing national carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions led by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Air Act of 1963- a regulatory pathway revealed through the practice of litigation - is currently being pursued by President Barack Obama in lieu of federal climate legislation (MacNeil 2013). Adapting Tanya Murray Li's (2007) analytic of assemblage, this thesis examines the practice of litigation and the sequence of regulatory events it has incited, using the key Supreme Court cases of Massachusetts v. EPA [2007] and Utility Air Regulatory Group (UARG) v. EPA [2014] to bound discussion. It terms these practices and events the 'climate litigation assemblage', and investigates its emergence since 1999. It considers how CO2 has been legally 'framed and acted upon' (McGuirk 2011: 339), and the (selective) arrangement of actors, institutions, objects, laws, objectives and modes of authority that constitute a provisional governance form. Reading for the relational interaction of distributed and heterogeneous, human and non-human agencies reveals the internal contradictions and provisionality of governance-in-practice. This is not to suggest governance assemblages - through ongoing labour to maintain relationships - cannot endure to produce social and material effects. Realistically, the climate litigation assemblage has produced modest direct emission reductions; however its immaterial effects - which include exposing climate issues through highly publicised Supreme Court cases, mounting legal and social pressure on decision making institutions and the relationships forged between similarly minded and widely distributed actors - have made a significant imprint on the larger US climate governance space. In explicating the material and immaterial effects of the assemblage, a 'deliberately open', non-essentialist approach to the composition of governance forms is adopted; one that doesn't presuppose the 'durability, the types of relations and the human and non-human elements involved' (Anderson and McFarlane 2011: 124). Finally, future directions of the assemblage - including the potential productivity of disassembly - are considered. This consideration is focused by the prospect of the Environmental Protection Agency's pursuit of a national CO2 reductions program being eroded under 'the weight of its own contradictions' (Murray Li 2007: 287) by the case UARG v. EPA that is currently being heard by the Supreme Court.
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ItemClimate change mitigation in Singapore: challenges and opportunities( 2013)As greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase world-wide, the possibility of the occurrence of catastrophic climatic changes increases, and the need for countries to implement mitigation measures becomes increasingly important. When it comes to implementing measures to tackle these rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions, each country is faced with their own set of challenges and constrains. As a densely populated city-state with a lack of natural resources, high economic activity and limited land area, Singapore is faced with a range of challenges with regards to climate change mitigation. Despite these limitations, there are also opportunities and capabilities that the country can tap on, such as the technological expertise and a skilled workforce, and these can potentially help Singapore to overcome the challenges. As the economy continues to expand and the population continues to grow, Singapore has to consider environmental policy options that will not just reduce the emission intensity but will also result in a progressive decrease in the annual carbon emissions. Therefore, this paper will propose possible environmental policy options that has the potential to reduce emissions and is suitable to be implemented in Singapore to help her achieve her national reduction targets. This research will take on a qualitative-based approach to assess five selected environmental policy options - Renewable Energy Target, Feed-in Tariffs, Carbon Tax, Electricity Vending System and Energy Labelling Schemes. It will firstly demonstrate how the liberalisation of the electricity market, despite being an economically-driven political decision, has indirectly led to positive environmental changes, such as the increased contribution of natural gas in the country's fuel mix, which has reduced the annual increase in domestic emissions. Most importantly, this restructuring has provided a platform, which is able to promote the interaction with environmental policies that may impact on electricity prices and potentially influence changes to bring about emission reduction in the country. As Australia has a similar wholesale market and since some of the policy options that will be studied, interacts with this functioning market, similar policies in Australia will be used as a guideline in the discussion of this paper. Each environmental policy option will be analysed and evaluated based on their potential effectiveness to encourage emission reduction in the country. It is observed that with advantages in being a financial and clean technology hub, as well as having a skilled workforce, the promotion of investments in renewable energy has the potential to bring about emission reduction in the country. Furthermore, developing feedback mechanisms have been discerned to be important factors that have the capabilities to influence environmentally-conscious behaviours and potentially contribute to the efforts to reduce emissions in Singapore. Therefore, these suggest that a combination of the Renewable Energy Target, Electricity Vending System and Energy Labelling schemes is most likely to potentially achieve large-scale emission reduction for Singapore.
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ItemSocial carbon budgeting: voluntary targets for achieving a low-emissions lifestyle( 2013)It is now widely accepted that anthropogenic climate change is likely to reach dangerous levels in the absence of national and international policies that would see the dramatic reduction in human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. The likely outcome of this lack of policy is of a world that is not only significantly warmer that it is today but also significantly different in the make-up of the terrestrial biosphere. Current scientific analysis suggests that any changes to the global climate exceeding 2-degrees of warming poses potentially irrevocable changes to the global environment. Although it has been suggested that 2-degrees of warming may not actually constitute 'safe' levels of global warming, the international consensus appears to have settled on the goal of no more than a 2-degree world. Of all the developed countries in the world, the adverse impacts of anthropogenic climate change will affect Australia the greatest. Two issues that currently exist within Australian climate policy that is focused on addressing these issues are a) the insufficient abatement of emissions through the current national policy framework (Clean Energy Legislation) and b) disengagement with the general population on both the realities of anthropogenic climate change and the positive role the public can play in the mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. The policy tool that is suggested for addressing these problems is Social Carbon Budgeting, a voluntary-participation model utilizing the existing ideas of Personal Carbon Budgeting and Personal Carbon Trading. Social Carbon Budgeting (or SCB) encourages individuals to monitor and assess their daily greenhouse gas (CO2e) emissions from their consumption of goods and services and reduce these emissions in-line with daily targets that reflect a 'safe' emissions level. The daily target is based on an Equal per Capita approach for the entire globe, updated yearly in accordance with changes in global population. The conclusion is that Social Carbon Budgeting provides an opportunity to address the deficiencies that currently exist in the national climate policy framework and for engaging with individuals on the need to respond to anthropogenic climate change, and for the significant role individuals can play in reducing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.