Ethics-Rorty-cultural studies : towards an understanding of the cultural production of solidarity : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Is cultural studies on the verge of an ethical turn? What role could the work of Richard Rorty play in such an ethical turn? Rorty may be considered as a cultural theorist whose work enables a productive articulation of cultural studies and that area of experience known as "ethics" – one's sensitivity and sense of responsibility to others in pain. Through an extended "misreading" of the dispersed texts Rorty has written on and around the topic, it is possible to formulate a Rortian account of ethics as solidarity, including such concepts as the moral subject, the other, moral identification, moral community, as well as the ethical implications of Rorty's theoretical ethnocentrism. This account, by virtue of its antifoundationalist and discursive theoretical position, holds much interest for a cultural studies concerned to understand the normative dimension of discursive meaning

Willingness to Pay to Reduce Mortality Risks: Evidence from a Three-Country Contingent Valuation Study

Valuing a change in the risk of death is a key input into the calculation of the benefits of environmental policies that save lives. Typically such risks are monetized using the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL). Because the majority of the lives saved by environmental policies are those of older persons, there has been much recent debate about whether the VSL should be lower for the elderly to reflect their fewer remaining life years. We conducted a contingent valuation survey in the UK, Italy and France designed to answer this question. The survey was administered in these three countries following a standardized protocol. Persons of age 40 and older were asked questions about their willingness to pay for a specified risk reduction. We use their responses to these questions to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) for such a risk reduction and VSL. Our results suggest that the VSL ranges between €1.052 and €2.258 million. The VSL is not significantly lower for older persons, but is higher for persons who have been admitted to the hospital or emergency room for cardiovascular and respiratory problems. These results suggest that there is no evidence supporting that VSL should be adjusted to reflect the age of the beneficiaries of environmental policy. They are also partly inconsistent with the QALY-based practice of imputing lower values for persons with a compromised health status. We also find that income is positively and significantly associated with WTP. The income elasticities of the WTP increase gradually with income levels and are typically between 0.15 and 0.5 for current income levels in EU countries. We use the responses to the WTP questions to estimate the value of an extension in remaining life expectancy. We find that the value of a month’s extension in life expectancy increases with age and with serious cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses experienced by the respondent. The value of a loss of one year’s life expectancy is between €55,000 and €142,000.Value of a statistical life, Willingness to pay, Life expectancy, Risk reduction, Contingent valuation

Estimating Historical Energy Security Costs

Energy Security is of increasing importance in today’s world, yet little research has been carried out on the costs or benefits of energy security policies. This paper looks at the period after the 1970s to estimate the cost premium of electricity generation due to energy security policies. The cost premium is estimated for France, Germany, Italy and Spain for the period 1980-2000 by estimating actual versus hypothetical lowest cost generation mixes. The cost premium is estimated to be lowest for France, which had a clear energy security policy based around developing nuclear power and reducing reliance on oil and coal.energy security; electric energy; historic cost estimation

The Role of Transaction Costs and Risk Premia in the Determination of Climate Change Policy Responses

Transaction costs and risk have generally not been taken into account in assessing the Kyoto mechanisms JI, CDM and emissions trading. However, they can have a significant influence. With regard to the project-based mechanisms, the factor that most determines the influence of transaction costs on the implementation of a project is the size of the particular project. For some projects transaction costs amount up to over 1000 ?/ton C reduced, which proves the necessity of streamlining procedures, as recognised in the Marrakesh Accords. With regard to international emissions trading it will be of high importance to build on experience with past national emissions trading schemes in order to keep transaction costs low. However, international trading schemes of the type envisaged under the Kyoto Protocol are likely to have significant issues that have not been addressed in previous national experience. In addition to transaction costs, we determine country risk premia to account for the fact that projects in different states may induce different levels of risk of default or project failure. --transaction costs,risk premia,Kyoto Protocol,emissions trading,small scale projects

Step by step onto the policy agenda

Dieser Artikel gibt einen Überblick über die Entstehung der ökosozialen Gesamtrechnung sowie alternative Indikatoren zur wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung. Gleichzeitig werden die jüngsten Fortschritte beschrieben und praktische Anwendungen aufgezeigt

Experimental measurement of focused wave group and solitary wave overtopping

Prediction of individual wave overtopping events is important in assessing danger to life and property, but data are sparse and hydrodynamic understanding is lacking. Laboratory-scale waves of three distinct types were generated at the Coastal Research Facility to model extreme waves overtopping a trapezoidal embankment. These comprised wave groups of compact form, wave groups embedded in a background wave field, and a solitary wave. The inshore wave propagation was measured and the time variation of overtopping rate estimated. The total volume overtopped was measured directly. The experiments provide well-defined data without uncertainty due to the effect of reflection on the incident wave train. The dependence of overtopping on a range of wave shapes is thus determined and the influence of wave-wave interactions on overtopping assessed. It was found that extreme overtopping may arise from focused waves with deep troughs rather than large crests. Furthermore, overtopping waves can be generated from small wave packets without affecting the applicability of results to cases in which there are surrounding waves. Finally, overtopping from a solitary wave is comparable with overtopping from focused wave groups of the same amplitude. © 2011 Copyright International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research

The Role of Transaction Costs and Risk Premia in the Determination of Climate Change Policy Responses

Transaction costs and risk have generally not been taken into account in assessing the Kyoto mechanisms JI, CDM and emissions trading. However, they can have a significant influence. With regard to the project-based mechanisms, the factor that most determines the influence of transaction costs on the implementation of a project is the size of the particular project. For some projects transaction costs amount up to over 1000 ton C reduced, which proves the necessity of streamlining procedures, as recognised in the Marrakesh Accords. With regard to international emissions trading it will be of high importance to build on experience with past national emissions trading schemes in order to keep transaction costs low. However, international trading schemes of the type envisaged under the Kyoto Protocol are likely to have significant issues that have not been addressed in previous national experience. In addition to transaction costs, we determine country risk premia to account for the fact that projects in different states may induce different levels of risk of default or project failure

Households WTP for the Reliability of Gas Supply

The security of natural gas supply is an important issue for all EU countries due to the region’s heavy dependence on imported supply sources and in light of energy demand for gas that is continuously increasing. Discussions have emphasised strategies for securing the supply at the macro level, e.g. diversification in supply sources, increase in storage capacity, etc. By contrast, consumers’ demand for the reliability of gas supply is rarely investigated. Hence this study was conducted to examine the economic implications associated with the security of gas supply directly to domestic consumers. Based on the choice experiment approach, household surveys were conducted in France, Italy and the UK. The results confirmed that the degree of the economic impact of a disruption of gas supply to domestic consumers was a function of the duration of a supply disruption and the season in which a supply cut would take place, as well as other preferences of consumers. The willingness to pay to secure per unit of gas consumption, or alternatively the costs of gas unsupplied, was estimated at between €2.65/cubic metre and €41.48/cubic metre across three different European countries.Energy security; gas supply; households; willingness to pay; choice experiment; EU

The Economic Value of Climate Information in Adaptation Decisions : Learning in the Sea-level Rise and Coastal Infrastructure Context

Traditional methods of investment appraisal have been criticized in the context of climate change adaptation. Economic assessment of adaptation options needs to explicitly incorporate the uncertainty of future climate conditions and should recognise that uncertainties may diminish over time as a result of improved understanding and learning. Real options analysis (ROA) is an appraisal tool developed to incorporate concepts of flexibility and learning that relies on probabilistic data to characterise uncertainties. It is also a relatively resource-intensive decision support tool. We test whether, and to what extent, learning can result from the use of successive generations of real life climate scenarios, and how non-probabilistic uncertainties can be handled through adapting the principles of ROA in coastal economic adaptation decisions. Using a relatively simple form of ROA on a vulnerable piece of coastal rail infrastructure in the United Kingdom, and two successive UK climate assessments, we estimate the values associated with utilising up-dated information on sea-level rise. The value of learning can be compared to the capital cost of adaptation investment, and may be used to illustrate the potential scale of the value of learning in coastal protection, and other adaptation contexts