Scientific Research about Climate Change Mitigation in Transport : A critical review

Peer reviewedPostprin

If, At First, The Idea is Not Absurd, Then There is No Hope For It: Towards 15 MtC in the UK Transport Sector.

This paper examines the possibilities of reducing transport carbon dioxide emissions in the UK by 60 per cent by 2030 using a modified scenario building and backcasting approach. It examines a range of policy measures (behavioural and technological), assessing how they can be effectively combined to achieve the required level of emissions reduction. The intention is to evaluate whether such an ambitious target is feasible, identify the main problems (including the transition costs), and the main decision points over the 30-year time horizon. This paper outlines the first stages of the research, providing: An introduction to futures studies, including a review of forecasting, scenario building and backcasting approaches; An assessment of the UK transport sector's contribution to climate change and global warming, and; Setting targets for 2030, forecasting the business as usual situation for all forms of transport in the UK, and assessing the scale of change in terms of achieving the emissions reductions. The benefits of scenario building and backcasting are that innovative packages of policy measures can be developed to address emissions reduction targets. It allows trend-breaking analysis, by highlighting the policy and planning choices to be made by identifying those key stakeholders that should be included in the process, and by making an assessment of the main decision points that have to be made (the step changes). It also provides a longer-term background against which more detailed analysis can take place.

Innovation, the diesel engine and vehicle markets: Evidence from OECD engine patents

This paper uses a patent data set to identify factors fostering innovation of diesel engines between 1974 and 2010 in the OECD region. The propensity of engine producers to innovate grew by 1.9 standard deviations after the expansion of the car market, by 0.7 standard deviations following a shift in the EU fuel economy standard, and by 0.23 standard deviations. The propensity to develop emissions control techniques was positively influenced by pollution control laws introduced in Japan, in the US, and in the EU, but not with the expansion of the car market. Furthermore, a decline in loan rates stimulated the propensity to develop emissions control techniques, which were simultaneously crowded out by increases in publicly-funded transport research and development. Innovation activities in engine efficiency are explained by market size, loan rates and by (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) diesel prices, inclusive of taxes. Price effects on innovation, outweigh that of the US corporate average fuel economy standards. Innovation is also positively influenced by past transport research and development. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd

Book review: Richard Gilbert and Anthony Perl (2008) Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight without Oil

Having read this book, one is left with a feeling that the important issues raised should have been at the forefront of policy debates for many decades, not just now. The basic argument is that transport must move away from its almost complete dependence of oil to alternative energy sources. Transport consumes nearly 60% of all oil (2005), and it is in a very vulnerable position as it is dependent on this one source, a potentially unstable set of supply conditions, volatile prices, and substantial increases in demand. This is not a good business strategy, and the risks and uncertainties seem to have grown substantially in the last two years with oil prices rising by nearly three times to around $150 per barrel

Policy on Sustainable Transport in England: The Case of High Speed 2

The achievement of sustainable transport is often a clearly stated objective of government policy, but in England there is no National Sustainable Transport Strategy (NSTS). This paper outlines the nature of sustainable transport arguing for a strategic approach that takes account of the means to reduce travel through substitution and shorter trips, as well as making best use of all modes and reducing reliance on carbon-based energy sources. It reviews the recent austerity phase of UK transport policy (2010-2015) where revenue support has been cut, but capital expenditure has increased, and it comments on the difficulties of making decisions on large scale transport infrastructure projects in the absence of a NSTS. The recent policy statements and initiatives on transport and sustainability are covered, looking backwards and forwards. It then takes the case of High Speed 2 (HS2) and identifies five main narratives in the debates over the arguments in support of this huge investment. It seems that sustainable transport has not been a central part of that debate, and there is a need to reframe the discussion on HS2, as part of a NSTS

Work Ethic, Turnover, and Performance: An Examination of Predictive Validity for Entry-level Employees

Work ethic is continually cited as a top factor in hiring new employees (Flynn, 1994; Shimko, 1990; VanNess, Melinsky, Buff, & Seifert, 2010). Research on the relationship between work ethic and job performance has typically shown positive results in a variety of contexts (Meriac & Gorman, 2017; Miller et al., 2002). The purpose of this study was to examine dimensions of work ethic and its relationship with turnover and contextual performance in an often-neglected segment of the workforce: entry-level employees. Data were collected from a large fast food franchise, including work ethic, turnover data, and supervisor-rated job performance. In Study 1, the relationships between the work ethic dimensions and turnover were examined. In Study 2, the relationships between work ethic dimensions and performance outcomes were examined through the mediating mechanism of job involvement. Turnover results indicated that dimensions of work ethic, including self-reliance, leisure and morality/ethics are potential predictors of avoidable and involuntary turnover. Wasted time, morality/ethics and leisure were significant predictors of manager-rated performance outcomes and counterproductive behaviors. Implications and future research directions are discussed

Sporting Bodies: The Rhetorics of Professional Female Athletes

In my dissertation, “Sporting Bodies: The Rhetorics of Female Athletes,” I interrogate how female athletes are represented in the media, trace the dominant cultural images and discourses associated with these representations, illustrate how female athletes use venues such as ESPN The Magazine as a vehicle to represent themselves even as they are represented by ESPN in ways that are not entirely within their control, and examine how female athletes’ self-presentation in the Body Issues can be interpreted as strategic, rhetorical acts. This project begins by investigating how historical discourses have influenced women’s athletics and female athletes. Rhetorically examining historical discourses about female athletes and women’s bodies demonstrate how patterns of marginalization have developed and continue to function in contemporary sports and American culture. I then build out these discourses in our contemporary setting, specifically focusing on arguments made my feminist sports scholars and women’s sports advocates, which call for the media to solely focus on the athleticism of female athletes. I also I offer the critique that an important limitation of these arguments is the lack of discussion about the economic pressures that greatly influence professional athletes. Additionally, a main focus of this dissertation is my rhetorical analysis of the visual and textual representations of female athletes in ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issues. I argue that we should resist interpretations of the representations of female athletes that position their sexual, racial, and feminine appearances as something to be ignored and devalued or as something that should be the focus of attention in themselves. The central goal in this project is to demonstrate how female athletes engage in rhetorical acts, via the representations of their bodies, that are complicated and often contradictory. A rhetorical analysis of the female athletes in the Body Issues is especially provocative because it offers a way to look at the representations of these athletes’, to look at their multiple subjectivities, and consider how they use their bodily appearances, pose types, and interviews in order to maintain the structures of the sporting world, or to survive and/or to gain visibility, economic security, public recognition, and the power to speak. Ultimately, I argue that their collective rhetorical activity demonstrates how athletes use the Body Issues as a vehicle to work within and against the male-dominated sporting world and propel themselves, their sport, and the larger organization of women’s athletics into positions of power

Professional mobility in Ibn ʿArabshāh’s fifteenth-century panegyric dedicated to Sultan al-Ẓāhir Jaqmaq

The fifteenth-century rhetorician, litterateur, and belletrist-historian Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿArabshāh (791–854/1389–1450) is known as a biographer of the Central Asian warlord and conqueror, Amir Temür (r. 771–807/1370–1405), Tīmūr, or Tamerlane. Scholarly interest in Ibn ʿArabshāh concerns primarily his ʿAjāʾib al-maqdūr fī nawāʾib Tīmūr (The Wonders of destiny in the calamities wrought by Tīmūr) and his relationship to Timurid historiography. Seldom is Ibn ʿArabshāh himself approached as a participant in and product of the socio-political landscapes of fifteenth-century Syria (Bilād al-Shām) and Egypt in the context of the late medieval sultanate of Cairo. Through the cultural practice of historical writing Ibn ʿArabshāh, like many of his peers, sought to take advantage of new opportunities presented by the emerging political order during the successive sultanates of al-Ashraf Barsbāy (r. 825–41/1422–38) and al-Ẓāhir Jaqmaq (r. 842–57/1438–53) to acquire a patronage position either at the court of the new sultan or elsewhere in the religio-political networks of the time. This article, building on the previous life sketch of Ibn ʿArabshāh and his works established by Robert McChesney, adds a more nuanced layer to the picture by historicizing his panegyric for the sultan al-Ẓāhir Jaqmaq (d. 857/1453), Al-Taʾlīf al-ṭāhir fī shiyam al-Malik al-Ẓāhir al-qāʾim bi-nuṣrat al-ḥaqq Abī Saʿīd Jaqmaq (The Pure composition on the character of the King al-Ẓāhir the supporter of divine truth Abī Saʿīd Jaqmaq). Analysis of the latter text in relation to The Wonders of Destiny will demonstrate ways in which the author may have sought to instrumentalize the Pure Composition during a precise moment of political transformation. Examining the Pure Composition in the context of its creation helps identify and reconstruct some details of the social world in which Ibn ʿArabshāh operated and provides a window into the author’s attempts to expand and define his key relationships in the hope of securing a new patron or better position