Marcus Carson

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Acting locally to mitigate globally: climate actionin the AnthropoceneMarcus CarsonPublished online: 3 February 2015# The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.comAbstract The idea that individual- or local-scale actions cancombine to have global effects and relevance is of course notlimited to the natural sciences. Slogans such as Bthink global-ly, act locally^ have been used for many years in an effort toencourage individuals and locally anchored movements to seetheir place—and their actions—as part of a broader effort.What the message embedded in the term Anthropocene high-lights, however, is the fact that a multitude of individualsacting locally influences global conditions whether or notwe Bthink^ globally. Nowhere is this more true than withclimate change. In the Arctic, the consequences of climatechange are more visible, yet the links between action andconsequences appear more distant, and this illustrates a keychallenge. Local action has often been pursued in the shadowof the global negotiations, yet many of the most importantbreakthroughs currently being made are arguably being ac-complished at the local and regional levels. This is in factthe silver lining in that dark cloud surrounding theAnthropocene. It points to the critical importance of local levelaction on climate change, both from a governance perspectiveand for improving underlying the socio-technical conditionsthat influence what is possible in global efforts.Keywords Climate change . Local action . Arctic . Localclimate mitigationEven as final preparations were feverishly underway for theDecember 2014 climate negotiations in Lima, Peru, a commit-tee of scientists was meeting in Berlin to consider how onemight properly judge whether the planet has entered a newgeological epoch (The Guardian 2014). Some 15 years afterthe designation BAnthropocene^ was coined by Paul Crutzen,it has yet to become a household word.Nevertheless, the Bparadigm shift^ to which it gives a nameis gaining ground. As an insightful 2011 editorial in the Econ-omist quite accurately noted, Bthe term paradigm shift is ban-died around with promiscuous ease. But for the natural sci-ences to make human activity central to its conception of theworld, rather than a distraction, would mark such a shift forreal.^(Economist 2011). Indeed. Where human populationswere previously not large enough for human impacts to reachmuch beyond a local or regional level, the combined force ofsheer numbers and technological magnification of our impactis now recognized to have become a major geophysical forcepowerfully influencing the physical systems of our planet(Crutzen and Schwägerl 2011).The idea that individual or local scale actions can combineto have global effects and relevance is of course not limited tothe natural sciences. Slogans such as Bthink globally, actlocally^ have been used for many years in an effort to encour-age individuals and locally anchored social movements to seetheir place—and their actions—as part of a broader effort.What the message embedded in the term Anthropocene high-lights, however, is the fact that a multitude of individuals actinglocally influences global conditions whether or not we Bthink^globally. Nowhere is this more true than with climate change.The Arctic offers a conspicuous example of this phenome-non. Although changes in physical characteristics such as tem-perature and ocean acidity are proceeding at roughly twice thepace in the Arctic as the rest of the globe (AMAP 2014a, b),the diverse human activities causing these changes are, by andlarge, being carried out elsewhere. Some of these changes areM. Carson (*)Stockholm Environment Institute, Post Box 24218, SE 10451 Stockholm, Swedene-mail: marcus.carson@sei-international.orgURL: http://www.sei-international.orgURL: http://sei-international.org/staff?staffid=243M. Carson87D Linnégatan, 11523 Stockholm, SwedenJ Environ Stud Sci (2015) 5:58–60DOI 10.1007/s13412-015-0225-0quite dramatic, with the erosion caused by dwindling sea icethreatening coastal villages with oblivion, melting permafrostleading to the collapse of buildings and roads as their formerlysolid foundations melt away, and changing precipitation patternsleaving communities without fresh water. While most humanactivities that produce greenhouse emissions are geographicallyseparated from their climate-related consequences in the Arctic,they are much more closely linked in time than elsewhere, mak-ing the Arctic a sort of planetary early warning system thatprovides a preview of the scope and speed of climate-relatedenvironmental change. Moreover, the Arctic is not merely abellwether of change. There is a saying that Bwhat happens inthe Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic,^ as North Americans whohave learned about the polar vortex have learned.With theArcticoccupying a central role in our planet’s climate system,Arctic changes caused by actions elsewhere may well boomer-ang back to be felt elsewhere. This reality would seem to arguefor a slight modification of the slogan to Bthink globally, actlocally, and keep a really close watch on the Arctic.^ Yet in theArctic as elsewhere, many perceive retreating snow and icemoreas opportunity than threat—perhaps because many of the oppor-tunities appear even nearer in time than the threats, or perhapsbecause the effects are directly experienced by a relative few.A full 5 years after the high hopes and ambitions that con-verged in Copenhagen around the climate talks, the pace ofprogress in the United Nations Framework Convention on Cli-mate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations remains at a crawl. Bothindividually and as blocs, countries have proven reluctant toembrace emissions reductions at anything approaching the lev-el of ambition science indicates will be needed to avoid dan-gerous warming (Grubb 2011). Even countries such as Swe-den, with extremely good preconditions for dramatically re-ducing emissions (few domestic fossil fuel resources, abundanthydropower and a broad-based political support for climatemitigation), are moving far less decisively than many analystsbelieve possible—or necessary (Rockström and Eklund 2012).The core logic of the international talks is that bindingcommitments agreed to in the UNFCCC process will be im-plemented at the national and subnational levels. Yet, whilethe success or failure of negotiations is dependent on the ef-fectiveness of the negotiations themselves, negotiators’ in-structions are rooted in the very structures that they are ex-pected to change. It is well known that internal social, cultural,and institutional dynamics, in combination with the energy-related infrastructure of the individual participating countries,create their own powerful path dependencies.In considering what is possible in any particular round ofnegotiations, far too little is made of what Sweden’s formerchief negotiator Bo Kjellén (2009) characterizes to asBenabling conditions.^ Kjellén’s insight echoes Putnam(1988) classic work on Btwo-level games,^ which highlightedhow policy influence flows in both directions in a multi-level(Hooghe and Marks 2003), multi-scalar (Cash et al. 2006),and highly interactive process that involves policy, behavior,physical infrastructure, and feedbacks. In short, individualcountries find it much easier to strike agreements committingthem to changes they are already embracing domestically. Asnew practices become institutionalized at a local and regionallevel across significant portions of a country’s geography, itdeprives scare scenarios of their relevance, weakens once-powerful interests, and strengthens others.The importance of climate mitigation action across scaleshas gained increasing recognition over the past decade. Sub-national action was especially vital for setting changes in mo-tion in the United States of America (USA) as the Bush ad-ministration formally disengaged from the Kyoto Protocol,with some scholars highlighting state-level initiatives (Rabe2004) and others pointing to the key role of cities in gover-nance and implementation of climate policies (Betsill andBulkeley 2006). These subnational actors make an essentialcontribution in driving change toward national-level policyand implementation Btipping points (Carson and Román2010).^Moreover, the Buneven geographic distribution of ob-stacle and opportunity^ creates Bhotspots^ where social, po-litical, ideational, and infrastructural factors converge to sup-port sociopolitical innovation and Bdead spots^ where changeefforts are blocked or simply gain no traction (Carson 2011).Many, if not most of these hotspots of activity, lie where aconfluence of social factors and energy infrastructure makesfor a comparatively low threshold for change. They are regionsthat are culturally conducive, in that environmentalist sympa-thies are strong, where willingness to use regulation as a toolfor addressing social problems is not ruled out based on ideo-logical proclivities, andwhere there are strong organized actorswho see opportunity in pursuing a clean energy transition.They are also regions where coal or other fossil energy sourcesplay a relatively minor role in electricity production or in eco-nomic well-being. In the USA, this confluence is seen in WestCoast states such as California,Washington, andOregon or theEast Coast states that participate in the Regional GreenhouseGas Initiative (RGGI). In Europe, Sweden offers a good exam-ple of this confluence, while Norway and Germany illustratemore complex cases (with Norway having significant revenuesfrom its oil reserves and revenues and Germany having had asignificant portion of its electricity produced with coal).Moreover, the local level is where many of the very practicalchanges involved in reducing energy consumption and carbonemissions must be implemented (Mulugetta et al. 2011; Walker2011). Municipalities exert decisive influence over local infra-structure and energy use, structuring public and private behaviorfor decades to come. As small and mid-sized cities grow, theyhave a unique opportunity to employ today’s climate andenergy-related knowledge to set the scene for future cityinhabitants and roles as tenants, transport users, and energyconsumers. These are the kinds of elements highlighted byDavidVictor (2011) in his argument for shifting attention to localJ Environ Stud Sci (2015) 5:58–60 59efforts to more effectively combat climate change. One criticalpoint to make is that even comparatively ambitious emissionsreduction goals that might be embraced by a given country in theinternational negotiations must ultimately be converted into con-crete change for those reductions to be achieved. Many, if notmost of those changes, must be carried out at the local level.This brings us back to the Anthropocene. The core logic ofthe term is that humanity now represents a significant geo-physical force, due both to our sheer numbers and throughthe technological magnification of our impacts. In and of it-self, it is a neutral concept. In practice, however, it is frequent-ly invoked as part of a dark cloud of dire warning—of theharm we are unintentionally creating, of the risks we are un-wittingly magnifying. Since it is the global nature of theseharms and risks that makes them so foreboding and serious,many of the efforts to respond have focused at that globallevel, and much energy and attention has been rightly givento these global efforts. One result, however, is that local actionhas often been pursued in the shadow of the global negotia-tions, yet many of the most important breakthroughs currentlybeing made are arguably being accomplished at the local andregional levels (Bulkeley et al. 2011) and through coordina-tion efforts among constellations of local and regional actors,such as the International Council for Local EnvironmentalInitiatives (ICLEI), the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group(C40), the US Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Pro-gram, or the EuropeanUnion’s Covenant ofMayors. This is infact the silver lining in that dark cloud surrounding theAnthropocene. It points to the critical importance of local levelaction on climate change, both from a governance perspectiveand for improving underlying the socio-technical conditionsthat influence what is possible in global efforts.Acknowledgments The author would like to acknowledge the SwedishResearch Council Formas for research funding that has contributed to thisarticle.Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the CreativeCommons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, andreproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and thesource are credited.ReferencesAMAP (2014a) Arctic ocean acidification 2013: an overview. ArcticMonitoring and Assessment Program, Oslo, 2014AMAP (2014b) Snow, water, ice and permafrost in the arctic (SWIPA):climate change and the cryosphere. Arctic Monitoring andAssessment Program, Oslo, 2014Betsill MM, Bulkeley H (2006) Cities and the multilevel governance ofglobal climate change. Glob Gov 12:141–159Bulkeley H, Broto VC, HodsonM, Marvin S (eds) (2011) Cities and lowcarbon transitions. Routledge, LondonCarson M (2011) Paradigm shift in US climate policy, but whereis the system shift? In: Pelling M, Redclift M, Navarette DM(eds) Climate crisis and the crisis of capitalism. Rougledge,LondonCarson M, Román M (2010) Tipping point: crossroads for US climatepolicy. In: Lever-Tracy C (ed) Routledge international handbook ofclimate change and society. Routledge, LondonCash DW, Adger WN, Berkes F, Garden P, Lebel L, Olsson P,Pritchard L, Young O (2006) Scale and cross-scale dynamics:governance and information in a multi-level world. Ecol Soc11:8–20Crutzen PJ, Schwägerl C (2011) Living in the Anthropocene: toward anew global ethos. Environ 360, 2012-01-24.Economist (2011) Welcome to the Anthropocene: geology’s new age. InEconomist: the economist newspaper limited.Grubb M (2011) Durban: the darkest hour? Clim Pol 11:1269–1271Guardian (2014) Anthropocene: Is this the new epoch of humans? In TheGuardian news and media limited.Hooghe L, Marks G (2003) Unraveling the central state: types ofmulti-level governance. Institute for Advanced Studies,ViennaKjellén B (2009) New diplomacy for sustainable development. Taylorand Francis, LondonMulugetta Y, Jackson T, van der Horst D (2011) Carbon reduction atcommunity scale. Energy Policy 38:7541–7545Putnam R (1988) Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-levelgames. Int Organ 42:427–460Rabe BG (2004) Statehouse and greenhouse: the emerging politics ofAmerican climate change policy. Brookings Institution Press,WashingtonRockström J, Eklund K (2012-04-24) Världen har backat frånambitionerna för 40 år sen^ DN Debatt.Victor D (2011) Global warming gridlock: creating more effective strat-egies for protecting the planet. Cambridge University Press,CambridgeWalker G (2011) The role for ‘community’ in carbon governance.WIREsClim Chang 2.60 J Environ Stud Sci (2015) 5:58–60

Acting locally to mitigate globally: climate action in the Anthropocene

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Acting locally to mitigate globally: climate action in the Anthropocene

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