Further revealing examples of similar dynamics can be found in emerging global
governance of climate change – arguably (as documented elsewhere in this book)
the principal high-level arena within which issues of ‘green transformation’ are
currently played out. Key issues arise most acutely in the concluding paragraphs
of the recent summary for ‘policy-makers’ by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC, 2013). That such an influential body chose (tentatively,
but nonetheless momentously) to highlight a possible transition involving the diverse
technologies of ‘climate geoengineering’ indicates the depth of the dissonance and
contradiction. So important is this for understanding the contrast being drawn here
that it is worth briefly recalling the magnitude of this disjuncture.
A ‘progressive’ global transformation towards zero carbon energy would harness
diverse proven viable renewable resources and innovations to deliver energy
services at the same time as eliminating carbon emissions and realizing other sustain -
ability benefits. Although the challenges of such transformations are undoubtedly
ambitious and daunting, it is clear that there exists a diversity of possible pathways
through which to address them. The obstacles to an entirely renewable global
energy system are not – as often claimed – about intrinsic limits on resources,
technologies or economics. Repeated detailed assessments show that the energy
service needs of a more heavily populated and equitable world enjoying radically
higher levels of well-being, can be cost-effectively met, entirely and solely through
diverse currently available technological and organizational innovations around wind,
solar, biomass, hydro, ocean and geothermal power (PwC, 2010; GEA, 2012; IPCC,
2012).
However, the climate geoengineering alternative raised by the IPCC (IPCC,
2013), by contrast, would use an array of speculative technologies and unpre -
cedented global institutions aimed solely at assuming human ‘control’ over the
planetary climate (Shepherd et al., 2009; Fleming, 2010; Ridgwell et al., 2012;
Ruddiman, 2005). Although requiring economic and political investment on a scale
similar to that required for direct transformation of energy infrastructures, most
forms of climate geoengineering would leave energy needs entirely unaddressed
(Morgan and Ricke, 2009; Bracmort and Lattanzio, 2013). And it is this manifestly
more speculative alternative that is gaining strikingly increasing high-level
worldwide attention beyond the IPCC as well. That a regressive transition built
around climate geoengineering is asserted in some quarters to present a somehow
more tractable governance challenge to a progressive transformation based on
renewable energy is an indication not only of the strength of entrenched vested
interests in this sector, but of their impact on wider structures, knowledges and
expectations.
These examples illuminate a general factor of enormous importance for
considering these contrasting dynamics of transition and transformation: the ‘fallacy
of control’ (Cunha et al., 1999). This can be found in various areas of psychology,
organizational studies and politics, where simple deterministic pictures of control
are all variously problematic. They are often better understood more as instrumental
fictions necessary for the assertion of privilege than as disinterested accounts of
64 Andy Stirling
governance of climate change – arguably (as documented elsewhere in this book)
the principal high-level arena within which issues of ‘green transformation’ are
currently played out. Key issues arise most acutely in the concluding paragraphs
of the recent summary for ‘policy-makers’ by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC, 2013). That such an influential body chose (tentatively,
but nonetheless momentously) to highlight a possible transition involving the diverse
technologies of ‘climate geoengineering’ indicates the depth of the dissonance and
contradiction. So important is this for understanding the contrast being drawn here
that it is worth briefly recalling the magnitude of this disjuncture.
A ‘progressive’ global transformation towards zero carbon energy would harness
diverse proven viable renewable resources and innovations to deliver energy
services at the same time as eliminating carbon emissions and realizing other sustain -
ability benefits. Although the challenges of such transformations are undoubtedly
ambitious and daunting, it is clear that there exists a diversity of possible pathways
through which to address them. The obstacles to an entirely renewable global
energy system are not – as often claimed – about intrinsic limits on resources,
technologies or economics. Repeated detailed assessments show that the energy
service needs of a more heavily populated and equitable world enjoying radically
higher levels of well-being, can be cost-effectively met, entirely and solely through
diverse currently available technological and organizational innovations around wind,
solar, biomass, hydro, ocean and geothermal power (PwC, 2010; GEA, 2012; IPCC,
2012).
However, the climate geoengineering alternative raised by the IPCC (IPCC,
2013), by contrast, would use an array of speculative technologies and unpre -
cedented global institutions aimed solely at assuming human ‘control’ over the
planetary climate (Shepherd et al., 2009; Fleming, 2010; Ridgwell et al., 2012;
Ruddiman, 2005). Although requiring economic and political investment on a scale
similar to that required for direct transformation of energy infrastructures, most
forms of climate geoengineering would leave energy needs entirely unaddressed
(Morgan and Ricke, 2009; Bracmort and Lattanzio, 2013). And it is this manifestly
more speculative alternative that is gaining strikingly increasing high-level
worldwide attention beyond the IPCC as well. That a regressive transition built
around climate geoengineering is asserted in some quarters to present a somehow
more tractable governance challenge to a progressive transformation based on
renewable energy is an indication not only of the strength of entrenched vested
interests in this sector, but of their impact on wider structures, knowledges and
expectations.
These examples illuminate a general factor of enormous importance for
considering these contrasting dynamics of transition and transformation: the ‘fallacy
of control’ (Cunha et al., 1999). This can be found in various areas of psychology,
organizational studies and politics, where simple deterministic pictures of control
are all variously problematic. They are often better understood more as instrumental
fictions necessary for the assertion of privilege than as disinterested accounts of
64 Andy Stirling