68
so on. This means that policies can be assessed, scenarios can be crafted,
decision-makers can—in principle—be held to account. And in the seductive ways that metrics work in governance, targets may work themselves
into mind sets and documents even after they have been shed of their
methodological and substantive attire.
It has been argued that due to this metrical legibility of carbon, climate
change is actually more open to politicisation than the sustainable development discourse was. Sustainable development has of course also been
subject to quantification (Miller 2005), but has lent itself too easily to
being incorporated in the growth paradigm and neoliberal modes of governance. By contrast, argue While and co-authors (2010), the discourse of
carbon control represents “a harder edge to state environmental regulation via non-negotiable target setting…”. Shifting focus from the ambiguous and co-optable idea of sustainability towards the more measurable
problem of carbon control, they argue, opens up for a harder type of
regulation.
Carbon control may introduce a new set of values into state regulation,
which could open possibilities for challenging mainstream modes of urban
development in ways not possible under the sustainable development discourse (While et al. 2010). Jonas et al. (2011) suggest that the ranking of
cities on the basis of carbon emissions is becoming part of the competition
between cities for investment capital, headquarter locations and attraction
of educated workers. In other words, carbon control and its target are
becoming part of the calculus behind “rational” urban governance.
We are probably not quite there yet. But at least target-setting is becoming normalised, which in turn legitimates a whole set of practices that may
advance sustainable energy transitions. The next section examines a concrete chain of events to illustrate how this may occur. Given the scope of a
short chapter, this case study is cursory. Yet it seeks to identify certain
mechanisms for how climate targets are legitimated.
The concrete case I look at traces the 2 °C target through the Norwegian
Zero Growth Objective for urban transport. Within this, I am interested
in how the climate problem, which has been distilled into a universal
object of knowledge (as in the 2 °C target), cascades downwards in scale
from the national to the local level.
H. HAARSTAD
so on. This means that policies can be assessed, scenarios can be crafted,
decision-makers can—in principle—be held to account. And in the seductive ways that metrics work in governance, targets may work themselves
into mind sets and documents even after they have been shed of their
methodological and substantive attire.
It has been argued that due to this metrical legibility of carbon, climate
change is actually more open to politicisation than the sustainable development discourse was. Sustainable development has of course also been
subject to quantification (Miller 2005), but has lent itself too easily to
being incorporated in the growth paradigm and neoliberal modes of governance. By contrast, argue While and co-authors (2010), the discourse of
carbon control represents “a harder edge to state environmental regulation via non-negotiable target setting…”. Shifting focus from the ambiguous and co-optable idea of sustainability towards the more measurable
problem of carbon control, they argue, opens up for a harder type of
regulation.
Carbon control may introduce a new set of values into state regulation,
which could open possibilities for challenging mainstream modes of urban
development in ways not possible under the sustainable development discourse (While et al. 2010). Jonas et al. (2011) suggest that the ranking of
cities on the basis of carbon emissions is becoming part of the competition
between cities for investment capital, headquarter locations and attraction
of educated workers. In other words, carbon control and its target are
becoming part of the calculus behind “rational” urban governance.
We are probably not quite there yet. But at least target-setting is becoming normalised, which in turn legitimates a whole set of practices that may
advance sustainable energy transitions. The next section examines a concrete chain of events to illustrate how this may occur. Given the scope of a
short chapter, this case study is cursory. Yet it seeks to identify certain
mechanisms for how climate targets are legitimated.
The concrete case I look at traces the 2 °C target through the Norwegian
Zero Growth Objective for urban transport. Within this, I am interested
in how the climate problem, which has been distilled into a universal
object of knowledge (as in the 2 °C target), cascades downwards in scale
from the national to the local level.
H. HAARSTAD