Pub Date : 2020-12-11DOI: 10.4337/9781800371781.00034
C. Henry
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Pub Date : 2020-12-11DOI: 10.4337/9781800371781.00026
M. Minnesma
The Dutch NGO Urgenda demanded greater action from the Dutch Government by suing it in 2013 for failing to implement effective climate policies to live up to its own acknowledged goal of 25-40% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2020. With 886 co-plaintiffs Urgenda won in 2015 the biggest climate lawsuit that had ever been filed at that time. The District Court The Hague decided that there was a breach of the duty of care for taking insufficient measures to prevent dangerous climate change (unlawful hazardous negligence). The State appealed, but the Court of Appeal dismissed all 29 arguments. The Court did agree with Urgenda, that filed one cross appeal, that the State also owed a duty of care under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In December 2019 the Supreme Court of the Netherlands also upheld the decision. This case is seen as a ‘rights turn’ in climate change litigation.
{"title":"The Urgenda case in the Netherlands: creating a revolution through the courts","authors":"M. Minnesma","doi":"10.4337/9781800371781.00026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800371781.00026","url":null,"abstract":"The Dutch NGO Urgenda demanded greater action from the Dutch Government by suing it in 2013 for failing to implement effective climate policies to live up to its own acknowledged goal of 25-40% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2020. With 886 co-plaintiffs Urgenda won in 2015 the biggest climate lawsuit that had ever been filed at that time. The District Court The Hague decided that there was a breach of the duty of care for taking insufficient measures to prevent dangerous climate change (unlawful hazardous negligence). The State appealed, but the Court of Appeal dismissed all 29 arguments. The Court did agree with Urgenda, that filed one cross appeal, that the State also owed a duty of care under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In December 2019 the Supreme Court of the Netherlands also upheld the decision. This case is seen as a ‘rights turn’ in climate change litigation.","PeriodicalId":256332,"journal":{"name":"Standing up for a Sustainable World","volume":"9 3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134645819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-11DOI: 10.4337/9781800371781.00017
L. Tubiana, E. Guérin
{"title":"The Paris Agreement on climate change: what legacy?","authors":"L. Tubiana, E. Guérin","doi":"10.4337/9781800371781.00017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800371781.00017","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":256332,"journal":{"name":"Standing up for a Sustainable World","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115511797","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-11DOI: 10.4337/9781800371781.00073
G. Mace
Climate change and biodiversity loss are the two most important features of human-driven global environmental change. They are also closely related. Not only are they both direct consequences of human population growth, natural resource consumption and waste, but there are many interrelationships among the actions that will be necessary to address each of them. However, while biodiversity loss attracts a great deal of popular interest, it has not achieved the same degree of political attention as climate change. Biodiversity lacks effective intergovernmental commitments, something that biodiversity scientists regularly lament (Legagneux et al., 2018). Perhaps this is because the causes of biodiversity loss are complex and less clear-cut than are the causes of climate change. While it is clear that moving away from our current carbon-based economy will be difficult, it is much more tangible than the multiple actions across scales and sectors that will be required to reverse biodiversity loss (IPBES, 2019). At least we know what we must do to limit the degree of climate change. But the lack of binding commitments addressing biodiversity loss may also be due to the fact that the immediate consequences of biodiversity loss are neither evident nor obviously material compared to climate change impacts. It is accepted that climate change carries substantial economic costs, and even existential threats. By contrast, the consequences of biodiversity loss are multiple, vague and often contested. While there are very good reasons to be concerned about biodiversity loss and its potential to pose a serious risk to future generations, biodiversity can be perceived as an idle concern for amateur naturalists, or a manageable problem that technological innovation will address as necessary. The recognition of ecosystem services and their importance for society (Daily, 1997) has to some extent transformed the way in which biodiversity is perceived in policy-making. A developing narrative about the dependence of people on nature, and assessments such as those produced by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA, 2005), The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB, 2010), and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES,
气候变化和生物多样性丧失是人类驱动的全球环境变化的两个最重要特征。它们也是密切相关的。它们不仅都是人口增长、自然资源消耗和浪费的直接后果，而且解决每一个问题所必需的行动之间也有许多相互关系。然而，尽管生物多样性的丧失引起了大众的极大兴趣，但它并没有像气候变化那样得到同等程度的政治关注。生物多样性缺乏有效的政府间承诺，这是生物多样性科学家经常哀叹的(Legagneux et al.， 2018)。也许这是因为生物多样性丧失的原因比气候变化的原因更复杂，更不明确。虽然很明显，摆脱目前的碳基经济将是困难的，但这比扭转生物多样性丧失所需的跨规模和部门的多重行动要切实得多(IPBES, 2019)。至少我们知道我们必须做些什么来限制气候变化的程度。但是，缺乏解决生物多样性丧失问题的约束性承诺也可能是由于与气候变化影响相比，生物多样性丧失的直接后果既不明显也不明显。人们普遍认为，气候变化会带来巨大的经济成本，甚至是生存威胁。相比之下，生物多样性丧失的后果是多重的、模糊的，而且往往存在争议。虽然有很好的理由担心生物多样性的丧失及其对后代构成严重威胁的可能性，但生物多样性可以被认为是业余博物学家的无聊担忧，或者是技术创新将在必要时解决的可控问题。对生态系统服务及其对社会的重要性的认识(Daily, 1997)在某种程度上改变了政策制定中对生物多样性的看法。关于人对自然依赖的发展叙述，以及千年生态系统评估(MEA, 2005年)、生态系统和生物多样性经济学(TEEB, 2010年)和生物多样性和生态系统服务政府间科学政策平台(IPBES)所做的评估。
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Pub Date : 2020-12-11DOI: 10.4337/9781800371781.00040
Alessia Lefébure
Young people believe they have a responsibility to make a better world but do not feel adequately prepared to do so. This is a serious challenge for Higher Education institutions who want to meet these expectations and keep recruiting – as they often say - the best and the brightest. The ambitions and aspirations of the youth are increasingly converging throughout the planet. Surveys and polls have never been as consistent as in 2019, revealing growing concerns for societal issues at large, but most importantly, for the ecological transition, that Higher Education institutions cannot ignore. Confronted to fierce competition for students and of declining enrolment, universities face a multiple challenge: meeting the expectations of future students and maintain the trust of the job market concerning its capacity to prepare and equip the youth with the skills and competencies of tomorrow, while providing the foundations for critical thinking and for effective citizenship.
{"title":"Ecological aspirations of youth: how higher education could fall between two stools","authors":"Alessia Lefébure","doi":"10.4337/9781800371781.00040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800371781.00040","url":null,"abstract":"Young people believe they have a responsibility to make a better world but do not feel adequately prepared to do so. This is a serious challenge for Higher Education institutions who want to meet these expectations and keep recruiting – as they often say - the best and the brightest. The ambitions and aspirations of the youth are increasingly converging throughout the planet. Surveys and polls have never been as consistent as in 2019, revealing growing concerns for societal issues at large, but most importantly, for the ecological transition, that Higher Education institutions cannot ignore. Confronted to fierce competition for students and of declining enrolment, universities face a multiple challenge: meeting the expectations of future students and maintain the trust of the job market concerning its capacity to prepare and equip the youth with the skills and competencies of tomorrow, while providing the foundations for critical thinking and for effective citizenship.","PeriodicalId":256332,"journal":{"name":"Standing up for a Sustainable World","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129915253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-11DOI: 10.4337/9781800371781.00052
Pippo Ranci
Plastics have entered the everyday life of humans everywhere and help solve innumerable problems, yet they are a curse on the environment. They remain in the streets and parks and beaches, wherever humans do not dispose of waste properly. This is not an easy exercise for many societies, since it requires an organized and costly system of waste collection, reuse or appropriate incineration. Plastic objects and microplastics are littering the soil and the water, suffocating and poisoning marine life. Europe is the second largest plastics producer in the world, after China, and out of the 27 million tonnes of plastic waste produced each year in Europe, only a third is recycled. Every year, 150 000–500 000 tonnes of macroplastics and 70 000–130 000 tonnes of microplastics are dumped into the seas around Europe. The majority of these plastics enter the Mediterranean Sea, posing a major threat to marine life. Large plastic pieces injure, suffocate and often kill marine animals, including protected and endangered species, such as sea turtles. The microplastics, smaller and more insidious fragments, have reached record levels in the Mediterranean Sea: their concentration is almost four times higher than in the “plastic island” found in the North Pacific Ocean. Plastic debris in the marine environment contains organic contaminants, of which 78 percent are toxic. By entering the food chain, these fragments threaten an increasing number of animal species as well as human health (Alessi and Di Carlo, 2018). There are three defence strategies, and they are all necessary:
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Pub Date : 2020-12-11DOI: 10.4337/9781800371781.00062
J. Oppenheim, Catharina Dyvik
We are living through one of the warmest decades ever recorded, with climate-related natural disasters increasing in frequency and intensity. We are also losing biodiversity at unprecedented rates, with over a million species on the verge of extinction. Recent Australia and Amazon forest fires remind us that deforestation, often caused by agricultural and infrastructure expansion, is also a major driver of global heating and environmental degradation. According to the scientific community, limiting global warming and mitigating the effects of climate change will require a rapid and far-reaching transformation across the real economy if we are to reach the net-zero emissions target by 2050. To do so, we need to green our energy systems, decarbonize our heavy industries, integrate resilience into our building design, modernize our transport systems and shift how we produce our food. This will require strong and coordinated political leadership, changing consumer habits and bold businesses figuring out how to create value through sustainability. But none of this will happen – or happen fast enough – unless it is combined with rapid and widespread action from the financial sector. There has been growing momentum and countless new initiatives over the past years that are committed to “greening” the financial system. But it is not happening at the necessary scale, speed or ambition required. The financial system is only responding at the margin. We continue to invest in high-carbon industries, with greenhouse gas emissions at record highs in 2018 and coal finance still on the rise. Global climate finance flows dropped 11 per cent in 2018 to $546 billion1 largely due to falling spending on wind and solar and despite unprecedented efforts to install new renewable capacity. By comparison, the largest global banks have poured nearly $2 trillion into fossil fuel financing since the Paris Agreement was adopted, with financing on the rise each year.
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Pub Date : 2020-12-11DOI: 10.4337/9781800371781.00027
Patti Moore, D. Noonan, Erik Woodward
The Juliana v. United States lawsuit is arguably the highest-profile, most-successful and most-consequential legal action in a global wave of youth-led climate advocacy. This contribution summarizes the lawsuit, including its legal, factual and scientific bases, its history, and its future prospects. The authors also situate the lawsuit within the global youth-led climate movement that has risen to prominence since circa-2018, and briefly comment on the growing trend of similar youth-led, human rights-based legal actions in other countries and jurisdictions.
朱莉安娜诉美国(Juliana v. United States)一案可以说是全球青年主导的气候倡导浪潮中最引人注目、最成功、影响最大的法律行动。这篇文章总结了该诉讼，包括其法律、事实和科学依据、历史和未来前景。作者还将该诉讼置于自2018年左右以来日益突出的全球青年主导的气候运动中，并简要评论了其他国家和司法管辖区以青年为主导的、基于人权的类似法律行动日益增长的趋势。
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Pub Date : 2020-12-11DOI: 10.1215/9780822398059-016
S. Stern
Our lives and livelihoods face profound threats from unmanaged or badly managed climate change; for many they are existential. The science is clear that the potential magnitude of the risks we face is immense and that we must act with great urgency and across the whole economy. The next two decades will be decisive for climate change. If we delay, the consequences could be devastating and many of the changes will be irreversible. Our current paths of growth and development are unsustainable. Yet we also have in our hands an immense opportunity: we can now see how to embark on a path of strong, sustainable, resilient and inclusive growth that could both drive and be driven by the transition to the zero-carbon economy. There is real momentum as countries, sectors and technologies change, but we are not moving anywhere near fast enough. Essential to the acceleration we need is the power of ideas and the forces of entrepreneurship. Private individuals and enterprises are a crucial source of initiative and creativity. They generate new ideas, show what is possible and can inspire. The policies and institutions within which they work are vital to their incentives and their ability to achieve. This part of the book brings these dynamics to life. Their coming together also provides us with an opportunity to identify the common threads, both in terms of the underpinnings of success and the barriers hindering progress, that can help us understand how their potential contributions can be fostered. Their differences too help us understand how creativity can bloom or be discouraged. The examples cover an extraordinary range and all are in areas of activity of particular relevance to the major challenges of managing climate change and other fundamental environmental issues. They range from rural electricity to urban transport, from drip irrigation to mangroves, from managing migration to managing a transition from mining, and from changing an oil and natural gas company to a wind company, to changing a company from chemicals to biodegradable plastics. They demonstrate in an inspiring way what can be achieved. In this short introduction, we highlight just a few of the cases to illustrate their range and creativity. Responding to the climate and biodiversity crises in a manner commensurate to the challenges will entail many large-scale changes: our future must be very
{"title":"Introduction to Part V","authors":"S. Stern","doi":"10.1215/9780822398059-016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822398059-016","url":null,"abstract":"Our lives and livelihoods face profound threats from unmanaged or badly managed climate change; for many they are existential. The science is clear that the potential magnitude of the risks we face is immense and that we must act with great urgency and across the whole economy. The next two decades will be decisive for climate change. If we delay, the consequences could be devastating and many of the changes will be irreversible. Our current paths of growth and development are unsustainable. Yet we also have in our hands an immense opportunity: we can now see how to embark on a path of strong, sustainable, resilient and inclusive growth that could both drive and be driven by the transition to the zero-carbon economy. There is real momentum as countries, sectors and technologies change, but we are not moving anywhere near fast enough. Essential to the acceleration we need is the power of ideas and the forces of entrepreneurship. Private individuals and enterprises are a crucial source of initiative and creativity. They generate new ideas, show what is possible and can inspire. The policies and institutions within which they work are vital to their incentives and their ability to achieve. This part of the book brings these dynamics to life. Their coming together also provides us with an opportunity to identify the common threads, both in terms of the underpinnings of success and the barriers hindering progress, that can help us understand how their potential contributions can be fostered. Their differences too help us understand how creativity can bloom or be discouraged. The examples cover an extraordinary range and all are in areas of activity of particular relevance to the major challenges of managing climate change and other fundamental environmental issues. They range from rural electricity to urban transport, from drip irrigation to mangroves, from managing migration to managing a transition from mining, and from changing an oil and natural gas company to a wind company, to changing a company from chemicals to biodegradable plastics. They demonstrate in an inspiring way what can be achieved. In this short introduction, we highlight just a few of the cases to illustrate their range and creativity. Responding to the climate and biodiversity crises in a manner commensurate to the challenges will entail many large-scale changes: our future must be very","PeriodicalId":256332,"journal":{"name":"Standing up for a Sustainable World","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122820630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-11DOI: 10.4337/9781800371781.00046
C. Henry
discovered chain-like carbon molecules in interstellar gas clouds. Would it be possible to vaporize carbon on Earth to produce similar molecules and find out what they are exactly made of? this Kroto a very powerful laser that could vaporize almost any known material. know that bring to the three of them Nobel in chemistry. In a series of experiments performed in the autumn of 1985, they simulated the physicochemical reactions that take place in interstellar clouds by applying the power of their laser to the most common form of carbon, graphite. The results were stunning: hitherto unobserved on Earth, and altogether remark-able, carbon molecules were detected. Because of their size, they are usually called nanoparticles. Since then, lots of nanoparticles have been engineered from various physical elements, not only carbon; some of them are endowed with astonishing mechanical, electrical and chemical properties. As far as mechanical strength is concerned, it can be two orders of magnitude greater than it is for steel. Electrical properties beat those of previously known elec-trically efficient materials. The high level of chemical activity is linked to the high surface area to volume ratio that small size entails. In short, one might say that ordinary materials, when embodied at very small scales, display remarka-ble properties that cannot be anticipated at larger scales.
{"title":"The rise of supercapacitors: making electric vehicles as convenient as ordinary ones","authors":"C. Henry","doi":"10.4337/9781800371781.00046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800371781.00046","url":null,"abstract":"discovered chain-like carbon molecules in interstellar gas clouds. Would it be possible to vaporize carbon on Earth to produce similar molecules and find out what they are exactly made of? this Kroto a very powerful laser that could vaporize almost any known material. know that bring to the three of them Nobel in chemistry. In a series of experiments performed in the autumn of 1985, they simulated the physicochemical reactions that take place in interstellar clouds by applying the power of their laser to the most common form of carbon, graphite. The results were stunning: hitherto unobserved on Earth, and altogether remark-able, carbon molecules were detected. Because of their size, they are usually called nanoparticles. Since then, lots of nanoparticles have been engineered from various physical elements, not only carbon; some of them are endowed with astonishing mechanical, electrical and chemical properties. As far as mechanical strength is concerned, it can be two orders of magnitude greater than it is for steel. Electrical properties beat those of previously known elec-trically efficient materials. The high level of chemical activity is linked to the high surface area to volume ratio that small size entails. In short, one might say that ordinary materials, when embodied at very small scales, display remarka-ble properties that cannot be anticipated at larger scales.","PeriodicalId":256332,"journal":{"name":"Standing up for a Sustainable World","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133738910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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