Thesis title:
Carbon connections: Analysing the shifting enactments of climate change as a political issue
About the project:
Climate change is taking on increasing importance as an issue of public concern, gaining ever more widespread attention in international politics as well as national political debate in countries like Norway. In parallel with its increasing importance, however, the issue itself seems to have undergone a transformation in recent years. The Paris Agreement from 2015 introduced a new goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C, implying drastic emission reductions and the virtual elimination of fossil fuel energy use. In Norway and elsewhere, this has led to climate targets becoming increasingly tied to the question of fossil fuel production and the future of the oil industry. This indicates a shift not just in political importance but also in how climate change is enacted as an object of politics in the first place.
This project draws on theoretical resources from STS to develop an account of how the climate issue changes over time. It asks how climate change changes as an object of politics, through what specific tools and practices such changes are enacted, and with what political effects. These questions are pursued through in-depth investigations of two different sites at which the climate issue has been modified, reworked and renegotiated in recent years. The first site is the nexus of global climate knowledge-production and international climate governance – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the UN Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) – where a new understanding of climate change as a problem of keeping within a limited ‘carbon budget’ has become established. The second is the apparatus of national politics and administration in Norway, where the climate issue is closely connected to the new international targets of the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement, but also to the politics of oil and the governing of fossil carbon.
Supervisor
Kristin Asdal
Commentator
Linda Soneryd, University of Gothenburg (Sweden)
About Bård Lahn
Bård Lahn is a PhD Research Fellow at the TIK Centre. This seminar marks the final evaluation prior to submission of his dissertation.
The manuscript (draft) is available upon request. Please send a request to Helena helena.seibicke@tik.uio.no and she will ask Lahn to send it to you.
Welcome!