Tom and Matthias,
This is a great sounding panel! But it's REALLY hard to read (at
least on my primitive browser). Any chance you can send another
version along as a Word attachment or something like that?
Thanks, Steve
Quoting Thomas Princen <[email protected]>:
April 11, 2010
To: ESS and other ISA section members
From: Matthias Finger, PhD, EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale
Lausanne) & EUI [European University
Institute] <[email protected]>
Thomas Princen, PhD, University of Michigan
<[email protected]>
Re: Request for paper proposals for a panel at the 2011 ISA annual
conference, Montreal on the topic,
Leave It In the Ground!
Humanity has currently extracted about half of the Earth's oil
resources (and less than half of the Earth's gas and coal resources)
with already dramatic consequences on the global climate, the
regional and local environment and, especially, on local and
powerless peoples. If such extraction continues, the consequences
for the habitability of our planet, for biodiversity and for
humanity will be devastating.
This panel thus starts with three assumptions:
*if fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal, tar sands, etc.) are extracted,
their combustion products will enter the atmosphere and oceans
(i.e., technological efficiencies, decoupling, sequestration,
geoengineering won't do it);
*one way or another, fossil fuel extraction will stop, long before
the last drop of oil or last lump of coal is mined (for
habitability, economic, political or other reasons);
*further extraction of fossil fuels must stop before catastrophic
change is unavoidable.
The question this panel will explore, then, is, What would be the
politics of stopping fossil fuel extraction-that is, stopping fossil
fuels at the source-before catastrophic effects are set in motion?
Who would be the key actors? What scientific, economic and normative
arguments would be applicable? What historical shifts might offer
insight (e.g., abolition, POPs agreement, land mines)? What
contemporary efforts are pertinent (e.g., elimination of nuclear
weapons). The panel will ask how leave-it-in-the-ground! can be
achieved both from a theoretical and from a practical point of view.
We encourage proposals from and referrals to other sections-e.g.,
IPE, IO, Ethics, Security.
To date, we expect to have papers that could cover the following. We
invite additional paper ideas, whether primarily empirical or
conceptual.
*Framing the problem of stopping fossil fuel extraction
*Ethics of keeping fossil fuels in the ground
*Case study on a local/national/international effort to keep known
oil reserves in the ground (e.g., Ecuador)
*Case study on oil exploitation in Petén, Guatemala
*Case study of opening (via warming) and closing (via politics) the
Arctic
We would especially like to see work, however provisional, on the following:
*Exploring institutional arrangements, governmental and
non-governmental, formal and normative, for leaving fossil fuels
in the ground
*Case studies of local or regional resistance to fossil fuel
extraction (e.g., Nigeria, Appalachia, Papua New Guinea)
*Analysis of NOPE (not on planet earth) strategies, local to
national to global (e.g., POPs, nuclear weapons)
###Please respond to BOTH Finger and Princen:
<[email protected]> <[email protected]> ###
**********************************************************************
Thomas Princen, Ph.D.
School of Natural Resources and Environment
440 Church Street, Dana Building
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1041 USA
telephone: 734-647-9227 fax: 734-936-2195
e-mail: [email protected]
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