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Call for Papers and Session organizers: AAG Annual Meeting, Washington DC
The Annual AAG meeting will be in Washington DC, April 14-18, 2010. Note the deadline for submitting a paper abstract is Octber 28, 2009. It is not too early to be thinking of organizing an EESG sponsored session or panel! I would urge you to check the EESG website to see if any similar sessions have been planned so that we might better coordinate them. If you would like EESG sponsorship for your session please send me your call for papers for approval (a minor formality) so they can be posted on the EESG website.
Paper session: Carbon economy: assessing the impact of carbon markets and green jobs
Organizer: Janelle Knox-Hayes, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology
Sponsored by the Energy and Environment Specialty Group
Energy consumption has long stood at the intersection of the economy, environment, and national security, and is of growing interest to economic and urban geographers. The economic impacts of climate change stress the urgency to transition the global economy to a low-carbon energy supply. The United States Congress is working to pass a comprehensive climate and energy bill by 2010. The bill would promote a number of measures to reduce energy consumption and incorporate the use of a cap-and trade system for heavy emitters. The United States is under pressure to pass climate legislation before the UNFCCC Conference of Parties meets in Copenhagen in December, where world leaders will try to secure an agreement to extend the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012. The developing U.S. legislation as well as the growing global consensus under the UNFCCC encourage the use of carbon trading schemes and clean energy initiatives to spur green development. These initiatives aim to convert an economy sustained by high-carbon energy to one based on low-carbon, sustainable sources of energy. The undertaking of this challenge is immense, and the impact could transform virtually every sector of the economy.
The aim of this session is to explore the structure, function, and future of carbon economy. Conceptual and or empirical papers which explore the development of carbon economy are invited. This session will explore themes including, but not limited to:
- Do markets serve to establish a low-carbon economy? Are market mechanisms sufficient, or do they divert attention from the issue for the sake of economic pursuits? Can carbon markets be conceived of in other ways?
- What are the economic and social impacts of climate programs such as emissions trading initiatives? What is the potential impact on different energy sectors of pricing carbon emissions? Are there considerable social justice issues involved in the development of legal rights to own, sell and trade carbon emission credits?
- Does carbon economy promote the transition of energy supplies to renewable resources?
- What type of energy architecture and infrastructure is needed to achieve a low-carbon economy?
- LWhat does carbon economy offer to developing countries? Does a global low-carbon economy offer countries the opportunity to leapfrog technological development through energy initiatives?
- Role of military action in energy usage
- Are there specific labor implications of carbon economy? Will the nature of workforces dramatically change in the next 20 years as a result of efforts to reduce carbon footprints?
- What are the limitations and shortcomings of economic approaches to address climate change?
- What role do urban centers play in promoting low-carbon economy?
Paper session: The Ethics of Energy
Organizer: Johanna Haas (Illinois State University) and Michael Ferber (The King’s University College)
Sponsored by:
- The Energy and Environment Specialty Group
- The Ethics, Justice, and Human Rights Specialty Group
- The Geography of Religions and Belief Systems Specialty Group
Would you close down Yellowstone National Park to build a massive geothermal power plant if you knew it would close down hundreds of coal fired plants and slow climate change? Is it just to store spent nuclear fuel in Yucca Mountain, or has that region already given enough to America’s nuclear program? What are religious leaders saying about climate change, and why do they disagree with each other? Why were hundreds of communities destroyed in order for the Tennessee Valley Authority to provide rural electrification, and even more have been destroyed to build China’s Three Gorges Dam? What responsibility does the international community hold to clean up accidents like Chernobyl?
Our energy decisions have religious, ethical, and moral dimensions at scales from the individual to the globe. This session welcomes papers from a variety of perspectives and scales that explore the ways energy extraction and use interact with morals, values, ethics and religion. We hope to explore the multiple roles deeply-held beliefs play (or should play) in shaping energy and environmental decisions, lifestyles and policy.
This session will explore themes including, but not limited to:
- Environmental justice and power plant construction
- Creation care and climate change
- Role of military action in energy usage
- Biofuels and hunger
- Impacts of energy taxes on low-income people
- Religiously-based protest groups