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ASEAN's cooperative security enterprise : norms and interests in the ASEAN regional forum
\"ASEANs Security Enterprise explores the significance of ASEANs cooperative security enterprise the questions of whether and in what sense this enterprise matters\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Sociotechnical transitions for deep decarbonization
Accelerating innovation is as important as climate policy Rapid and deep reductions in greenhouse gas emission are needed to avoid dangerous climate change. This will necessitate low-carbon transitions across electricity, transport, heat, industrial, forestry, and agricultural systems. But despite recent rapid growth in renewable electricity generation, the rate of progress toward this wider goal of deep decarbonization remains slow. Moreover, many policy-oriented energy and climate researchers and models remain wedded to disciplinary approaches that focus on a single piece of the low-carbon transition puzzle, yet avoid many crucial real-world elements for accelerated transitions ( 1 ). We present a “sociotechnical” framework to address the multidimensionality of the deep decarbonization challenge and show how coevolutionary interactions between technologies and societal groups can accelerate low-carbon transitions.
Journal Article
The crisis of democracy and the science of deliberation
Citizens can avoid polarization and make sound decisions That there are more opportunities than ever for citizens to express their views may be, counterintuitively, a problem facing democracy—the sheer quantitative overabundance overloads policymakers and citizens, making it difficult to detect the signal amid the noise. This overload has been accompanied by marked decline in civility and argumentative complexity. Uncivil behavior by elites and pathological mass communication reinforce each other. How do we break this vicious cycle? Asking elites to behave better is futile so long as there is a public ripe to be polarized and exploited by demagogues and media manipulators. Thus, any response has to involve ordinary citizens; but are they up to the task? Social science on “deliberative democracy” offers reasons for optimism about citizens' capacity to avoid polarization and manipulation and to make sound decisions. The real world of democratic politics is currently far from the deliberative ideal, but empirical evidence shows that the gap can be closed.
Journal Article
The U.S. National Quantum Initiative
Academia, agencies, and industry will work together Although quantum information science and technology (QIST) is based on fundamental physical tenets familiar to many in the academic world, it remains alien to much of the industrial and engineering workforce that will actually build reliable quantum devices. Industrial investment in QIST has grown considerably in recent years, but the field is at an embryonic stage, and formidable technical challenges to building quantum technologies remain. This confluence of opportunity, need, and challenge suggests that governments will have a substantial role in developing QIST and its ecosystem and in translating the corresponding science and technology for the benefit of society. We outline one such initiative, the U.S. National Quantum Initiative (NQI), and discuss how it can play a vital role in advancing QIST.
Journal Article
China’s present and future lunar exploration program
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the pace of lunar exploration has accelerated, with more than a dozen probes having undertaken scientific exploration of the Moon. Prominent among these have been the robotic “Chang’E” (CE) missions of the China Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP). We discuss technological and scientific goals and achievements for the four completed, and four planned, CE missions, and longer-term goals and plans of the CLEP beyond the CE missions. The exploration plan is flexible and iterative, with an emphasis on international cooperation.
Journal Article
A greener path for the EU common agricultural policy
It's time for sustainable, environmental performance The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU) is one of the world's largest agricultural policies and the EU's longest-prevailing one. Originally focused mostly on supporting production and farm income, the CAP has progressively integrated instruments to support the environment. Nonetheless, there is considerable agreement among EU citizens that the CAP still does not do enough to address ongoing environmental degradation and climate change (92% of nonfarmers, 64% of farmers) ( 1 ). In May and June 2018, the European Commission (EC) published the financial plan and legislative proposal for the CAP post-2020 ( 2 ), prompting numerous proposed amendments that the newly elected European Parliament (EP) will now have to consider. With an eye toward the next and final reform stages, including budget discussions and “trilogue” negotiations between the EC, the Council, and the EP to begin in autumn 2019, we examine whether the proposed post-2020 CAP can address key sustainability issues and meet societal demands for higher environmental performance.
Journal Article
A roadmap for rapid decarbonization
Emissions inevitably approach zero with a “carbon law” Although the Paris Agreement's goals ( 1 ) are aligned with science ( 2 ) and can, in principle, be technically and economically achieved ( 3 ), alarming inconsistencies remain between science-based targets and national commitments. Despite progress during the 2016 Marrakech climate negotiations, long-term goals can be trumped by political short-termism. Following the Agreement, which became international law earlier than expected, several countries published mid-century decarbonization strategies, with more due soon. Model-based decarbonization assessments ( 4 ) and scenarios often struggle to capture transformative change and the dynamics associated with it: disruption, innovation, and nonlinear change in human behavior. For example, in just 2 years, China's coal use swung from 3.7% growth in 2013 to a decline of 3.7% in 2015 ( 5 ). To harness these dynamics and to calibrate for short-term realpolitik, we propose framing the decarbonization challenge in terms of a global decadal roadmap based on a simple heuristic—a “carbon law”—of halving gross anthropogenic carbon-dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions every decade. Complemented by immediately instigated, scalable carbon removal and efforts to ramp down land-use CO 2 emissions, this can lead to net-zero emissions around mid-century, a path necessary to limit warming to well below 2°C.
Journal Article