A new regime of carbon counting: the practices and politics of accounting for everyday carbon through C02e

Inspired by the commercial desires of global brands and retailers to access the lucrative green consumer market, carbon is increasingly being counted and made knowable at the mundane sites of everyday production and consumption, from the carbon footprint of a plastic kitchen fork to that of an online bank account. Despite the challenges of counting and making commensurable the global warming impact of a myriad of biophysical and societal activities, this desire to communicate a product or service's carbon footprint has sparked complicated carbon calculative practices and enrolled actors at literally every node of multi-scaled and vastly complex global supply chains. Against this landscape, this paper critically analyzes the counting practices that create the ‘e’ in ‘CO2e’. It is shown that, central to these practices are a series of tools, models and databases which, in building upon previous work (Eden, 2012 and Star and Griesemer, 1989) we conceptualize here as ‘boundary objects’. By enrolling everyday actors from farmers to consumers, these objects abstract and stabilize greenhouse gas emissions from their messy material and social contexts into units of CO2e which can then be translated along a product's supply chain, thereby establishing a new currency of ‘everyday supply chain carbon’. However, in making all greenhouse gas-related practices commensurable and in enrolling and stabilizing the transfer of information between multiple actors these objects oversee a process of simplification reliant upon, and subject to, a multiplicity of approximations, assumptions, errors, discrepancies and/or omissions. Further the outcomes of these tools are subject to the politicized and commercial agendas of the worlds they attempt to link, with each boundary actor inscribing different meanings to a product's carbon footprint in accordance with their specific subjectivities, commercial desires and epistemic framings. It is therefore shown that how a boundary object transforms greenhouse gas emissions into units of CO2e, is the outcome of distinct ideologies regarding ‘what’ a product's carbon footprint is and how it should be made legible. These politicized decisions, in turn, inform specific reduction activities and ultimately advance distinct, specific and increasingly durable transition pathways to a low carbon society.

Spectacular foodscapes: food celebrities and the politics of lifestyle mediation in an age of inequality

This editorial introduces a special issue of Food, Culture & Society and works to add a parallel, substantive take on the phenomenon of the food celebrity and the mediated, everyday cultural politics they create. We start by exploring the concept of the foodscape. Specifically, we argue that food celebrities represent a fundamental component of contemporary foodscapes, how they “perform” and function, and the socio-material means by which they are produced. We then explore the key roles and privileges of food celebrity, arguing that the celebrity chef is not the only high-profile, mediating figure at work on the foodscape. Key food celebrity paradoxes are identified and discussed: food celebrities must work to be authentic and aspirational, accessible yet exclusive, responsibilizing but also empowering. We conclude with a short contextualization of the papers in this special issue, and argue for the rich potential of food celebrity scholarship as a way to better understand food inequalities

The politics of fiscal policy during economic downturns, 1981-2010

This article investigates fiscal policy responses to the Great Recession in historical perspective. We explore general trends in the frequency, size and composition of fiscal stimulus as well as the impact of government partisanship on fiscal policy outputs during the four international recessions of 1980-81, 1990-91, 2001-02 and 2008-09. Encompassing 17-23 OECD countries, our analysis calls into question the idea of a general retreat from fiscal policy activism since the early 1980s. The propensity of governments to respond to economic downturns by engaging in fiscal stimulus has increased over time and we do not observe any secular trend in the size of stimulus measures. At the same time, OECD governments have relied more on tax cuts to stimulate demand in the two recessions of the 2000s than they did in the early 1980s or early 1990s. Regarding government partisanship, we do not find any significant direct partisan effects on either the size or the composition of fiscal stimulus for any of the four recession episodes. However, the size of the welfare state conditioned the impact of government partisanship in the two recessions of the 2000s, with Left-leaning governments distinctly more prone to engage in discretionary fiscal stimulus and/or spending increases in large welfare states, but not in small welfare states.

Nature protection in Greece: an appraisal of the factors shaping integrative conservation and policy effectiveness

The proliferation of designated areas following the implementation of Natura 2000 in Greece has initiated changes in the protected area design and conservation policy making aiming at delivering action for biodiversity and integrative planning on a wider landscape. Following the sustainability concept, an integrative approach cannot realistically take place simply by extending the protected area and designations. The paper addresses public involvement and inter-sectoral coordination as major procedural elements of integrative management and evaluates the nature and strength of their negative or positive influences on the fulfillment of an integrative vision of nature conservation. A review of the history of protected areas and administration developments in Greece provide useful input in the research. The analysis has shown that the selected network of Natura 2000 sites has been superimposed upon the existing system and resulted in duplication of administrative effort and related legislation. As a result the overall picture of protected areas in the country appears complex, confusing and fragmented. Major failures to integrated conservation perspective can be traced to structural causes rooted in politico-economic power structures of mainstream policy and in a rather limited political commitment to conservation. It is concluded that greater realisation. of integrated conservation in Greece necessitates policy reforms related mainly to sectoral legal frameworks to promote environmentalism as well as an increased effort by the managing authorities to facilitate a broader framework of public dialogue and give local communities incentives to sustainably benefit from protected areas. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Terminal: a miracle play with popular music from the end of the world

Terminal: A Miracle Play with Popular Music from the End of the World is a film and live performance project exploring the politics of post-apocalyptic fiction. A theatrical staging of a morality play for end times and future folk music, it recasts eschatology, as a foundational myth for a future society. Post-apocalyptic writing and cinema are grounded in an ethos of survivalism. Invoking Rousseau’s state of nature, or time before government, these fictions propose violent scenarios in which nuclear holocaust, environmental catastrophe and other disasters generate an individualistic politics of pure pragmatism, negating the possibility of democratic deliberation. Terminal narrates this familiar scenario, but at the same time questions its validity. The film, shot on black and white VHS at Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbarn in Cumbria, dramatises a series of conversations between future-historical archetypes about the needs and pressures of the situation in which they find themselves at the end of the world. The performers then gather to play worshipful songs about acid rain, radiation sickness and eating the dog, using a mix of conventional, obscure and makeshift instruments In the tradition of books such as Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker and Arthur M. Miller Jr.’s A Canticle for Liebowitz, Terminal imagines artistic expression and new folk traditions for a world to come after the apocalypse. If, as Slavoj Žižek would have it, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to think of the end of capitalism, the project juxtaposes these two endpoints to test out how alternative scenarios might emerge from the collaborative practice of making theatre and music against a setting of social collapse.

'Nature concocts & expels': the agents and processes of recovery from disease in Early Modern England

The ‘golden saying’ in early modern medicine was ‘Nature is the healer of disease’. This article uncovers the meaning and significance of this forgotten axiom by investigating perceptions of the agents and physiological processes of recovery from illness in England, c.1580-1720. Drawing on sources such as medical texts and diaries, it shows that doctors and laypeople attributed recovery to three agents – God, Nature, and the practitioner. While scholars are familiar with the roles of providence and medicine, the vital agency of Nature has been overlooked. In theory, the agents operated in a hierarchy: Nature was ‘God’s instrument’, and the physician, ‘Nature’s servant’; but in practice the power balance was more ambivalent. Nature was depicted both as a housewife who cooked and cleaned the humours, and as a warrior, who defeated the disease. Through exploring these complex dynamics, the article sheds fresh light on concepts of gender, disease, and bodies.

Food geographies I: relational foodscapes and the busy-ness of being more-than-food

The study of foodscapes has spread throughout geography at the same time as food scholarship has spearheaded post-disciplinary research. This report argues that geographers have taken to post-disciplinarity to explore the ways that food is ‘more-than-food’ through analyses of the visceral nature of eating and politics and the vital (re)materializations of food’s cultural geographies. Visceral food geographies illuminate what I call the ‘contingent relationalities’ of food in the critical evaluation of the indeterminate, situated politics of ‘feeling food’ and those of the embodied collectivities of obesity. Questions remain, however, about how a visceral framework might be deployed for broader critiques within foodscapes and the study of human geography. The study of food’s vital materialisms opens up investigation into the practices of the ‘makings’ of meat, food waste and eating networks. Analysis of affect, embodiment and cultural practices is central to these theorizations and suggests consideration of the multiple materialisms of food, space and eating. There is, I contend, in the more radical, ‘post-relational’ approaches to food, the need for a note of caution. Exuberant claims for the ontological, vital agency of food should be tempered by, or at least run parallel to, critical questions of the real politik of political and practical agency in light of recent struggles over austerity, food poverty and food justice.

The symbolic value of grafting in ancient Rome

Some scholars have read Virgil’s grafted tree (G. 2.78–82) as a sinister image, symptomatic of man’s perversion of nature. However, when it is placed within the long tradition of Roman accounts of grafting (in both prose and verse), it seems to reinforce a consistently positive view of the technique, its results, and its possibilities. Virgil’s treatment does represent a significant change from Republican to Imperial literature, whereby grafting went from mundane reality to utopian fantasy. This is reflected in responses to Virgil from Ovid, Columella, Calpurnius, Pliny the Elder, and Palladius (with Republican context from Cato, Varro, and Lucretius), and even in the postclassical transformation of Virgil’s biography into a magical folktale.

Redefinition of the kilogram, ampere, kelvin and mole: a proposed approach to implementing CIPM recommendation 1 (CI-2005)

The International System of Units (SI) is founded on seven base units, the metre, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, mole and candela corresponding to the seven base quantities of length, mass, time, electric current, thermodynamic temperature, amount of substance and luminous intensity. At its 94th meeting in October 2005, the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) adopted a recommendation on preparative steps towards redefining the kilogram, ampere, kelvin and mole so that these units are linked to exactly known values of fundamental constants. We propose here that these four base units should be given new definitions linking them to exactly defined values of the Planck constant h, elementary charge e, Boltzmann constant k and Avogadro constant NA, respectively. This would mean that six of the seven base units of the SI would be defined in terms of true invariants of nature. In addition, not only would these four fundamental constants have exactly defined values but also the uncertainties of many of the other fundamental constants of physics would be either eliminated or appreciably reduced. In this paper we present the background and discuss the merits of these proposed changes, and we also present possible wordings for the four new definitions. We also suggest a novel way to define the entire SI explicitly using such definitions without making any distinction between base units and derived units. We list a number of key points that should be addressed when the new definitions are adopted by the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM), possibly by the 24th CGPM in 2011, and we discuss the implications of these changes for other aspects of metrology.

On defining base units in terms of fundamental constants

The definitions of the base units of the international system of units have been revised many times since the idea of such an international system was first conceived at the time of the French revolution. The objective today is to define all our units in terms of 'invariants of nature', i.e. by referencing our units to the fundamental constants of physics, or the properties of atoms, rather than the characteristics of our planet or of artefacts. This situation is reviewed, particularly in regard to finding a new definition of the kilogram to replace its present definition in terms of a prototype material artefact.

Attitudes of landscape professionals towards naturalistic versus formal urban landscapes in the UK

The last 30 years have seen a tide of interest sweeping across Europe in the development of nature in cities, and an increasing amount of landscape development in urban areas has involved the use of 'naturalistic' styles. This is an increasing attempt to find ways for urbanism and nature to co-exist. However, there have been considerable discussions among professionals regarding the advantages and disadvantages of 'naturalistic' styles in urban areas. This research examines professional attitudes to 'naturalistic' landscape styles in Britain, in contrast to more traditional, formal landscape styles, and aims to find out whether the interest in natural landscapes is really a fashion among landscape professionals. A self-administered postal survey was carried out using both quantitative and qualitative data collection techniques and analysis. The survey included 500 professionals from parks and recreation departments of local authorities, private landscape practices and conservation trusts, and resulted in a satisfactory response rate of 53 %. The results of this study suggested that professionals recognise most of the values attached to naturalistic landscapes in urban areas. However, possible benefits that natural areas may have for urban people are not attached to naturalistic landscapes alone. The study also revealed that the naturalistic style is highly popular among conservation trusts but is less so among professionals from local authorities and private landscape practices who seem to appreciate both styles and believe that these styles are not separable from each other and should co-exist in an urban environment. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

On defining base units in terms of fundamental constants

The definitions of the base units of the international system of units have been revised many times since the idea of such an international system was first conceived at the time of the French revolution. The objective today is to define all our units in terms of 'invariants of nature', i.e. by referencing our units to the fundamental constants of physics, or the properties of atoms, rather than the characteristics of our planet or of artefacts. This situation is reviewed, particularly in regard to finding a new definition of the kilogram to replace its present definition in terms of a prototype material artefact.

Improvement of link failure restoration utilising MPLS as a means to maintain QoS

The availability of a network strongly depends on the frequency of service outages and the recovery time for each outage. The loss of network resources includes complete or partial failure of hardware and software components, power outages, scheduled maintenance such as software and hardware, operational errors such as configuration errors and acts of nature such as floods, tornadoes and earthquakes. This paper proposes a practical approach to the enhancement of QoS routing by means of providing alternative or repair paths in the event of a breakage of a working path. The proposed scheme guarantees that every Protected Node (PN) is connected to a multi-repair path such that no further failure or breakage of single or double repair paths can cause any simultaneous loss of connectivity between an ingress node and an egress node. Links to be protected in an MPLS network are predefined and an LSP request involves the establishment of a working path. The use of multi-protection paths permits the formation of numerous protection paths allowing greater flexibility. Our analysis will examine several methods including single, double and multi-repair routes and the prioritization of signals along the protected paths to improve the Quality of Service (QoS), throughput, reduce the cost of the protection path placement, delay, congestion and collision.