The Work of Policy: Actor Networks, Governmentality, and Local Action on Climate Change in Portland, Oregon

Abstract

In 1993 Portland, Oregon, became one of the first cities in the world to address climate change by committing to specific, citywide reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In a policy entitled the Carbon Dioxide Reduction Strategy, the city outlined its intention to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20% of 1990 levels by 2010, primarily by channelling funds toward residential and commercial energy efficiency projects. By 2005, although unlikely to reach its initial emissions reduction target, Portland had succeeded in reducing its per capita emissions by 12.5% and, despite 27% population growth, managed to stabilize its overall emissions at 1990 levels (City of Portland, 2005). Perhaps more significantly, Portland's initiative has inspired other cities to make similar moves. By 2007, in response to appeals from cities like Portland and Seattle, over 500 US cities had agreed to cut local carbon dioxide emissions by 7% of 1990 levels by 2012. (1) The numbers involved are partly symbolic: they mimic the US's now-abrogated commitments in the Kyoto Protocol, the major international agreement on climate change. Indeed, the adoption of municipal climate change policies is intended explicitly to exert pressure on a national government that is viewed as unresponsive to its citizens' ecological concerns. (2)

Governance and the Geography of Authority: Modalities of Authorisation and the Transnational Governing of Climate Change

“…As with the working of power in its instrumental and associational registers, power in its governmental guise is seen here as working through the generation of socio-spatial relations. In an analysis of the disputes over Chesapeake Bay, Lipshutz (2005: 766) Authorization as concord emerges as the result of both the strategic normalisation of particular discourses concerning, in this case, the climate problem, the mundane practices through which networks operate, and the artefacts which they put in place to hold networks together (see also Rutland and Aylett 2008). Several examples of the practice of concord were cited during research interviews with The Climate Group and the REEEP.…”

Configuring Urban Carbon Governance: Insights from Sydney, Australia

“…By definition, these practices are distinctly contextual, spatially and temporally. The concept of configuring is highly productive when it comes to more fully specifying the translation between governing intent 1 Notably, governmentality and ANT-informed work has been particularly cognisant of the ultimate coconstitution of governing intentions and specific interventions that reshape the objects and subjects of governing (see Rutland and Aylett 2008). 2 Configuring resonates with notions of assembling and articulating (see Wise 2005;Featherstone 2011).…”

“…Within the field of governmentality, for example, authors frequently point to the ways in which 'neoliberal' rationalities underpin and frame governmental programs, sometimes too readily assuming that such logics can be 'rolled out' at a distance to shape the actions of communities and individuals (Barnett 2005). In contrast, detailed studies have also sought to examine the workings of particular assemblages, projects or programs in situ, demonstrating their dynamics and their practical effects in terms of the territorializations and subjectivizations they seek to render, or their integration with hegemonic interests and power relations (see Rutland and Aylett, 2008;Paterson and Stripple 2010;Rice 2010;Jonas and Gibbs 2011).…”

“…Such connections and alliances are fundamental to governing, enabling abstract intentions to be translated into practicable interventions achievable in particular places (see Li 2007;Cupples 2011). Recent contributions specifically attending to the role and agency of objects in political geography have brought increasing focus to the actual processes through which this translation occurs by attending to the ways and means through which actors and elements are brought into and held in relation (Rutland and Aylett 2008;Müeller 2012;Meehan, Shaw, and Marston 2013;Shaw and Meehan 2013;). Notwithstanding, there is still surprisingly little attention to the particularities of how this relating is achieved and maintained.…”

Low Carbon Urban Transitioning: From Local Experimentation to Urban Transformation?

“…The momentum at the local scale can in part be explained by a grassroots driven desire to address climate change and its impacts which has contributed to driving local government responses at a community scale. Municipal authorities have also taken the lead in large part as a response to, and indeed an attempt to put pressure on, weak or non-existent climate change policies at a national level [1]. During the early 1990s, action at the municipal level focused around mitigation initiatives and reducing emissions through regulation, planning, transportation, energy provision and waste collection [2].…”