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12 - Governing climate change in the European Union: understanding the past and preparing for the future

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2011

By
Andrew Jordan ,
Dave Huitema ,
Harro van Asselt ,
Tim Rayner  and
Frans Berkhout
Edited by
Andrew Jordan ,
Dave Huitema ,
Harro van Asselt ,
Tim Rayner  and
Frans Berkhout
Andrew Jordan
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom
Dave Huitema
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Harro van Asselt
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Tim Rayner
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom
Frans Berkhout
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Andrew Jordan
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Dave Huitema
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Harro van Asselt
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Tim Rayner
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Frans Berkhout
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
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Summary

[I]f you study the history of political decisions about the environment … you find that there are no New Jerusalems at the end of [the] road …. Each political decision implants a choice into our system of social values; this imperceptibly changes the system of values, and this in turn affects the next choice

(Ashby 1978: 78).

Introduction

In his 1978 book, Reconciling Man with the Environment, Eric Ashby sought to address what he considered to be one of the most critical issues of his time: the protection of the environment. He believed that by continually making difficult policy choices and confronting the associated dilemmas, humans would gradually arrive at a fuller understanding of their environment and thus a more anticipatory approach to managing it. This reconciliation, he contended, would be achieved not by ‘heroic long-term megadecisions’ but by ‘the cumulative effect of wise medium-term microdecisions, each … clarifying the shape of the decision that needs to follow’ (Ashby 1978: 87).

Ashby was one of those rare individuals in public life who somehow managed to combine a lifelong career as a scientist (he was, among other things, President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of the Royal Society), with equally important roles in policy making. This sensitised him to the realpolitik of decision making.

Type
Chapter
Information
Climate Change Policy in the European Union
Confronting the Dilemmas of Mitigation and Adaptation?
 , pp. 253 - 275
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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