Apologies for cross posting

Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting
San Francisco 2007

Call for papers: Local action on peak oil and dangerous climate change

Organisers:
Peter North, University of Liverpool, UK;
James DiFilippis, Baruch College, CUNY, US;
Justin Beaumont, University of Groningen, NL;
Colin Williams and Aidan While, University of Sheffield, UK;
Stuart Wilks-Heeg and Alan Southern, University of Liverpool, UK;
Paul Benneworth, University of Newcastle, UK;
Helen Lawton-Smith, Birkbeck, University of London, UK;
Irene Hardill, Nottingham Trent University, UK.

Please respond to Peter North: [log in to unmask]

Our proposed panel sessions address economic development strategies and
political activities at local and regional levels in response to climate change
and fears about looming resource depletion: in particular, a forthcoming oil
crisis – peak oil. These fundamental concerns have yet to become mainstream
economic development issues. For some we have a forty year period in which to
move decisively to cut greenhouse emissions and move to a post carbon economy.
Sceptics argue that human-induced climate change is unproven or exaggerated and
is a barrier to growth put up by self-regarding but economically secure groups
which pulls the ladder up behind them. Others argue that it is too late: we
have changed the planet so much over the past 150 years that all we can do is
adjust to inevitable change and build a new generation of nuclear power
stations to get us through.

The conveners welcome a wide range of papers that interrogate the
interrelationship between local or regional economic development; and dangerous
climate change and peak oil. While papers from all perspectives are welcome, the
convenors work from the perspective that we are entering a period when major
changes to our approaches to economic development are necessary, we cannot rely
on technological fixes and do not know yet what a post carbon local economy
would look like. Solutions cannot be relied upon to emerge spontaneously; but
neither is pessimism or even paralysis an appropriate response.

Papers would be welcome on any issue within the remit of the call, but we would
particularly welcome papers that address the following issues:

Conceptualising local economic strategies (at local, city, regional and
bioregional level) in the context of climate change and peak oil: the end of
Ricardian development based on the division of labour, free movement of capital
(and people?) and competitive advantage in favour of a new emphasis on import
substitution and localisation, if not autarky? Given the current neoliberal
consensus, how realistic or appropriate are such conceptions, and how could
they be made more realistic?

Questions of scale: What works best at what scale in confronting global
phenomena locally (if scale “matters” and one scale can be cut of from others)?
What does it mean for conceptualising local strategies if, in this case in
particular, the “local” is shot though with the global and vice versa (Massey
2002)?  What should be abandoned in an era of peak oil – for example automobile
production, airport expansion, tourism-based strategies around weekend
“city-breaks” funded by cheap flights?

The logic of mitigation: what types of mitigation strategy are emerging?

Urban social justice and the oil crisis.  Who will have access to scarce
resources?  How might oil stress get layered on existing patterns of
socio-spatial inequality?  What opportunities might open up for progressive
urban politics?

Are solutions best found in technological innovation, cultural change or changes
in the material basis of economies? What is the role of science, culture,
politics and material economic development in developing change?

Opening space for alternatives in politics, civil society and everyday life:
Evaluating ways of social movements and citizen or consumer-led actions
effecting change (by changing policy or through cultural changes around
resource use from below).

The role of alternative economic spaces in creating alternatives: especially
local food systems, local currencies, ecologically-minded small businesses,
decentralised energy production.

How are the issues made real? What characterises good campaigning?  An appeal to
business or “bottom line”, energy-saving principals, or wider conceptions of
potential danger (Slocum 2004)? How can more global concerns with temporally
distant change affecting (perhaps) spatially distant others inspire local
action, or compete with other agendas (crime, development, poverty)?

The role of peak oil and dangerous climate change dystopias/ alarmist
discourses. Do they paralyse or act as a spur to action? Are they alarmist,
reminiscent of previous scares around Malthus’ conception of population growth
outstripping food supply, food production before the introduction of artificial
fertilizers, the 1970s Club of Rome neo-Malthusianism, Y2K? Or should we really
be worried, and these dystopias help us prepare?

Please express your interest in participating along with an outline of the paper
you have in mind at the first opportunity. Final abstracts (250 words max.)
should be sent to Peter North by email by 29 September 2006. You should consult
the AAG website (www.aag.org) for online registration and abstract submission
instructions.  You should register with the AAG and get your PINs as soon as
possible.

Peter North
July 2006