Scalar Politics of Climate Change: Regions, Emissions and Responsibility

2012 ◽  
Vol 143 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Waitt ◽  
Carol Farbotko ◽  
Barbara Criddle
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
New South ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Daily Newspaper ◽  
South Wales ◽  
The Social ◽  
Geographical Scale ◽  
Scalar Politics ◽  
Climate Change Politics

The print media have facilitated multiple types of claim-making and an oppositional climate change politics. Drawing on arguments about the social construction of geographical scale as a category for understanding media practice, this article examines such politics. We focus on the Illawarra Mercury, the only daily newspaper in the Illawarra region of New South Wales, to showcase exactly how this tabloid newspaper engages readers in a scalar politics of climate change. We argue that a regional scalar politics shapes the framing of emissions in the Illawarra Mercury. A key question organising this article concerns the way in which geographical scale is invoked, and reproduced, in this newspaper to structure a certain rationale in reporting on emissions from one of Australia's largest greenhouse gas emitters, the Port Kembla Steelworks. The argument is that the regional scale is evoked as a pre-given, natural and contained entity to justify why the steelworks need not shoulder greenhouse gas emissions reductions. We argue that a better understanding of scalar politics is integral to explain how responsibility for emissions is shifted elsewhere.

scholarly journals Education activities for environment and sustainability: A Snapshot of eight New South Wales councils

1970 ◽  
pp. 77-89
Author(s):  
Jade Herriman ◽  
Emma Partridge
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Sustainability Education ◽  
South Wales ◽  
University Of Technology ◽  
The University ◽  
Sustainable Futures ◽  
Preliminary Phase ◽  
Sydney Australia

This paper describes in brief the findings of a research project undertaken by the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. The research was commissioned by and undertaken on behalf of the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water (DECCW). The aim of the project was to investigate current practices of environmental and sustainability education and engagement within local government in NSW. The research was commissioned by DECCW as the preliminary phase of a larger project that the department is planning to undertake, commencing in 2010.

Today’s Special Guest Star : Aboriginal Studies!

1984 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 35-40
Author(s):  
M. Sisley
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
High School ◽  
New South ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
Education Department ◽  
Aboriginal Community ◽  
South Wales ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Teacher

It is a western New South Wales High School with strong winter sunshine filling the classroom. The teacher moves nervously in from the brick corridor with its interchangeable Education Department prints, and stands just inside the door.“Right, pay attention please,” the Social Sciences and History teacher says. The group gives the teacher their concentration because they have come to expect interesting and controversial work in these sessions. Even though a few of them are tired and full of canteen lunch, they turn in their seats and begin to chew on the ends of biros.“This afternoon we have a visitor to the school who I am sure most of you know. She is here to help you…understand and come to grips with the Aboriginal Studies segment of your work…and she’ll probably straighten me out on a few points where I might have gone wrong, too, so I’ll ask you to pay attention to Mrs Copago and save your questions up for a minute or two.”Mrs Copago is a little bit nervous, too, being in the formal atmosphere of the brick blocks, but she has known most of the students since they were drooling, so she quickly relaxes and settles into the task of talking about her culture and her people.There is no shortage of questions from the students, and from the teacher, and they are all anxious to learn. Mrs Copago does not mind the questions that the students have heard at home, and she explains about unemployment and drinking in the light of the area’s history and racism in Australia. She talks about the skills and values Aborigines have that most Australians do not have and she ends on a positive note with hope for the Aboriginal community of the area and for Australia generally. The students and the teacher are well pleased by the session and Mrs Copago challenges them to change their own values and their family’s by thinking about different, equal cultures, land rights and the history of Australia.

Victims, Perpetrators and Fatal Scenarios: A Research Note on Anti-homosexual Male Homicides

2002 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Tomsen
Keyword(s):  
Illicit Drugs ◽  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Situational Factors ◽  
Social Characteristics ◽  
Male Victims ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Police Interviews ◽  
The Social

Anti-homosexual harassment and violence are often described as ‘hate’ crimes perpetrated by homophobic people who act on an extreme and irrational contempt for the sexual identity of victims, and killings are regarded as the most typical form of these incidents. But there is little detailed international research evidence about the victims, perpetrators and the social aspects of such fatal violent incidents. The author's ongoing study in New South Wales, Australia, has filled some of these gaps. It has drawn evidence from 74 homicides with male victims that occurred in New South Wales between 1980–2000. Information sources were press records, police interviews with suspects, Coroner's court files and documents from the criminal trials of accused perpetrators. Analysis of the social characteristics of victims and perpetrators and the fatal scenarios reflect the significance of situational factors (such as alcohol, illicit drugs and anonymous sexual cruising) as well as the ‘hate’ motive in this fatal violence. Some perpetrators have serious drug use or psychological problems, whereas most killers are young men and boys from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. The major scenarios of killing indicate that these crimes are linked to commonplace issues of male honour and masculine identity that are sharpened in the perpetrators’ situations by their marginal social status.

Submarine landslides offshore Yamba, NSW, Australia: an analysis of their timing, downslope motion and possible causes

2018 ◽  
Vol 477 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Hubble ◽  
Serena Yeung ◽  
Samantha Clarke ◽  
Alan Baxter ◽  
Fabio De Blasio
Keyword(s):  
New South ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
Morphological Evidence ◽  
Submarine Landslides ◽  
Small Individual ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Failure Event ◽  
Complete Disintegration ◽  
Scale Failure

AbstractRadiocarbon isotopic ages and sedimentological data are presented for material recovered from three adjacent translational submarine landslides (YS1, YS2 and YS3) identified on the upper-continental slope offshore Yamba, New South Wales, Australia. The age data indicate that these three co-located upper-slope slides probably occurred independently of each other and not in a single, widespread regional-scale failure event.Numerical estimates of the likely runout distances for slide blocks corresponding to the entire landslide scar volumes range between 10 and 27 km, and represent a ‘runout zone’ in which landslide blocks or debris might reasonably be expected to be located. There is no morphological evidence for large blocks or debris fields derived from two of the Yamba landslide scars within their identified runout zones (YS1 and YS2), suggesting these two failures involved complete disintegration of large slide blocks after failure or the removal of sediment from the landslide sites as grainflows or turbidites. In contrast, the third runout zone (YS3) presents good evidence of at least 12 slide blocks between 100 and 200 m in diameter, suggesting that they were shed as relatively small individual blocks or they were generated due to the dismemberment of a larger slab.

Compassion, a Timely Feeling …

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-108
Author(s):  
Diana G. Barnes ◽  
Delia Falconer
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Effect Change ◽  
Emotional Effect ◽  
South Wales

Abstract The concept of compassion, defined as suffering with, has a long history often entangled in that of the cognate term pity. It has proven to be a changeable concept that is not only responsive to but integral to historical change itself. This is because it is a sociable emotion, but, in the sense that it expresses a desire to alleviate the suffering of another, the emotion also expresses the desire to effect change. For this reason it is a particularly timely lens through which to consider the emotional effect of climate change upon local communities, and the new emotional regime taking shape in the Anthropocene – and the dawning of the Pyrocene – beginning with Armidale, New South Wales through the drought and fire of Australia’s Black Summer of 2019–20, but extending beyond.

Lively cities made in sound: A study of the sonic sensibilities of listening and hearing in Wollongong, New South Wales

Urban Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (10) ◽  
pp. 2131-2146
Author(s):  
Gordon Waitt ◽  
Ian Buchanan ◽  
Michelle Duffy
Keyword(s):  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
City Centre ◽  
Recent Analysis ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
South Wales ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City

This paper seeks to better understand the lively city with reference to recent analysis of sonic affects, bodily sensations and emotions. The notion of ‘hearing contacts’, as it is usually deployed in discussion of the lively city, emphasises the social interactions with other people in a rather narrow anthropocentric way. Yet, it overlooks the diversity of felt and affective dimensions of city sounds. This paper takes up this challenge by bringing Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of territory into conversation with Greimas’s semiotic square. In doing so, this paper offers a compelling theoretical framework to better understand the sonic sensibilities of listening and hearing to provide a clearer sense of how people decide to attach specific meanings to sound, and which ones they do not. The paper first reviews various theoretical approaches to sound and the city. Next, the paper turns to an ethnographic account of sound and city-centre urban life recently conducted in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. This research seeks to better understand the ways bodily dispositions to sonic affects, materials and cultural norms helped participants territorialise the city centre, distinguishing ‘energetic buzz’, ‘dead noise’, ‘dead quiet’ and ‘quiet calm’.

Shallow groundwater dynamics in smectite dominated clay on the Liverpool Plains of New South Wales

Soil Research ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 203 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Timms ◽  
R. I. Acworth ◽  
D. Berhane
Keyword(s):  
New South ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Shallow Groundwater ◽  
Important Indicator ◽  
Groundwater Levels ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Aquifer Systems ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Shallow Groundwater System

Dynamic shallow (<5 m) groundwater levels are an important indicator of water and salt fluxes in smectite-dominated clay on the Liverpool Plains in north-eastern New South Wales. Previous hydrogeological assessments of shallow groundwater related salinity risk have focused on regional scale distribution and interaction with rising pressure levels in confined aquifer systems. In this study, groundwater levels over a 7-year period for the saline Yarramanbah subcatchment are presented, along with data from 60 new and existing shallow piezometers and precise elevation surveying and intensive automated monitoring at selected sites. The shallow groundwater system is shown to respond to recharge; however, over the medium-term it is in hydrologic balance, with no evidence of increased water storage. A proportion of recharge is lost by discharge into deeply incised surface channels. Groundwater salinity in the banks of Warrah Creek indicate that flushing of salts from clay is related to increased flux of fresh water. Concern exists that there may be increased salt export from the catchment. If this is in fact occurring while the plains are in hydrologic equilibrium, then increased salt fluxes must be related to factors other than rising groundwater levels.

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