道家生态伦理视域下的城市低碳经济建设探析

道家的生态伦理思想幽深博大,最能体现其基本精神的莫过于"物我为一"的整体观念、"知止知足"的开发原则、热爱自然的伦理情趣等,它们集中地显现出道家生态伦理所特有的东方神韵。道使生态系统趋向平衡,生态系统遵循道所固有的规律运动,循环往复,周而复始。以道家生态伦理指导城市低碳经济建设,有助于我们掌握低碳经济建设的原则,把握低碳经济建设契机,推动其发展。     

吉林省能源消费问题及调整对策思考

吉林省是我国最重要的老工业基地之一,是工业大省、农业大省,也是能源消耗大省。吉林省工业基础好、重工业所占比重较高,在产业结构偏重的情况下,吉林省存在着能源消费结构不合理、能源消费环境污染较重等问题。吉林省要改变目前的能源消费结构现状,就要扬长避短地发挥现有优势,一方面要加大替代能源的开发力度,使清洁能源的使用比例不断提高,另一方面要提高资源利用效率,减少浪费,降低能耗和减少环境污染。     

论我国《能源法》的制定——兼评《中华人民共和国能源法》(征求意见稿)

作为全球第二大能源生产国和消费国,中国正面临着十分复杂的能源形势和安全问题,因而制定一部《能源法》是十分必要的。《能源法》应当将保障能源供应与安全、优化能源结构、提高能源效益、降低能源消耗、保护环境作为其立法宗旨。《能源法》应当定位于能源领域的综合性立法,主要对涉及能源安全、能源效率、能源管理、能源环境保护等全局性的问题和其他单行能源法不予调整的问题加以规范,发挥宏观管理和对各单行立法加以协调和拾遗补缺的作用。由国家能源领导小组办公室等组成的《能源法》起草小组起草的《能源法》(征求意见稿)已经取得令人瞩目的成就。如果能够进一步听取意见,去粗取精,相信能够成为一部科学和实用的《能源法》。     

论中国能源法的生态化

能源法是我国近年来发展最为迅速的立法领域之一。在生态文明观的指导下，不断涌现的能源法呈现出生态化的特征。我国能源法的生态化主要表现为新指导思想的出现、立法结构的生态化、能源法律制度的进步等。     

Smokescreen Politics? Ratcheting Up EU Emissions Trading in 2017

The reform of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) adopted in November 2017 was surprisingly strong, given the previous opposition from central member‐states like Poland and key stakeholders like the energy‐intensive industries. The carbon price has also increased substantially since then. To explain why such major reform was possible, we present several findings with wider relevance. Importantly, all the actors pushing for a more ambitious reform benefitted from having a central, “second‐best” mechanism in place—the Market Stability Reserve (MSR)—which could be further tightened. By focusing cancelation on allowances in the MSR and taking place only after 2023, policy entrepreneurs managed to make the distribution of costs obscure and diffuse, whereas the benefits (a probable higher carbon price and related greater auctioning revenues for member‐states) were more specific and closer in time. That is what we call “smokescreen politics.”     

Multiple Streams in Hawaii: How the Aloha State Adopted a 100% Renewable Portfolio Standard

Renewable portfolio standards (RPS) are an important policy tool for reducing carbon emissions and advancing the global shift toward renewable energy. As the U.S. federal government backs away from commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, subnational governments play an increasingly important role in mitigating climate change. In June 2015, Hawaii became the first state in the United States to adopt a 100% RPS. Through understanding the conditions that gave rise to Hawaii’s RPS, policy actors will be better informed as they navigate policy processes in other states and jurisdictions. This study uses Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) to explore the policy process that led to Hawaii’s 100% RPS. Data were collected during the summer of 2016 via interviews with 25 key policy actors and informants in Hawaii. Expectations based on the MSF are confirmed, and the results suggest factors that might be included or explored in future studies of RPS adoption.     

Governing Unconventional Oil and Gas Extraction: The Case of Pennsylvania

Over the past decade, directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing enabled an unconventional oil and gas extraction (UOGE) boom in many regions of the United States, including parts of Pennsylvania. This revolution has created serious concerns about the capability of existing institutions to govern important societal outcomes associated with UOGE. We present a conceptual framework for assessing key societal outcomes influenced by UOGE governance. In applying this framework to Pennsylvania, we discern certain institutional strengths that have allowed the Commonwealth to reap appreciable short‐term economic growth from rich resource endowments. We also find, however, that several institutional weaknesses have allowed costs externalized to the environment, public health, and community integrity to offset some proportion of those economic benefits. Likewise, we find that governance of UOGE in Pennsylvania has contributed to a bifurcated sociopolitical landscape wherein adversarial coalitions dispute the legitimacy of the industry and its governance.     

The devil we know and the angel that did not fly: An examination of devil/angel shift in twitter fracking “debates” in NY 2008–2018

Recent work has applied the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to examine narrative strategies in policy debates on social media platforms. We contribute to the literature by applying the NPF to fracking policy debates in New York using well-established Natural Language Processing tools, including sentiment analysis. We combine this computational approach with a qualitative hand-coding of pro- and antifracking Twitter influentials. This approach allows us to consider a much larger corpus of tweets over a much longer time frame than has been done thus far. We adapt and test NPF propositions related to the use of the devil/angel shift strategies before and after a major state-wide policy change, that is, a state-wide moratorium on high volume hydraulic fracturing or fracking. Overall, we find evidence for the use of the devil shift narrative strategy by the pro-fracking coalition aimed at the Governor prior to the moratorium. After the moratorium, the relative percentage of Tweets containing devil shift sentiments decreases as the pro-fracking coalition generally downshifts in its use of angel shift language without a corresponding increase in devil shift language, whereas, conversely, the anti-fracking coalition generally downshifts in its use of devil shift language without a general increase in angel shift language. When we shifted our analysis to Tweets containing fracking and the Governor, we found a similar postban decrease in devil shift language among anti-fracking users. Our findings offer lessons for using computational tools in the NPF as an approach to expand analytic ability and for the operationalization of concepts such as narrative strategies and policy entrepreneurs.     

国际原油价差中的政治因素

国际石油价格一直是影响各国经济发展的重要因素，同时石油定价作为一种经济问题也会威胁各国能源安全，从而转化成为政治问题。作为世界上两种最重要的基准油,西得克萨斯州轻质原油（WTI）和布伦特原油（Brent）是国际石油定价中的核心要素，两者价格从历史上来看基本趋平，但从2010年至今,这两种原油价格倒挂价差峰值大，持续时间长，从本质上改变了WTI 和Brent相互参照联动的关系。从历史上WTI和Brent四次价差拉大案例的发展变化，可以看出政治因素能够影响并左右国际石油定价的经济问题。从中国角度来看，WTI和Brent倒挂对中国来说是一把双刃剑，一方面，美国由于获得低油价优势制造成本下调，中国制造占相对优势的行业相对处于劣势；另一方面，美国WTI对油价的低估，将导致其他石油生产国更倾向于同中国合作，并且WTI影响力的下降给中国参与国际石油定价系统提供了更大的空间。     

The political economy of ‘flex trees’: a preliminary analysis

With the rise of ‘bioeconomy’, trees are receiving increasing attention. This contribution conducts a preliminary analysis of the trajectories and the main drivers of change in the rise of new, flexible and multiple uses of trees. It assesses the political dimensions involved in this transformation, which is simultaneously ongoing, anticipated and imagined. Notes are offered on the issues to be considered when the flex-crop framework is operationalized to include the study of trees, and additional conceptualizations that help in analyzing the political economy of tree uses are provided. Areas needing further empirical study are identified and a preliminary research agenda is suggested. The flexible and multiple use of trees and tree-derived commodities is having a large impact on power relations in the global political economy of forestry and the forest industry, the asymmetry of which is based on who is best able to flex or de-multiply, thereby controlling commodity webs and processing technology. It is argued that while flexing seems to increase diversity, in practice it typically increases this only for the processing industry; the converse occurs in terms of the unification of the productive base into monocultures. However, these two processes go hand in hand, and illustrate how flexing is a deeply capitalist process.