Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
state, businesses, organized labour and localities; social norms include the
values of equity and liberty; and adaptation is seen as a matter of adjustments
to maintain regional growth through partnerships and joined-up government.
3 '
New Atlantis
' (purposeful state / pro global justice), where the state is
purposeful; public policy is made by the state with respect to ensuring a
balanced relationship between the needs of society, the environment and the
economy; social norms include the values of justice, the good life and global
citizenship. Adaptation policy is set in the context of international leadership
on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, deliberative processes of transfor-
mation of key sectors and places, and systematic and purposeful policies to
build adaptive capacity across all sections of the population.
Scenario 1: Terror Australis
This wonderful climate - the envy of the world - seems to be turning on us.
Terra Australis is becoming Terror Australis, a blast furnace of drought, heat
and capricious tempests.
(Gleeson, 2008)
The state
is rolled back in that it has transferred its responsibilities for the
provision of public goods to the private sector. Machinery of the state is minimal,
consisting of a well-funded judiciary, police and armed forces, with most other
state functions reduced to small bureaucracies with weak powers. The state
progressively loses legitimacy as effects of climate change and market forces, and
their interactions, lead to retreating coasts, higher and more volatile prices for
essential goods and services, increasing social inequality, and rising morbidity
and mortality among some populations. As legitimacy erodes, so too does the
ability of the state to perform even its minimal functions of maintaining law and
order and to adjudicate among competing interests, such that corporate criminals
are increasingly unconstrained and organized crime has increasing legitimacy
among marginalized populations.
Public policy
is influenced by capital. The power of labour is weakened by
workplace reforms and decreased restrictions on the immigration of skilled
workers, while civil society is consumed with the burden of providing those
social services divested from the state. Public policy is a process of divestment
of state responsibility for public goods through processes of privatization - for
example, of management of public lands, education, transport and essential
services such as water, energy and healthcare - and, more simply, through the
curtailment of bureaucratic capacity. The sustainable use of resources is a matter
of inter-temporal allocation through markets. After this process of rolling back
the state, public policy ceases to be a meaningful category of activity, and instead
becomes a matter of historical interest.
Social norms
are dominated by a concern for the value and practice of freedom.
As a result of social fragmentation, debates about attendant responsibilities to
