The United Nations 2015 Climate Change Conference established a framework for keeping global temperature increase “well below” two degrees Celsius through commitments by the parties to significant ...reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The agreement has implications for the energy policies of all countries, not least major coal exporters like Australia. By contrast, the government's 2015 Energy White Paper lays out the vision for the country's future as a “global energy superpower” dominated by the export of fossil fuels for decades to come. Legislative frameworks around planning, land use, mining, heritage and environment have moved in synchrony with this agenda. Rural landowners in the big coal rich geological basins of Australia are directly impacted by current government policies on energy exports and on domestic supply. This article follows the coal value chain to rural communities in New South Wales where new mines are being built, and analyses the politics of land use, natural resources and energy from the vantage point of landowner engagement with government and corporations in the policy, legislative and regulatory domains. The need for more equitable, democratic and precautionary approaches to energy policy, heritage and environmental planning and agricultural land use is highlighted.
•Australian energy policies prioritise coal and gas exports to emerging economies.•Rural landholders are marginalised in mining law, environmental protection legislation and planning regulations.•Disputes with companies centre on control of natural resources necessary for agriculture.
•‘Natural cycles’ is a central organising idea for climate change sceptics.•It links nature and humans through time, explaining environmental change and weather.•It is a longstanding view not a fear ...management strategy for reducing moral anxiety.•It situates humans as integrated with nature, not controlling nature with science.•‘Natural cycles’ sceptics can have pro-environmental values similar to climate change believers.
This article analyses lay understandings of climate change elicited through a longitudinal population-based survey of climate change, place and community among 1162 residents in the Hunter Valley, Southeast Australia. We explore how older residents in contrasting rural and coastal geographic areas perceive climate change information in terms of culturally relevant meanings and values, lived experiences and emotional responses to seasonal cycles, temperature fluctuations and altered landscapes. Thematic analysis of comments given by 467 interviewees to an open-ended question identified a significant subset for whom the concepts of “nature” and “science” express competing views about changing climatic conditions. For them, the idea of “natural cycles” is a significant cultural construct that links nature and humans through time in a way that structures stable and resilient understandings of environmental change, drawing on established cosmological frameworks for contemplating the future in relation to the past. In contrast to other studies that postulate scepticism and denial as individuals’ fear management strategies in the face of climate change threat, we found that the natural cycles view is founded on a reassuring deeper conviction about how nature works, and is linked to other pro-environmental values not commonly found in sceptical groups. It is a paradox of natural cycles thinking that it rejects the anthropocentrism that is at the heart of science-based environmentalism. By contrast, it places humans as deeply integrated with nature, rather than operating outside it and attempting with uncertain science to control something that is ultimately uncontrollable.
Rural life in the Upper Hunter Region of NSW is threatened by the mining and burning of coal and coal seam gas extraction. Extensive open-cut mining is a serious threat to productive rural ...enterprises between Singleton and Muswellbrook, while mining and gas extraction is expanding into communities on the Liverpool Plains and around Gloucester. The marginalisation of rural life has economic, environmental and sociocultural dimensions. Economically, the marginalisation of rural life refers to declining food production, threatened rural industries such as thoroughbred breeding and viticulture, and to the loss of commercial services in rural towns. Environmental damage includes air and water pollution, biodiversity loss, destruction of aquifers and waterways, and the loss of fertile agricultural land. Socio-cultural impacts include threats to human health, rising income inequality, depopulation of villages, and damage to the fabric of rural communities from mining incursion. The article examines the competing scripts employed in land use contests and how communities are using new and reflexive constructions of 'the rural' that integrate traditional identity, discourses of sustainability and the re-centring of rural life. This analysis illuminates the current situation of marginalisation and the possible future of rural life in the Upper Hunter and surrounding areas.
‘Environmental cognitive stress’ a hybrid model combining environmental stress and cognitive determinants of pro-environmental behavior is explored among Australians living in contrasting ‘micro’ ...climates in the same river catchment system. Peoples’ climate risk perceptions are mediated by their connections to local environment, observations of environmental change and personal weather experiences. A longitudinal study randomly sampled 1,162 Hunter Valley coastal and rural residents in New South Wales. Telephone interviewers (2008) recruited lakeside homeowners ‘at risk’ of sea level rise, nearby ‘control’ residents and a comparable farming area group. Follow-up interviews (2011) located 81.5 % of the original sample. Fifty-six items based on the model asked about climate change observations, concerns, impacts and actions. Statistically significant rural–suburban and time differences were found. The rural sample was attuned to conditions affecting agricultural productivity: They worried about drought and heat, saw trees dying and changes to seasons and natural rhythms. They anticipate the impact of water scarcity, conserve water and value protecting plants and animals. Compared to higher elevation residents, lake dwellers observed marine life loss, worry about sea level rise and predict the decline of property values. Across time, all groups’ perceptions of warming indicators declined. Concerns and impacts were high and generally stayed high, as did actions related to energy use. No differences emerged in beliefs about climate warming. Climate change observations, along with concerns and actions, have important implications for the environmental cognitive stress model. Overall, dynamic changes in residents’ understandings are related to a changing policy environment, the vicissitudes of climate debates and weather experiences, including extreme swings from inundation to drought.
Solastalgia: The Distress Caused by Environmental Change Albrecht, Glenn; Sartore, Gina-Maree; Connor, Linda ...
Australasian psychiatry : bulletin of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists,
01/2007, Letnik:
15, Številka:
1_suppl
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Objective: Solastalgia is a new concept developed to give greater meaning and clarity to environmentally induced distress. As opposed to nostalgia – the melancholia or homesickness experienced by ...individuals when separated from a loved home – solastalgia is the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment. The paper will focus on two contexts where collaborative research teams have found solastalgia to be evident: the experiences of persistent drought in rural NSW and the impact of large-scale open-cut coal mining on individuals in the Upper Hunter Valley of NSW. In both cases, people exposed to environmental change experienced negative affect that is exacerbated by a sense of powerlessness or lack of control over the unfolding change process.Methods: Qualitative (interviews and focus groups) and quantitative (community-based surveys) research has been conducted on the lived experience of drought and mining, and the findings relevant to solastalgia are presented.Results: The authors are exploring the potential uses and applications of the concept of solastalgia for understanding the psychological impact of the increasing incidence of environmental change worldwide.Conclusions: Worldwide, there is an increase in ecosystem distress syndromes matched by a corresponding increase in human distress syndromes. The specific role played by global-scale environmental challenges to ‘sense of place’ and identity will be explored in the future development of the concept of solastalgia.
The ethnographic study of Western environmental activism opens up the prospect of studying subjectivities formed in opposition to dominant Western ideas and values, and yet encapsulated within ...Western societies and democratic polities. One of the directions in which it points the anthropologist, which is pursued in this article, is towards the study of the political lifeworlds of activists, their self-identity as citizens and their embeddedness in the wider society. Environmental politics can be an emergent activity in citizens' lives, as expressed in John Dewey's concept of 'the public' as citizens who organise themselves to address the adverse consequences of situations that they experience in common (Dewey 1991 1927). This paper focuses on a middle ground of social action between habitual daily practice, and the domain of institutional politics: groups of people in small voluntary organisations in the heavily coalmined Hunter Valley, Southeast Australia, who are moved to collective action to address the threatening aspects of anthropogenic climate change. Action group members variously articulate their reflexive understandings of the structural contradictions of environmentalism in corporate capitalist societies where values of consumerism and processes of individualization corrode collective concerns of citizenship-based politics. These understandings inform activists' personal motivations, values and ideals for a 'climate movement', diverse modes of political action and striving for wider political intelligibility.
To describe knowledge, values, and implementation of evidence-based practice (EBP) and use of two National Patient Safety Goals–Central Line Associated Blood Stream Infections (CLABSI) and Surgical ...Site Infections (SSI)–between nurses working in Magnet® versus non-Magnet® designated hospitals.
There is a gap in the literature concerning nurses' understanding of EBP and how EBP guidelines are used in practice and if guidelines are being used as intended. The Conceptual Model of Nursing and Health Policy was used to guide the study.
A descriptive survey methodology using three instruments was delivered electronically to members of the Society of Pediatric Nurses–the Quick-EBP-VIK, the Use of Evidence-based Practice Questionnaire, and a Background Data Sheet.
Results revealed statistically significant differences between the Magnet and non-Magnet participants only for the Quick-EBP-VIK value domain; nurses from Magnet hospitals had a higher value for EBP compared with nurses from non-Magnet hospitals, nurses from both groups had a moderate amount of knowledge about EBP, and very few nurses indicated they were implementing EBP. There were no differences in CLABSI and SSI prevention care for patients in acute care hospitals in the United States by nurses working in Magnet versus non Magnet designated hospitals.
The findings of this study have implications for practice, education, policy, and research. A disconnect between the use of policy and implementation of EBP has been identified. Specifically, nurses need to understand how EBP is embedded in hospital and organizational policy.
•A disconnect between the use of policy and implementation of EBP has been identified.•New educational strategies are needed.
To retrospectively identify factors associated with an increased risk of adverse cardiovascular or respiratory events during sedation of pediatric patients for imaging examinations.
This ...HIPAA-compliant study was institutional review board approved; the requirement for informed consent was waived. All sedation information--including patient demographics, medications (doses and routes of administration), time required to sedate and before discharge, American Society of Anesthesiologists physical status classification, adverse events, and failed sedations--was maintained in a computerized database. A review of the data on all patients sedated between 1997 and 2003 for magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography, and interventional radiology revealed associated adverse respiratory events in 70 patients. Adverse respiratory event was defined as oxygen desaturation of at least 5%, pulmonary aspiration, and need for airway resuscitation. Adverse cardiovascular events were defined as cardiac arrest and hemodynamic changes requiring medical therapy. Adverse events were compared between sedation regimens--which included fentanyl, chloral hydrate, pentobarbital, and midazolam hydrochloride--by using the Fisher exact test. Multiple logistic regression analysis was applied to identify potential predictors of adverse events.
Among 16,467 sedations performed, 70 (0.4%) were associated with adverse respiratory events: 58 cases of oxygen desaturation, two pulmonary aspirations, 10 cases of airway resuscitation, and no cardiovascular events. Nearly 30% (n = 20) of the 70 patients who had an adverse event had a history of serious respiratory illness. Logistic regression analysis revealed that neither patient age, weight, or sex nor type of imaging procedure was associated with an increased risk of an adverse event. Use of a single sedation agent was associated with lower adverse event risk than was use of multiple agents (P < .001).
Consideration should be given to using single agents, avoiding the use of multidrug sedation regimens, and recognizing that a history of pulmonary disease could be associated with an increased risk of adverse respiratory events despite a currently stable respiratory state.
Staying Local in the Global Village Raechelle Rubinstein, Linda H. Connor / Raechelle Rubinstein, Linda H. Connor
1999, 1999., 19990801
eBook
One of the world's most intensively studied societies, Bali has hosted scholars and writers as renowned as Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Miguel Covarrubias, Fred Barth, and Hildred and Clifford ...Geertz. Staying Local in the Global Village is part of a continuing tradition in which Balinese and foreign scholars reflect on the processes of transformation that link Bali to Indonesia and the world beyond. The chapters in this volume are based on research carried out in the early 1990s, when Suharto's New Order still enjoyed widespread legitimacy in Indonesia. Even then, political consensus in Bali was weakened by the inhabitants' view of themselves as an exploited minority of Hindus in a nation dominated by Islamic Javanese. As this book reveals, the ambivalent positioning of Balinese vis-à-vis the national and the global in recent decades has been played out in many different spheres of life. Contributors take up a number of themes that reflect different articulations of the local throughout the twentieth century. Early chapters provide a bird's-eye view of the public culture, local history, definitions of "Balinese-ness," and political struggles over land and sacred space. Later chapters explore specific aspects of Balinese participation in the transformations associated with the tourism-dominated provincial economy, the growth of communications and mass media, and the incursions of the nation-state trough its imperatives of economic development and rationalist discourses. New forms of traditional hegemony, status struggles over the priesthood, contestation about cultural authenticity by marginal groups within the island itself, women's work, the performing arts, and television watching, are all considered in this light, providing a highly nuanced and "local" perspective of global processes in Bali.
