Energy and Society: Public Opinion, Policies and Sustainable Development

By AuthorHouse

This book deals with a pivotal issue often marginalized by sociological analysis: the relationship between energy and society, with different contributions from several European scholars. The articles cover a series of topics concerning energy policies, risk communication, and sustainable development. The increasingly complex social organization emerging from the energy shifts of the last two centuries, incorporates an increasing quantity of expert knowledge.
Quite paradoxically, when the expert systems seem to be realizing the dream of total control on the uncertainty of the events, any occasional accident reveals to be a check for them contributes to undermining their credibility. Following the idea of a post-democratic turn, this kind of mistrust can be considered a different face of political elites and politics in general, in the frame of a radical change concerning political culture in the last several decades. This change is clear in areas such as risk communication, governance, and energy policies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504953085

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© 2015 Alfredo Agustoni. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse  10/08/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-5307-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-5308-5 (e)

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Part I:  Energy Policies, Public Opinion, and Risk Communication

Public Opinion, Green Cultures, and the Experts: An Introduction

1.  Fukushima Mon Amour: The Japanese Nuclear Accident as the Apotheosis or Demise of the Sociologies of Risk?

2.  The Nuclear Debate in Spain: The Persistence of Rejection

3.  The China Syndrome: The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster as Presented by Two Italian Daily Newspapers

4.  Nimby: Please Read This Instruction Sheet Carefully before Use

5. Some People Want It All versus. Some People Don’t Even Know It: Climate Friendly Energy and the Public in Romania

Part II:  Energy Policies and Sustainable Development

Scenarios for Sustainability and Energy Governance: A Theoretical Introduction

6.  A Mix of Politics and Sharing: The Case of Barcelona’s Regulation on Solar Thermal Collectors

7.  Energy Production from Biogas: Repeasantization and Modernization in the Italian Countryside

8.  Green Enterprises and Professions for Sustainable Construction

9.  Looking into Policy Options of Electric Mobility

Thanks to Risorse Future Ltd. Funding. This book is dedicated to the memory of Fulvio Beato and Osvaldo Pieroni, teachers and friends.

INTRODUCTION

A. Agustoni and M. Maretti

In spite of its crucial importance, the problem of energy has always occupied a relatively marginal place within sociological research; only in recent decades has it become a topic of theory and empirical studies. Nevertheless, an increasing number of interdisciplinary publications in the field of social sciences place the energy issue at the core of the concept of sustainability. In other words, energy can be seen as a driving concept that governs the relationship between societies and their environments, and that driver can be seen as the change in social structures and dynamics.

In a wider anthropological perspective, we can regard this concept – at the same time intangible, complex, and abstract – as representing a very concrete theoretical framework which enables us to understand and explain human change (Adams 1975, 1988). It allows us to consider the role of the energy issue in social change in the framework of both ecological history and environmental sociology. As has been shown by Goudsblom (1992) and Wrangham (2009), an energy shift such as fire domestication seems to accelerate and steer biological evolution, allowing what we can call humanization, then cultural development, a form of change completely different from biological change and distinguishing Homo sapiens from all other animal species. An energy revolution (i.e., the domestication of fire) has thus strongly contributed to biological conditions for the development of human society.

As a further example, we can consider the impact exerted since the last decades of the nineteenth century by the introduction of electricity into social organization (such as household patterns of consumption) and into everyday life in general. The electrification of society resulted in the creation of a specific economic sector dedicated to the production and supply of energy, and consequently it led from the appearance of a specific energy issue to a previously unknown disharmony between human practices and natural rhythms.

According to Adams (1988), the amount of extrahuman energy controlled by a particular society can explain the concentration and configuration of power within that society. The increasingly complex social organization emerging from the energy shifts of the last two centuries involves an increasing amount of expert knowledge, and there are several implications. Consider the trust placed in decision-makers and in different kinds of expertise, the margins of uncertainty tied to the complexity of sociotechnical systems in their relations with governance processes, public opinion, general attitudes towards particular energy production technologies (for example, at a local level, towards particular kinds of industrial plant), and in all this the impact of social communication and of old and new media.

We thus face problems of technical language translation: the problem of communication between an expert in one field and an expert in another, as well as the problem of how the languages of these experts appear within the everyday life of the layman. We therefore also face the problem of relations between technocracy and democracy in advanced industrial societies – a central issue in the theories of several sociologists, among them Harold Lippmann, James Burnham, and Robert Dahl.

According to Luhmann (1968) and Smil (2010), we can identify in a trust attitude towards expert systems a strategy of complexity reduction that causes people to rely on different expertises in our daily choices without questioning the inextricable tangle of connected fields of knowledge. Paradoxically, though, when expert systems seem to be achieving their aim of total control over the uncertainty of events, any unexpected accident turns out to be a check for them and therefore contributes to the undermining of their credibility.

As a result, the attitude of the general public towards expert knowledge (that of both political and technocratic elites) becomes ambiguous, displaying a partial withdrawal of trust and a decreasing willingness to delegate decision making to those elites. Consequently, what Colin Crouch (2004) calls the coming of post-democracy on the one hand, and increasing distrust towards the expertises on the other, are evidently in the framework of a radical change in the politics of risk and of trust – two sides of the same coin. This fact can be seen in such areas as economic policy and energy policy.

The main theme of this book is relations between energy and society, but culture, communication, politics, and policy matters are also examined. The book includes papers derived from an international conference that discusses the relations between energy issues and development policies, sustainability, and local development.

As has been shown by Castells (2009), one of the most important contemporary scholars of globalisation, communication, and the network society, it is not simply a question of emotional response versus rational response, as implied by the second criticism of the Nimby syndrome. The prospect of an invasion of an individual’s living space gives that individual and his or her community the impetus to search out information. Public opinion has become better informed than it was in the past – as well as more sceptical and less inclined to attitudes of delegation and trust. Grassroots mobilisations represent a worthwhile opportunity for the collection and organisation of facts, common knowledge, and expert information.

Starting from those assumptions, the book aims to stimulate some reflections on communication and social attitudes towards energy issues and the dynamics of local development related to new technologies for the production of energy. In the first section, risk communication and governance are used as a framework for examining energy issues in their current social complexity. The second section analyses connections between energy sustainability and perspectives of local development. Each chapter is based on original empirical research collected and selected via a peer-review process.

All the chapters of this book have been selected between the papers presented, after a peer-review process, to an international conference, Energy and Society: Social Aspects of the Energy Issue, which took place in Chieti, Italy, in May 2011.

References

Appleyard, D. (1967), Planning a Pluralist City (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT University Press).

Castells, M. (2009), Communication Power (Oxford: University Press).

Crouch, C. (2004), Post-democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press).

Luhmann, N. (1968), Vertrauen (Stuttgart: Enke).

Rosanvallon, P. (2006), La Contre-democratie: La Politique à l’Age de la Mefiance (Paris: Seuil).

Sandercock, L. (1989), Toward Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities (London: Wiley).

Schon, D. (1983), The Reflective Practitioner. How Professionals Think in Action (London: Temple).

Shiva, V. (1993), Monocultures of the Mind. Biodiversity, Biotechnology and Agriculture (New Delhi: Zed Press).

Smil, V. (2010), Energy, Myth and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate (Washington DC: AEI).

PART I

Energy Policies, Public Opinion, and Risk Communication

Public Opinion, Green Cultures, and the Experts: An Introduction

Alfredo Agustoni

University of Chieti and Pescara

Walter Lippmann’s 1922 treatise Public Opinion inspired a reply from John Dewey. Lippmann considered that in modern society, which is becoming more and more complex and whose activities incorporate an ever-increasing amount of expert knowledge, it was not possible for the general public to exert true democratic control over social processes. A layman’s areas of knowledge were inevitably based upon stereotypes; these stereotypes were reinforced by the media (which need to conform to the preconceived views of their consumers, thus creating a kind of vicious circle). In Lippmann’s view, only the experts possessed adequate representations of their specific field of expertise, and consequently a kind of expertocracy, based on dialogue between the experts in different fields, was bound to develop. The model proposed by this distinguished American journalist and scholar was based on the image of an impartial collective of experts not involved in the problems and interests of daily life, as well as on the assumption that a sharp gap existed between the representations (or stereotypes) of the layman and the areas of knowledge possessed by the expert.

In 1927 John Dewey contested Lippmann’s position by stating that public opinion could manifest itself in the form of interest groups able to contend with areas of expert knowledge, engage in dialogue with the experts, and establish their own roles in the process of knowledge development. According to this pragmatist philosopher, the participation of public opinion in various issues could become an occasion for public empowerment and indeed for the expansion of expert knowledge, creating a process of continuous interchange between knowledge and its social applications. In this way, Dewey is a forerunner of many later critics of technocratic urban and environmental planning, from Appleyard (1976) to Schön (1983) and Sandercock (1989). The contrasting positions adopted by Lippmann and Dewey encapsulate some of the more relevant issues of contemporary science and technology studies (STS), such as the problematic interrelationship between experts, public opinion, and the environment, and specifically the ability of experts to manage risk and to make use of the knowledge that they possess (and that they institutionalise) to further the public interest and to develop a safer and wealthier future.

On this basis, Callon et al. (2001) postulate the existence of three different versions of the relationship between laymen and experts. The first is the public instruction version centred on the concept of a knowledge gap between public opinion and experts, and attributing the increase in public controversies on technological issues to a general lack of information and an emotional response on the part of the public. The second is the public debate version: although the public plays a more active role in adapting scientific knowledge to local contexts, a huge difference between public and experts nevertheless persists. The third version includes the presence of a number of participating groups engaged in cooperation and dispute about the construction of knowledge and the definition of their own identities. An example of the more traditional public instruction model can be found in the position defined by Robert Merton in his Sociology of Science (1973). The work of the scientist, according to Merton, is carried out in a subsystem of society – namely, in scientific institutions. He argues that this system’s comparative autonomy and impermeability is ensured by its own norms and values, in spite of the difference in which its technology is applied. Lippmann’s (and, to some extent, Merton’s) point of view seems to be founded (to quote a famous critic of technocratic urban planning) on the illusion that professionals are value-free technicians (Appleyard 1976: 1).

An example of the engaged groups model is provided by Latour’s 1999 Action-Network Theory (ANT), which emphasises the role of networks and alliances of variously engaged stakeholders (scientists, businessmen, public decision-makers, civil society organisations, etc.) in the construction of scientific knowledge. In this view, the increasing uncertainty and opacity of future scenarios causes laymen to build up personal patchworks of information, derived from sources that themselves can be seen as less and less reliable, and ever more partisan and contradictory (Castells 2009). This process is the consequence of public feelings of mistrust towards the various economic and institutional stakeholders visible in the media limelight (Rosanvallon 2006, 2008).

Between the idea that ecological concern is no more than an exaggeration or a delusion artificially created by certain groups or lobbies, and the sinister vision of a world ineluctably heading towards environmental catastrophe, we can find various alternative paths (perhaps requiring different models of rationality) towards a more sustainable future. One such model is that of instrumental rationality, able to include sustainability within its aims and therefore give rise to an alliance between experts (a sort of green technocracy), public, and the environment in a world of smart technologies and good practices, with all this integrated within a framework of ecological modernization (Mol and Spargaaren 2000). This model means that more rationality is required (i.e., an increasing amount of expert knowledge) in order to restore waste areas caused by a way of development that is itself centred on rationality – in other words, to ensure a future that has been made proudly uncertain by this way of development itself. This kind of universal and optimising rationality requires a project that is willing to pursue clear and declared aims. The challenge to ecological modernisation is to include environmental sustainability among the range of goals to be rationally achieved. Another model is the belief in a kind of autopoietic ecosystemic rationality established locally and differing from instrumental rationality, which obliges us to search for patterns of development that can be alternatives to the Western one best way (Shiva 1993).

A friendly and green technology, even if accompanied by the spread of good practices, may then seem inadequate in the framework of a way of production because it finds the conditions of its own reproduction only in a continuous and blind process of accumulation (of production and consumption), which is seen as an end in itself. Technology itself may therefore embody this kind of system and be ineluctably subordinated (to quote Foster (2000) and Martinez-Allier (1992)) to this kind of social metabolism. The good practices of consumers can be regarded as irrelevant because they are subordinated to the needs of a model of production and growth; in other words, there is incompatibility between good practices and particular patterns of growth. This can account for the antitechnocratic character of many green cultures. From their points of view, the search for purely technological solutions to environmental issues can only lead to further expertification of everyday life, meaning a reinforcement of all constrictions and manipulations exercised by administrative subsystems … expanding techno-bureaucratic power … and banning the autonomy of politics in favour of expertocracy (Gorz 2006: 54).

Local, public mobilizations therefore do not represent only a local and emotional response to a general and rational project, as often argued by the Nimby syndrome critics. On the contrary, radical changes in risk management and in the politics of risk can be read in the framework of an increasing distrust towards politics and the expertises, characterizing the coming of a post-democratic age (Rosanvallon 2006; Crouch 2004). Starting from those assumptions, the first section of this book aims to stimulate some reflections on communication and social attitudes towards energy issues and the dynamics of local development related to new technologies for the production of energy. In this section, risk communication and governance are used as a framework for examining energy issues in their current social complexity.

A paper by Agostino Petrillo opens the first section. The author argues that Fukushima can be seen as an extreme confirmation of the worst assumptions of risk sociology. Ulrich Beck comments at length on this event, accusing the atomic industry of connivance with institutions of control and criticising the Japanese government for relying, in case of disaster, on information given by private companies such as TEPCO. Who will control the controllers? Atomic energy societies are experiments that are not always successful, but a new era could emerge from the Fukushima disaster as new opportunities result from the spread of public awareness of the international dimension of the risk. According to Beck, collective reflection on events at Fukushima could open the way towards a different modernity.

Still on the subject of Fukushima but concentrating on its treatment in the media, Alessandro Caramis analyses the presentation of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in the most popular Italian newspapers. The newspapers analysed are La Repubblica and Il Corriere della Sera, chosen firstly for their importance as sources of public information in Italy and secondly for their attitudes to the subject of nuclear energy.

Continuing the analysis of risk society, perception, and acceptance, Giuseppe Tipaldo offers an empirical contribution based on a content analysis of seventeen newspapers from thirteen different countries aimed at suggesting a more careful and precise use of the term Nimby (from Not In My Back Yard), in public discussions of local controversies and disputes. After outlining the general situation of local protests in Italy, he demonstrates that the Nimby acronym (whose subtle ideological premises are detailed in the article) is by far the most widely used term in international press, even though a number of more precise and up-to-date alternatives exist. An Anglo-American literature on Nimbyism (a relative novelty in the Italian social sciences tradition) is examined in order to present and critically discuss the tangle of senses, stakes, interests, and ideologies of each linguistic label extracted from the analysis of these newspapers.

A historic account of the debate on nuclear power in Spain is the subject of a paper by Artemio Baigorri, Manuela Caballero, and Mar Chavès. The debate is considered in three phases. The first phase, in the Fifties and Sixties, was marked by an almost irrational technological optimism which saw nuclear energy as a panacea for all the ills of humanity. This vision collapsed when many scientists, especially former participants in nuclear programmes, alerted public opinion to the dangers of nuclear energy. The second phase began with the energy crisis of 1973: nuclear energy was presented as a more modern and cleaner alternative to oil, and plans were drawn up for nuclearization on a massive scale. This time the dream was confronted by two separate nightmares: