Family Picture
Our first family picture with Sebastian, in the hospital the morning after he was born (he came late at night).
Archive for the ‘News’ category
Baby Sebastian Johannes
As most who are reading this by now probably will know, on 26 November, Jenna and I became to our beautiful little baby boy Sebastian Johannes. He was 3675 grams, 54 cm long. He cried for a few seconds after he came out and then fell mostly silent, lying on Jenna’s chest, blinking at the bright lights and trying to make sense of his alien, new situation.
Graduation Photo
Here’s a photo from my most recent convocation. I graduated with an M.A. in Global Governance from the Balsillie School of International Affairs (University of Waterloo) in June (2010).
As an interesting side-story, the president of the university, David Johnston, handed me my diploma and we had a little conversation about IISD on stage, since he asked me what my plans were and I said I was going to work for IISD for the summer. He had been involved with the organization, but I forget how. Then a few of weeks later he was appointed the new governor-general of Canada!
Geoengineering under a climate emergency
Geoengineering under a climate emergency:
Exploring governance pathways and pitfalls
Master research paper. Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo, 2010.
After receiving feedback for my master research paper (MRP) in January, 2010, I wrapped up my Master of Arts degree in Global Governance. The only thing left is to actually receive it, which will happen on 17 June.
Here is my MRP, then, finally. The MRP was the major accomplishment of the master, and though it is shorter than a thesis, it still ended up at 70 pages (of text — 92 pages altogether). I wrote about what I was planning to cover in my MRP a year ago, and the final paper isn’t far off the mark, though I chose to de-emphasise securitisation and write more about governance.
I will blog about this topic shortly–give a condensed version of the MRP–but here is the abstract. The paper is available for download in its entirety on the right.
Abstract
Geoengineering has been advanced as a possible emergency option to sudden and disruptive climate change—a climate emergency. This paper advances the nascent geoengineering governance discourse, looking specifically on issues and challenges relating to how geoengineering can be used as a remedial option in case of a climate emergency.
The main contribution of this paper is the examination of six potential governance alternatives for geoengineering, assessed according to three fundamental characteristics that the paper argues any geoengineering regime must evince, to wit, holism, adaptability and legitimacy. Using path-dependency theory, it further explores how the current parochialism and fragmentation in global governance could affect the long-term development of the geoengineering discourse, before finally looking at how unilateral geoengineering could result from a global discourse on catastrophic climate change gone astray.
High levels of complexity, risk and uncertainty are inherent in both climate change and geoengineering and present substantial obstacles in the development of geoengineering governance. The fundamental question of this paper is how we can foster robust and resilient governance and responses for climate change and other environmental problems.
Happy New Year!
With this custom bokeh experiment — which turned out pretty well — I wish you Happy 2010, may it be better than 2009!
The lights in the picture are on the Christmas tree, but the picture has not been manipulated — the stars were achieved using a home made filter.
Merry Christmas!
Wishing everyone I know a Merry Christmas! (or just a Happy Holiday if you’re not upholding this neopagan, hedonistic and consumeristic tradition ;)
God Jul alle sammen!
The picture is of a little street in St Catharines famous for it’s Christmas light display (but you find Christmas displays all over the place…).
The Christmas holiday in Norway went down the drain when our flight was cancelled by a snowstorm last weekend. When they couldn’t offer us an alternative until Christmas Eve (and it woulnd’t have gotten us to Norway until Christmas Day morning…), we opted to cancel, spend Christmas is Kalamazoo, and delay our Norway trip until the summer. It was disappointing though, Christmas is a very special time.
Now we’re relaxing in Kalamazoo. The last couple of weeks were stressful, I’ve been working furiously on finising my master research paper. It’s now finished! I turned it in last night, at 9PM on Christmas Eve — writing and editing, that’s how I spent Christmas Eve. It’s a tremendous relief to be done. The last leg of my master’s degree is now over, so now all I can do is wait and see how it went. If it went well, I’ll post it in January.
Anyway, I’m now not going to think anymore about it, just relax.
Have a good holiday!
Geoengineering and the Arctic
Desperate times, desperate measures: Advancing the geoengineering debate at the Arctic Council
I’m pleased to announce that the result of my internship at IISD this summer has been published; my first (real) publication! I worked on it for about a month and a half, and I’m quite pleased with it (if I may say so). It was co-written with Henry David (Hank) Venema, with me as lead author. I owe a lot to Hank, however, who helped me out, jogged my brain circuits, gave me the idea for the paper, and wrote a few crucial paragraphs I was struggling with.
Read the paper:
Abstract and download-page at IISD.org
Abstract:
The Arctic is like the canary in the coalmine, warning us about the increasing impact of climate change, which is felt first there. In 2007, the Arctic ice cap shrunk to its smallest size ever recorded, 37 per cent below the recorded average. Its abrupt decline, which deviates widely from the largely linear and predictable trend observed over the past few decades, has alarmed the scientific community and suggests we may be closer to a dangerous “tipping point” than previously anticipated. At the same time, economic globalization is coming to this marginalized region at last through increased resource exploitation, leading in turn to further emissions of greenhouse gases and further climate change.
As unsavoury as it may be, this paper will argue that we must investigate geoengineering as an emergency option in case the mitigation regime fails. Given the dramatic consequences of climate change in the Arctic and the role of this region in the global climate, the Arctic countries have a special responsibility to lead this investigation and the debate surrounding it. As the only circumpolar governance forum on environmental issues, the Arctic Council is an obvious venue for this process. The paper explores the state of global geoengineering governance and how it should be constructed, and how the Arctic Council can contribute.
Read the rest of this entry »
So why am I in Winnipeg?
I haven’t said anything about why I’m in Winnipeg . So what exactly what am I doing in this city in Manitoba, on the Canadian prairie?
I have an internship this summer at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). IISD is dedicated to precisely the kind of issues I care about: climate change mitigation and adaptation, natural resource management, sustainable international development and trade and more. I’m very happy (and lucky I gather) to be there, although it means I have to be away from Jenna and the two furballs for until the end of August (Jenna will hopefully visit :).
While I’m here I’m going to research Arctic governance. There’s been a lot of noise over who get’s the right to the fabulous riches hiding under the Arctic seabed (or not: the calculations by the US Geological Survey about how much oil and gas there is under there are pretty sketchy (I’ll find a source for this later)). At any rate, the polar bear care very little about the sabre rattling by the Great Powers and more about what’s happening to it’s habitat — the ice. There are some serious environmental challenges that will have to be resolved in the Arctic. Not just climate change, which will hit the Arctic and its inhabitants both human and animal disproportionately hard, but also pollution, increased shipping and overfishing. And this is where I come in; I will be writing recommendations for where the Canadian government should put its resources in the future. Principally, that means recommending that Canada continues its tradition as a multilateralist and internationalist, and put its weight behind the Arctic Council — the environmental governance and cooperation agency of the Arctic.
I have some other tasks too, relating mostly to updating and playing with a community website for Arctic youth (ookpik.org).
And that’s how I came to be here.
Version 7
Welcome to the new version of my homepage :) Hope you like the colours! This is the seventh incarnation of this site. It is still lacking some polish, but i’d say it’s 95% per cent done. Which is about as finished as the old theme ever got… There will probably still be some changes around here as I gain some critical distance, but this is the result of a lot of work (and a lot of scrapped drafts!) so the changes won’t be drastic (hopefully). Mostly bugfixes (there are still a few bugs crawling around).
I can’t post pictures :’(
I just updated to WordPress 2.6 and suddenly I can’t use Yet Another Photoblog to post pictures… :( Must be a compatibility issue which I hope will be fixed soon, but meanwhile I can’t update my blog…and I have tons of pictures to post…
Update: there were more people than me who had this problem. Apparently, it was caused by the new revision history feature in WordPress. I found a hack to disable that feature, and voila, I can post pictures again.