Social Roots of Global Environmental Change: A World-Systems Analysis of Carbon Dioxide Emissions

By J. Roberts, P. Grimes, Jodie L. Manale. Globalization and the Environment, 2003

137 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Carbon dioxide is understood to be the most important greenhouse gas believed to be altering the global climate. This article applies world-system theory to environmental damage. An analysis of 154 countries examines the contribution of both position in the world economy and internal class and political forces in determining a nation's CO, intensity. CO, intensity is defined here as the amount of carbon dioxide released per unit of economic output. An inverted U distribution of CO, intensity across the range of countries in the global stratification system is identified and discussed. Ordinary Least Squares regression suggests that the least efficient consumers of fossil fuels are some countries within the semi-periphery and upper periphery, spe-cifically those nations which are high exporters, those highly in debt, nations with higher military spending, and those with a repressive social structure.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Political Science and International Relations, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5b36454056bdaa64df7e2e29f42fda65063067b4

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Citations in the corpus

The Ecological Footprint Intensity of National Economies (2004, background): “Rothman (1998) and Frey (1998, 2003), among others, have drawn attention to this problem, suggesting that improvements in environmental quality in some nations come at the cost of increasing environmental deterioration in other nations.”
Are the Economy and the Environment Decoupling? A Comparative International Study, 1960–20051 (2012, unknown): “The third measure, emissions per unit of production, is widely used to quantify relative levels of ecoefficiency (e.g., Roberts, Grimes, and Manale 2003; Polimeni et al. 2008; York, Rosa, and Dietz 2009).”
Societies consuming nature: A panel study of the ecological footprints of nations, 1960–2003 ☆ (2011, background): “For example, the armed forces consume large amounts of fossil fuels, which directly contribute to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions and the emission of other greenhouse gases known to impact global warming and climate change (Roberts et al. 2006).”
Ecological Unequal Exchange: Consumption, Equity, and Unsustainable Structural Relationships within the Global Economy (2007, background): “Nonetheless, political regime repressiveness is also positively associated with carbon dioxide emissions ineffi ciency but the effect is the most salient within countries outside the core (Roberts et al., 2003).”
Who Ratifies Environmental Treaties and Why? Institutionalism, Structuralism and Participation by 192 Nations in 22 Treaties (2004, background): “Roberts et al. 2003; and Roberts and Grimes 1999; see also Sklair 2002.”
Ecologically Unequal Exchange, Ecological Debt, and Climate Justice (2009, background): “The structuralist approach of world-systems theory also helps explain why many peripheral and semi-peripheral nations are currently locked into ecologically unsustainable patterns (Roberts and Grimes, 2002; Roberts et al., 2003).”
Ecologically Unequal Exchange, World Polity, and Biodiversity Loss (2009, background): “It is also important to take into account demographic factors in cross-national research on environment issues (e.g. Jorgenson and Burns, 2007; Roberts et al., 2003; Rudel, 1989; Shandra, 2007a).”