Environmental regulation, shifting conditions and the strange movement of reason Last week, the Irish Times carried a range of stories and opinions about climate impacts, infrastructure delays and environmental regulation. It raises questions about what common sense is, where it comes from, and what makes one version of common sense more authoritative than another. On
Irish climate governance has not emerged from nowhere. In other words, it looks at the world from somewhere. Its origins extend well beyond the arrival of climate as a policy issue in the 1990s. It is a view that seems to have emerged and continues to evolve through a chameleon-like socio-economic structure that preserves elements
Addressing this question through the lens of Irish climate governance offers a salient case in point. For decades, it has cycled through repeated commitments to greater moral responsibility and targeted action, only to discover that the chosen means are not enough. In the meantime, we have reached the threshold of a world that is on