The Enemy, the Cabildo and the Defence of the City

On 27 June 1806, Porteños awoke to the news that they were no longer Spanish subjects but part of the British Empire. The political consequences of the assault and seizure of the capital of the viceroyalty have been studied by many as the spark that started the Wars of Independence in the River Plate. The aim here is to contribute to these studies through the perspective of space and power and show how the control of the city and its urban development achieved by the Cabildo and the Porteños soon became political control.

As seen in the first chapter, the creation of the viceroyalty of the River Plate and the tightening of the commercial regulations by the Bourbons drastically reduced the area's contraband trade in the late eighteenth century. This left Britain looking for other ways to keep and expand its commercial activities in this profitable area. Trade with the Americas was favoured by the then prime minister William Pitt (1759–1806) who had the support of Francisco de Miranda (1750–1816). Miranda was a Creole and a main instigator of the revolution against Spain; he intended to cooperate with the British as long as the freedom from Spain was guaranteed to the colonies. Miranda had travelled the world in support for the colonies’ freedom but had received little help from the United States and France, turning therefore to Britain, where he met members of a South American lobby group that had been working for the British government to back an expedition to Buenos Aires since the late 1790s. Pitt, Miranda and Commodore Home Popham (1762–1820) met in London in 1803 and discussed possibilities. Popham and Miranda have both been described as a pair of opportunistic mavericks, so after the successful capture of Cape Town for the British Empire in 1806, it is no surprise that Popham immediately saw the chance to sail from here to Buenos Aires and capture this city as well. He was acting also on some intelligence received from Thomas Wayne, an American merchant-ship captain, who described the defenceless state of Buenos Aires with less than one thousand troops, adding on a more personal note that Porteños would welcome freedom from Spain.

World leaders have made a forceful statement that climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity in the twenty-first century. While the majority of people are worried by climate change, most are unwilling to follow the call from the United Nations for “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” Further, many of the technologies needed to effectively transition the world's economy away from fossil fuels are not ready for large-scale deployment. As a result, there is acrimonious worldwide political debate on implementing climate policies, which even if successful, have little chance of improving the climate or human well-being in the twenty-first century.

How did we come to be between a rock and hard place on the issue of climate change? This book shows how the narrow and politicized framing of the climate debate has resulted in an oversimplification of both the scientific problem and its solutions. My personal journey in navigating the climate debate provides insights into the problem and ways forward for finding solutions.

Prior to about 2003, it was fashionable in academic circles to be skeptical about the highly confident conclusions being issued in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports on human-caused climate change. I became concerned about the way these assessment reports were treating uncertainty and confidence levels in their conclusions. Apart from reading the IPCC Reports, I was mostly oblivious to the public debate and controversies surrounding climate change.

I inadvertently entered the public debate on climate change on September 14, 2005. The American Association for the Advancement of Science organized a press conference for a paper I co-authored that described a substantial increase in the global proportion of category 4 and 5 hurricanes. The unplanned and uncanny timing of publication of this paper was three weeks after Hurricane Katrina had devastated New Orleans. Our “15 minutes” stretched into days, weeks, and months, as Hurricane Katrina became a major focusing event for the global warming debate. I was treated like a rock star by the environmental movement.

Climate change is a risk because it may affect prosperity and security, and because its consequences are uncertain. The way we understand and describe a risk strongly influences the way in which it is analyzed, with implications for risk management and decision-making. By characterizing climate change as a well-understood problem with a strong consensus, traditional risk management approaches assume that climate change can and ought to be rationally managed, or at the very least contained, and preferably eliminated. However, the diversity of climate-related impact drivers and their complex linkages, various inherent and irreducible uncertainties, ambiguities about the consequences of climate change, and the unequal distribution of exposure and effects across geography and time, confound any simple or uncontested application of traditional risk management approaches.

Characterization of climate change as a simple, tame hazard risk of dose-response (such as regulation of food additives or use of antibiotics in feedstocks) to be controlled via the Precautionary Principle has torqued both the science and the policy process in misleading directions. As a result, the policy process that has evolved over the past several decades is not only inadequate to deal with the risks associated with climate change, but has fueled societal controversies around climate risk.

Human-caused climate change has become a topic of contested politics, with great economic stakes associated with both the problem and its proposed solutions. Guided by the analyses in Parts One and Two on the nature of the climate change problem and scenarios of future climate outcomes, Part Three presents a framework for analyzing climate risks in all of their complexity and ambiguity, toward formulating pragmatic and adaptable policies. Integrative thinking in the context of the tension associated with different perspectives, best practices from risk science and decision-making under deep uncertainty, and focusing on resilience and antifragility can lead to broader risk management frameworks that are politically viable and support human well-being, both now and in the future.

Climate policy discussions are framed by the IPCC Assessment Reports. At the center of the IPCC approach to climate policy analysis are scenarios of the future climate. The IPCC uses global climate models, driven by scenarios of future emissions, as the basis for generating climate futures.

Scenarios refer to “a plausible, comprehensive, integrated and consistent description of how the future might unfold while refraining from a concrete statement on probability.” Scenarios of climate futures play a fundamental role in characterizing societal risks and policy response options.

This chapter examines the IPCC's scenarios of future climate change.

Emissions Scenarios

The IPCC projections of future climate change are driven by changes to radiative forcing arising from changes to concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols associated with human activity—primarily from emissions associated with fossil fuels. One approach to generating scenarios is simply to specify different levels of radiative forcing, which are referred to as “pathways.” Another approach is to develop socioeconomic and emission scenarios to provide plausible descriptions of how future emissions and their radiative forcing may evolve. To capture a range of possible future emissions scenarios, energy system modelers use Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) that simulate both future energy technologies and emissions, and also incorporate assumptions about population, land use, socioeconomic development and policy assumptions.

The most recent set of scenarios used by the IPCC are the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) and scenarios developed from the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP).

The RCPs are a set of four climate scenarios for the end of the twenty-first century. The RCPs were formulated for use in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, to reflect different potential climate outcomes (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0, and RCP8.5). The number (e.g., 8.5) reflects the additional radiative forcing (in Watts per square meter, W/m2, which is a measure of energy per unit time and per unit area) in 2100 at the top of the atmosphere from greenhouse gas emissions and other factors, relative to pre-industrial times.

Colonialism is a system in which a country controls another country or area, a definition that acquires complexity when considering the different disciplines that research this field, not to mention the evolving narratives and interests of both, authors and audiences. The focus in this volume is on colonialism and human geography, involving cities, architecture and the actors concerned with designing, developing and inhabiting the urban space in colonial Latin America. Within this focus, there are issues related to identity – which is central to spatial conceptualisations of colonial domination that cover private buildings, the public space as well as the inhabitants and users of these spaces. Identity in turn is understood here as a fluid and yet constrained concept affected by culture and politics but also, as this volume shows, by architecture and the urban context. The demographic explosion of the eighteenth century increased the demand for property while the financial gains made by entrepreneurs of the expanding trade created the necessary surplus for investment in real estate assets. No other urban centre exemplifies this phenomenon better than Buenos Aires, the fastest growing city in the Spanish world at the time of the establishment of the viceroyalty of the River Plate in 1776. Since then and until the end of the viceroyalty in 1810, the reduction of contraband trade, the opening of commerce and the regulation of land titles and urban planning helped the local economy and consolidated the basis for a flourishing real estate market.

Although these were spatial and economic measures brought by the Bourbon dynasty in Spain, the century was also characterised by a new way of thinking known as the Enlightenment. The movement was exemplified by freedom in thinking, where science and reason guided humanity. Nevertheless, an all-encompassing definition remains a challenge, as some countries used the concept to support absolutism while for others it represented republican ideas. Furthermore, studies have also shown the importance of geography particularly in colonial societies where the Enlightenment was more revolutionary than the independence movements themselves.

Notwithstanding, politics is not the only contradiction posed by the Enlightenment. By 1750, the power of the church in Europe had begun to decline favouring the ‘disenchantment of the world’ or the search for a more rational explanation of the world and the working of its natural forces.

The Geo-Administrative Division of the Colonial Territories in the Americas

The sixteenth century consolidated the geographical expansion of European powers over territories populated by indigenous people by means of a strategy that guaranteed the dual objective of subjugation as well as the economic exploitation of the colonies. From this common baseline, colonialism adopted different forms depending on several factors including the dominant socio-political ideas of each European power, as well as the physical environment encountered and the particularities of the local indigenous population, including their responses to foreign strategies. Colonialism was thus not uniform all over the territories, not even within those under the same colonial power.

In the case of Spain, the geographical colonial system consisted of administrative units, each with its own office that was dependant on an immediately higher office in a hierarchical order that culminated with the Spanish king. Administrative offices often lacked clearly defined functions, which generated disputes that only peninsular authorities could solve, albeit after a long bureaucratic process of communication. This long chain of letters and reports from the colonies to the Crown was deliberate and aimed to guarantee that ultimate decisions were taken by the state. The blurring of incumbencies also ensured that officials themselves watched their peers, immediately informing superiors when someone was encroaching another officer's incumbencies. The effect was a bottom-up surveillance system to prevent excesses of power and thus supervise the vast dominions with scant resources. Furthermore, as colonial officials were located far from the state's close control, European rulers often opposed the appointment of the nobility to high offices in the colonies, fearing that they could challenge the ruler's authority. During the earlier time of the colonies, Spain and Portugal, in particular, aimed to prevent the establishment of powerful nobilities overseas.

Modern European empires had separate colonial authorities in the metropolis to supervise the administration of the colonies. Initially, in Spain, the Royal Council of Castile dealt with matters related to the Indies, but the increase of business (and bureaucracy) forced the creation of a separate council exclusive for the colonies. This was known as the Real y Supremo Consejo de las Indias, created by Charles V on 1 August 1524 and although it ranked below that of Castile within the Spanish imperial system, it had undisputed powers in overseas territories.

Future scenarios of worst-case outcomes have an important role to play in many decision-making frameworks (Part Three). How to formulate worst-case scenarios, and assess whether they are plausible, is a substantial challenge. This chapter brings into play some complex epistemological issues, focused on formulating and assessing plausible worst-case scenarios.

Global climate models provide a coherent basis for generating scenarios of future climate change, based on emissions scenarios. The worst case is clearly associated with the 8.5 scenarios (RCP8.5, SSP5–8.5). However, Section 7.1.1 provided evidence that RCP8.5 is an implausible scenario. What exactly does implausible mean, and how do we delineate between a scenario that is improbable (<10 percent chance) versus a plausible or an implausible scenario?

Emissions-driven climate model simulations do not allow exploration of all possible future scenarios that are compatible with our background knowledge of the basic way the climate system actually behaves, as described in Chapter Eight. Some of these unexplored possibilities might turn out to be real ones.

Surprises are a class of risk that can be defined as low-likelihood but well-understood events that cannot be predicted with current understanding. Examples include: a series of major volcanic eruptions, a nuclear war, significant twenty-first-century sea level rise due to collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and unexpected pandemics.

Black swans are a category of surprise with the following attributes. A black swan is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations and is associated with an extreme impact. In spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable. Another class of surprises are known events or processes that were ignored for some reason or judged to be of negligible importance by the scientific community. These are often referred to as Pink Flamingos (also referred to as unknown knowns or known neglecteds).

Four risk factors have been articulated for genuine surprise:

• System complexity—risk of surprise is higher when the system under study is nonlinear and complex.

• Limited knowledge of the system's past behavior and processes that underlie that behavior.

• Past instances of genuine surprise when investigating the system.

List of viceroys of the River Plate and time in office

Pedro de Cevallos (1776–1778)

Juan José Vértiz y Salcedo (1778–1784)

Francisco Cristóbal del Campo, Marqués de Loreto (1784–1789)

Nicolás de Arredondo (1789–1795)

Pedro Melo de Portugal y Villena (1795–1797)

Antonio Olaguer Feliú (1797–1799) (interino)

Gabriel de Avilés y del Fierro, Marqués de Avilés (1799–1801)

Joaquín del Pino (1801–1804)

Rafael de Sobremonte, Marqués de Sobremonte (1804–1807)

Real Audiencia (interinato)

Santiago Antonio María de Liniers y Bremont (1807–1809)

Baltazar Hidalgo de Cisneros (1809–1810)

Within the public domain, there is a widespread narrative of climate catastrophe if we do not urgently reduce or eliminate emissions from burning fossil fuels. Example quotes are provided below from United Nations (UN) officials and national leaders:

In the 1990s, the world's nations embarked on a path to prevent dangerous human-caused climate change by stabilizing the concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide (CO2). These efforts were codified by the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) plays a primary role in legitimizing UNFCCC policies. The IPCC prepares periodic assessment reports that are formulated around identifying human influences on climate, adverse environmental and socioeconomic impacts of climate change, and stabilization of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.

How concerned should we be about climate change? The IPCC Assessment Reports do not support the concept of imminent global catastrophe associated with global warming. However, a minority of scientists, some very vocal, believe that catastrophic scenarios are more realistic than the IPCC's likely scenarios. There is also a very vocal contingent among journalists and politicians that supports the catastrophe narrative.

At the same time, there are other scientists that do not view climate change to be a serious threat. Many of these adopt the lukewarmer perspective, which expects warming to be on the lower end of the IPCC likely range and do not expect the impacts to be alarming or catastrophic. Some politicians and industrialists reject the solutions put forward by the international climate treaties in favor of near-term economic development.

This chapter lays out the contours of the climate change problem: ambiguities surrounding the definition of climate change, what we know with confidence, what we do not know and cannot know, and whether climate change is dangerous.