What is a low-carbon pathway? To many, it is a way of mitigating climate change. To others, it is about addressing market failure or capturing the co-benefits attached to low-carbon systems, such as jobs or improved health. To still others, it represents building adaptive capacity and resilience in the face of climate change. However, these interpretations can fail to acknowledge how pathways of low-carbon transitions can also become intertwined with processes and structures of inequality, exclusion and injustice. Using a critical lens that draws from a variety of disciplines, this article explores three ways through which responses to climate change can entrench, exacerbate or reconfigure the power of elites. As society attempts to create a low-carbon society, including for example via coastal protection efforts, disaster recovery, or climate change mitigation and renewable energy, these efforts intersect with at least three processes of elite power: experimentation, financialisation, and dispossession. Experimentation is when elites use the world as a laboratory to test or pilot low-carbon technologies or policy models, transferring risks yet not always sharing benefits. Financialisation refers to the expansion and proliferation of finance, capital, and financial markets in the global economy and many national economies, processes of which have recently extended to renewable energy. Dispossession is when elites use decarbonisation as a process through which to appropriate land, wealth, or other assets (and in the process make society more majoritarian and/or unequal). We explore these three themes using a variety of evidence across illustrative case studies, including hard and soft coastal protection measures (Bangladesh, Netherlands), climate risk insurance (Malawi), and renewable energy auctions and associated mechanisms of finance and investment (South Africa and Mexico).

什么是低碳途径？对许多人来说，这是缓解气候变化的一种方式。在其他人看来，这是解决市场失灵或抓住低碳系统带来的共同利益，例如工作或健康状况的改善。在其他人看来，它代表着面对气候变化时的适应能力和复原力的建立。但是，这些解释可能无法承认低碳转型的途径也如何与不平等，排斥和不公正的过程和结构交织在一起。本文使用了来自不同学科的批判性镜头，探讨了三种应对气候变化的方法可以巩固，加剧或重新构造精英的力量。。在社会试图建立低碳社会的过程中，例如通过沿海保护，灾难恢复，减缓气候变化和可再生能源等努力，这些努力至少与三个精英力量相交：试验，金融化和剥夺财产。实验是当精英们利用世界作为实验室来测试或试验低碳技术或政策模型时，转移风险但并不总是共享利益。金融化是指全球经济和许多国家经济中金融，资本和金融市场的扩张和扩散，其过程最近已扩展到可再生能源。剥夺是指精英利用脱碳过程获得适当的土地，财富，或其他资产（并在此过程中使社会变得更加多数化和/或不平等）。我们使用各种案例研究中的各种证据探讨这三个主题，包括硬性和软性沿海保护措施（孟加拉国，荷兰），气候风险保险（马拉维），可再生能源拍卖以及相关的金融和投资机制（南非和墨西哥）。