Climate change: from issue to magnifier

The headline in the Independent newspaper on 13 October 2007 made it quite clear what the issue was: "He's won an Oscar. He's won the Nobel Peace Prize. Now, can he win the Presidency?" Can Al Gore accomplish what no one has done before and secure this unique triumvirate of accolades and accomplishments?

The award of the 2007 Nobel peace prize jointly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the former vice-president of the United States has been applauded the world over. "It recognises climate change as a security issue", "... it emphasises the role of science in problem-solving", "... it rewards a charismatic communicator who has put climate change centre-stage". To the contrary, I found the rationale for this award bizarre. It was bizarre for Alfred Nobel's peace prize to be thus awarded - I fail to see where peace has broken out as a result of climate-science papers or Al Gore presentations. And it was bizarre to join together the enterprise of a huge international scientific assessment with a one-man publicity campaign aimed at subverting the power of the White House. The Independent newspaper, for all its populist ballyhoo, clearly saw what it was about. Why was the Nobel committee taken in?

Mike Hulme is professor in the school of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia. He is currently writing a book, to be published by Cambridge University Press, called Why We Disagree About Climate Change. His website is here

The limits of formula

I want to examine the thesis, this formula - implicit in the Nobel award - that good science + good communication = peace. (And here, in the context of climate change, we have to think of "peace" as a shorthand for reducing the risks to societies posed by a warming climate). The IPCC represents good science, Al Gore and his inconvenient truth represents great communication; put them together and they can change the world. If only it were as simple as this.

This formula is very reminiscent of the deficit model of science communication, popular in the 1970s and 1980s, but now largely abandoned except in the bastions of scientistic hegemony that survive in western liberal democracies (although sadly still more prevalent in some other parts of the world). The deficit model suggests that the reason for perverse or laggardly public policies with regard to environmental hazards is that the public and the politicians haven't grasped the science. Louder siren voices from the republic of science, crisper and more seductive communication of that science from the spin-doctors, will rectify matters (see Simon Retallack, "Ankelohe and beyond: communicating climate change", 17 May 2006). If science speaks truth to power - to use the old Quaker formulation - and speaks it persuasively through the mouth of Al Gore and the soft-lens focus of his biopic movie, then power will surely respond. Peace will break out; a runaway climate will be brought under human control.

But this is not how our world works; and this most certainly is not the way that this world is going to come to terms with its inadvertent project of climate modification. To do that, much more than just good science is needed; and it most certainly is not sufficient for that science to be filtered through the preferences and peculiarities of one man. Camilla Toulmin points out on openDemocracy that Gore's remedy for his climate fever, promoted in An Inconvenient Truth - recycle, change your lightbulb, buy a hybrid car - is not relevant for a large majority of the world's population (see "Climate change, global justice: letter to Al Gore", 27 July 2006).

openDemocracy writers debate the politics of climate change:

Stephan Harrison, "Glaciers and geopolitics" (27 May 2005)

Saleemul Huq & Camilla Toulmin, "Climate change: from science and economics to human rights" (7 November 2006)

Simon Retallack, "Climate change: the global test" (10 November 2006)

Tom Burke, "Climate change: choosing the tools" (21 December 2006)

John Elkington & Geoff Lye, "Climate change's right and wrong fixes" (2 February 2007)

Dougald Hine, "Climate change: a question of democracy" (2 March 2007)

Andrew Dobson, "A politics of global warming: the social-science resource" (29 March 2007)

Oliver Tickell, "Live Earth's limits" (6 July 2007)No, we need to understand the full significance of climate change in a different way. For sure, let us make sure that everyone understands that humans truly are altering climates around the world and that unfettered carbon-based material growth will lead to accelerated change ahead. This is what science is good at; this is what good science communication should be aimed at. This is lower-case "climate change"' if you will: climate change as physical reality.

The space of difference

But at that point, we have only just started on the task required. There is also an upper-case "Climate Change" phenomenon: Climate Change as a series of complex and constantly evolving cultural discourses. We next need to embark on the much more challenging activity of revealing and articulating the very many reasons why there is no one solution, not even one set of solutions, to (lower-case) climate change. "Solving" climate change, "stopping" climate chaos, "saving" the planet in ten years are fantasy projects. We disagree about Climate Change (upper-case, its social meanings not its physical reality) not because the science is uncertain or because a few well-paid sceptics have a loud voice. We disagree about Climate Change because we disagree in quite fundamental ways about the nature of the risks posed and about what constitutes appropriate responses.

Moreover, these disagreements can be traced back to things that matter very deeply to us. They emerge from our different perceptions and tolerances of risk; from our faith in, or suspicion of, the technological genius of human engineers and innovators; from the different views we hold about the role of the state in the regulation of individual freedom; from the ways we value the natural world relative to the human world; from the beliefs we hold about the autonomy of human action relative to the idea of a divine Creator.

We have to reveal these deeper reasons why we disagree about Climate Change rather than pretending that louder, crisper and slicker communication of science will somehow bully the world to a convergence of response. In different form, but with similar intent, this has been tried before in theocracies and been found wanting. God's ten commandments delivered from smoke and thunder on Mount Sinai went out of fashion a while ago. An Inconvenient Truth is hardly an adequate substitute. As David Goldston has said with respect to the US Congress: , "... the complexity of the policy discussion [about climate change] will make the previous congressional debate over whether climate change even exists seem like child's play" (see "Climate of opportunity", Nature, 17 January 2007).

This is not a prognosis for despair. It is only once we truly understand how deep our differences are, and respect them - differences in beliefs, values, goals, instruments, politics - that we will be in a position to think more clearly about what we really want to happen in the future. The role of Climate Change I suggest is not as a lower-case physical phenomenon to be "solved". We need to use the idea of Climate Change - the matrix of power relationships, social meanings and cultural discourses that it reveals and spawns - to rethink how we take forward our political, social and economic projects over the decades to come.

Climate Change is a good magnifying glass for us to use in a more forensic examination than we have been used to of each of these projects – economic growth, free trade, poverty reduction, community-building, demographic management, social health, and more. Let’s use the magnifying power of Climate Change – its emphasis on the long-term implications of short-term choices, its global reach, its revelation of new centres of power, its attention to both material and cultural values - to attend more closely to what we really want to achieve for humanity: affluence, justice or mere survival.

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Michael S Northcott, A Moral Climate: The Ethics of Global Warming (Darton, Longman & Todd, 2007)

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Richard said:

Sun, 2007-10-21 11:09

Mike Hulme: I fail to see where peace has broken out as a result of climate-science papers or Al Gore presentations. Nobel Peace Prize citation: Indications of changes in the earth's future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds. Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth's resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world's most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.

lsalzman said:

Wed, 2007-10-24 00:07

When I hear the phrase "cultural discourses" I reach for my gun (figuratively speaking of course). What an eloquent and seemingly wise discourse by Hulme. What he concludes is that we have to think of the wider societal problems that we face now and how our approach to climate change will or should address them. Duh. This has been said before, many times and by many people. It doesn't advance the dialogue. It doesn't offer even his personal opinions or solutions. Hulme is being contrarian and negative, which are ordinarily fine, but he isn't suggesting anything positive. It is hard to tell where he falls on the spectrum, aside from his somewhat snotty references to scientism and "cultural discourses", which appear to put him on the Post Modern Marxist part of the spectrum. Not that there's anything wrong with that, as the saying goes, but one expects more than just leftist kvetching. He also implies that the general public can't really grasp enough of the problem to make any relevant decisions or political choices, and also implies that unless they CAN be made to grasp it, we won't make any progress at all. Well, I am not such a cynic about the public, nor do I think that in the real world, any real world, that the final decisions or votes or actions will be taken based on anything but instinct, faith in specific individuals or leaders, personal biases, the opinions of friends and colleagues, professional peers and other such (presumably) shallow and unreliable influences. In the middle of all this, the activists and environmentalists and scientists will do their best to educate, inform and guide, using science honestly and admitting the uncertainties, while not downplaying the seriousness of the situation. In the end I don't really know what Hulme is driving at, and perhaps I have misunderstood him. But I have tried my best .

jamesg17 said:

Wed, 2007-10-24 11:49

It's in the nature of things that moderates are usually attacked from both sides. It's nice to see Mr. Hulme rail against the sexing up of climate change disaster scenarios and it's sad that so few seem to follow his lead. It seems most activists think you can't be too alarmist. Unfortunately, I disagree with him too. The evidence shows that people see what they want to see and nothing can shift them. Unlike lsalzman I don't see scientists "using science honestly and admitting the uncertainties" - they are in fact too often doing exactly the opposite; perhaps due to the herding instinct, perhaps due to moral duty. There is insufficient evidence that climate change is man's fault or even that it is dangerous and the more you look, the more uncertainties you find. An honest scientist would admit that! We are indeed being guided purely by the uncertainty principle and assuming that any change must be bad before we even start the research - often in order to get money to start it. But ultimately it really doesn't matter who is right. We need an energy plan that moves us away from fossil fuels. That is actually a very good area of agreement between all sides. In fact most of the current focus on alternative fuels has been due to high oil prices and uncertain natural gas supplies - not to the green propaganda. If the debate completely shifted away from the cause and effect of climate change and towards development of green, alternative fuels then that would represent real progress. That is, only the end point is important, not the start point. And to be fair to Al Gore, if he had been elected instead of George Bush, not only would there have been no Iraq war, I tend to think there would have been no 9-11 event or Katrina disaster. Why? Because perhaps Gore would have listened to the CIA, the FBI or FEMA, instead of ignoring them or impeding them or heading them up with incompetent cronies like Bush did. If Gore does get elected from this then we may even get real peace - as in anti-war - since all current US presidential candidates are actively pro-war.

hdwyrain said:

Thu, 2007-10-25 09:18

That Al Gore should have got any award for his blathering on climate change is a travesty. This hypocrite lives in an big energy devouring mansion. President Bush's ranch by comparison uses very little. Let's have a little good example Al. It should be noted that many scientists have now come to the opposite view on climate change. One scare monger said that these conditions haven't occurred for thousands of years - what kind of gas guzzling cars were being driven then I wonder.

Richard said:

Sun, 2007-10-28 20:58

James You write: "There is insufficient evidence that climate change is man's fault or even that it is dangerous and the more you look, the more uncertainties you find. An honest scientist would admit that!" I assume that you would not hold this point of view if 100% of climate scientists thought the opposite. What is the minimum percentage that would persuade you to change your mind? 70%? 80%? 90%? Thanks for answering this question Richard

jamesg17 said:

Tue, 2007-11-06 11:08

Richard You are wrong in assuming that. It's not about the number of scientists it's about the quality of evidence. If you are arguing for groupthink or herding then it's just a further demonstration of the lack of real evidence. I didn't believe the "experts" either about BSE, the millenium bug, Munchhausen by proxy, shaken baby syndrome, the asian bird flu epidemic, the coming ice age and a whole host of other false scare stories because the evidence just wasn't compelling. In most cases these common scares turn out to be nothing but hyped-up speculation for the purposes of attracting funding. Unfortunately scientific groupthink (ie go with the flow) helps them gain undeserved traction. Indeed the more strident scientists are mostly mathematicians or physicists with seemingly only a passing understanding of climatic processes and on major issues they are very often completely wrong - ask Carl Wunsch or Richard Seager about the huge number of scientists who misunderstand the Thermohaline Circulation for example. In many cases those much-maligned skeptics have been proved right too, eg on the minor role of CO2 in past climates. In fact lately the majority of scientists seem to be accepting what skeptics have argued all along; that natural forces likely dominated climate until 1970 and are probably a significant portion of warming from 1970 onwards. The science is still evolving, which is what science does, and those catastrophe scenarios are really only from fringe extremists. However, as I indicated above it is all irrelevant. Regardless of our beliefs we absolutely need new energy sources and I admit that this new scare has played at least some part in re-energising alternative energy research.