The Social Construction of Climate Change

Power, Knowledge, Norms, Discourses

Mary E. Pettenger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754648024
• eBook ISBN: 9781317015840
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias biológicas
• Subtopic: Política

Individuals, international organizations and states are calling for the world to confront climate change. Efforts such as the Kyoto Protocol have produced intractable disputes and are deemed inadequate. This volume adopts two constructivist perspectives - norm-centred and discourse - to explore the social construction of climate change from a broad, theoretical level to particular cases. The contributors contend that climate change must be understood from the context of social settings, and that we ignore at our peril how power and knowledge structures are generated. They offer a greater understanding of why current efforts to mitigate climate change have failed and provide academics and policy makers with a new understanding of this important topic.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Power, Knowledge and the Social Construction of Climate Change

Mary E. Pettenger1

Kyoto is without doubt only the first step. We will have to do more to fight this rapid increase in temperature on our wonderful blue planet earth.

Klaus Toepfer, Head of UNEP, 2005

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

Albert Einstein

Climate change has come to have numerous meanings “on our wonderful blue planet earth” (Toepfer 2005). Over the last twenty years, small steps have been taken to recognize, conceptualize and address climate change while scientific, political, economic and rhetorical battles rage. Recently we have taken tangible actions concerning climate change as illustrated in February 2005 when the Kyoto Protocol came into force. Yet, the treaty, requiring a binding commitment by member states to change their climate impacting behavior, has faced enormous criticism from multiple sources during its construction, ratification and implementation phases. The existence of climate change, its potential impacts and even the efficacy of current measures remain in contention.

Peter Haas (2004) presents an interesting and important question: “When does power listen to truth?” In his essay he discusses the means by which truth, as generated by science, influences political processes. Haas examines the social processes responsible for generating “usable knowledge” with which new realities can be birthed regarding climate change. Thus, he is addressing the age-old dialogue between power and knowledge. When do power and knowledge subvert or unite with each other? And, when does knowledge achieve its own power and bring change? In essence, the Social Construction of Climate Change asks these same questions. We are seeking to expose the dialogue between power and knowledge found in the social construction of climate change.

Taking on such a lofty endeavor has its obvious problems which we have actively sought to identify and address with varying degrees of success, but no book can be everything for everyone. When we first began to discuss the focus of the book, the contributors agreed that the policies to address climate change to date were problematic, and we consciously chose to cast a broad net to uncover vectors of change that might bring new understandings of climate change politics. The chapters in this book do not focus explicitly on the questions of what constitutes climate change. Nor do they explicitly examine how, or if, we should respond. Instead, we are exploring the construction of the questions. More precisely, what does it mean to ask if climate change exists? How has the process been socially constructed that interprets the existence of and responses to climate change?

Most of the contributors to this volume are scholars in the field of International Relations (IR). The field, while varying individually in theoretical orientations and assumptions, focuses on the organization, use and effects of power in its many forms. More recently, some in the field have begun to focus on the role of knowledge, and those producing this knowledge, as a form of power. For example, Peter Haas examines the role epistemic communities may play in generating knowledge, gaining power and influencing political processes (Haas 2004). In this book, we trace the dialogue between power and knowledge within which the social understandings of climate change have been constructed. Through our discussions and in our writings, we seek greater knowledge about climate change, but not always in a problem-solving manner that is the norm in IR. Problem-solvers generally assume that factual statements about the world can be tested and proven to be true or false based on principles found in natural science. This approach (often called positivism) assumes that facts exist outside of the observer who remains impartial in the process, and that all results can be subject to testing, leading to a systematic and reliable progression of knowledge.

In contrast, the contributors to this book in various ways and degrees challenge the assumptions of positivism and the categorization of climate change as a “problem” that can be analyzed and solved. To this end we have adopted the IR approach of constructivism. While the contributors support different perspectives on constructivism within the book, we all share much in common. We consciously choose to focus on several regions of the world, and to include northern/western and southern/indigenous voices. We are seeking to understand the interpretations of climate change, vis-à-vis the social processes of climate change conceptualization, i.e., what it is and how its causes and consequences, and the planned responses to it, are constructed.2 Additionally, we specifically are exploring change. The book focuses on the processes of social construction of climate change, primarily from the late 1980s when climate change became an increasingly salient issue to the present. It is through this process of change that we hope to identify the emerging forces arising from the structures of power and knowledge.

While some might judge the book for doing too much on a cursory level, our intent is to look broadly in order to uncover the hidden meanings lost in the climate change arena. At the same time, the cases and themes in the book touch on other areas in the global environmental politics (GEP) literature. What makes this book different is that we adopt the lens of constructivism to view the cases, and place the cases together within this theme to seek information that is not found through other theoretical and empirical processes. While the chapters are comparative in nature, we are not seeking to compare policy formation in different states and arenas.3 Rather, we have two main goals, to illuminate new understandings of climate change, and to compare two different constructivist perspectives. In the end, we are seeking new questions to ask that might gently prod future climate change negotiations and policies. We suggest that new “levels of consciousness” are required to address the substantial “problem” of climate change. What follows serves to guide the reader in understanding the purpose, theoretical roots and structure of the book.

Climate Change Meanings

The definitive assumption of this book is that climate change must be understood from the context of social settings; however, the importance of how (and for some, why) knowledge and power structures are generated is often ignored by policymakers and academics. The following discussion of the role of science in climate change policy illustrates this obfuscation. Scientists are bound within the realm of the scientific method to seek causality between human actions and climate change. However, even though there is an overwhelming amount of empirical evidence to support the existence of climate change, uncertainty remains (for an important discussion of this topic, see Oreskes 2004).

In response, there is a growing body of literature investigating the interactive role of science and the social construction of knowledge (Lahsen this volume; see also Lahsen 2005; Bäckstrand 2004, Demeritt 2001; Rosa and Dietz 1998). The construction of knowledge is fundamental to understanding climate change, and yet overwhelming evidence/knowledge has not led to power as Haas (2004) presents. The controversy continues when policymakers such as Schlesinger (former US Secretary of Energy) state the following about climate change science:

… science is not a matter of consensus, as the histories of Galileo, Copernicus, Pasteur, Einstein and others will attest. Science depends not on speculation but on conclusions verified through experiment. Verification is more than computer simulations—whose conclusions mirror the assumptions built in the model. Irrespective of the repeated assertions regarding a “scientific consensus,” there is neither a consensus nor is consensus science (Schlesinger 2005, A10).

Consequently, the perceived material reality of climate change is defined in social settings by scientists and policymakers (who may or may not be experts, Lahsen 2005). In other words “science … is the politics of climate change” (Lahsen this volume, p. 190).

Concurrently, while scientists work to make sense of climate change, some world leaders seize upon this brief gap of uncertainty to obstruct efforts to mitigate climate change. Are these political leaders uneducated or naive, or is there something deeper taking place? How can we understand the myriad of responses to climate change? For example, for what reason(s) has the largest contributor of greenhouse gases, the United States, chosen to impede international cooperation? How has policy emerged that has negated the urgency for action and/or obscured this issue in relation to other issues? These and other such illustrations and questions flow throughout this book.

At the same time, what role do other powerful actors, such as the media, play in our understandings of climate change? For example, the US infotainment industry increasingly has portrayed divergent climate change interpretations. A recent Hollywood movie, The Day After Tomorrow, sensationalized a cataclysmic, climate change event (Emmerich 2004). The film stirred controversy by portraying the climate of the world altering in just a matter of days, with much of the Northern Hemisphere covered in ice because of global warming. In contrast, State of Fear by Michael Crichton presents climate change as a hoax perpetrated by those who would use misperceptions of science to gain political and economic power. Crichton’s portrayal of global warming based upon his own scientific research (see his chapter “Author’s Message”) weaves an impressive amalgamation of science and entertainment (Crichton 2004).

Additionally, the documentary about former US Vice President Al Gore and his climate change awareness speeches, An Inconvenient Truth, presents worst-case-scenarios, including a twenty-foot sea level rise, and is an unbridled call for action (Guggenheim 2006). The movie has generated a large following of devotees in the US who flock to hear his tale and push for political changes amidst counter-attacks by opponents who claim he is distorting reality and seeking the political spotlight. What is climate change and how have our understandings of it been socially constructed? The general public is bombarded with opposing interpretations of climate change by the media, while facing increasingly more threatening physical/material realities.

In recent years it seems that the number of severe weather disasters has increased. Drought in South Asia, floods in Europe, typhoons in East Asia, and hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean left death and suffering in their wake. While these phenomena are not new, the severity of their occurrences has changed. The number of wildfires are on the rise and their increase has been linked to “higher temperatures” (Hotz 2006). Glaciers are melting at an unprecedented rate all over the earth (Blue Earth Alliance 2006). 2005 was the hottest year on record for the last one hundred years, with 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004 following on the list of the five hottest years (NASA 2006). Are all these material facts interrelated? How should climate change be interpreted and understood? Should we interpret these facts, as did Al Gore in The Inconvenient Truth, to convey the potential annihilation of the human species if we do not act immediately? Or should we respond as President Bush of the US has done since 2001, proclaiming that the scientific evidence is too uncertain and the economic costs are too great to require an immediate response?

Ask ten people how to define climate change, its causes and effects, and you will get ten different answers. The language used to discuss and describe climate change is often value-laden as the terms employed have different meanings depending on who is discussing the topic and why. What is clear is that the meaning of climate change is defined in social settings. The range of terms used to conceptualize the perceived material reality (of the rising mean surface temperature of the earth caused by increasing greenhouse gases) extends from global warming and the greenhouse effect, to others who might add a twist such as climate hoax, climate crisis and climate dilemma.

This book adopts climate change as a conventional term for several reasons. First, climate change is the term that was selected during United Nations negotiation for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Second, the choice of climate change implies certain subjective meanings. Global warming for some is a more explicit description of the process that is perceived to emerge out of the anthropogenic build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the resulting rise in mean surface temperature. Yet, this term often creates a misconception that global warming will result in hotter weather all over the world when changes in climate will take varying degrees and forms all over the world. We have selected climate change for conventional as well as practical purpose, while recognizing that the concept carries its own pejorative baggage.

Now look deeper into this picture at the different political agendas of the participants. Each has diverse answers for the following questions. Does climate change exist? Who or what is causing it? Can we predict the results of climate change? What actions can best reduce climate change? Who should pay for such changes? Is climate change a myth, hoax or, perhaps are those who claim the existence of anthropogenic climate change proposing a new “theology” as recently suggested by Schlesinger (2005, A10)? These types of questions are perplexing and yet interesting. Clearly, definitions and debates on climate change dance across the realms of science and politics. We are interested in exploring these questions from the social bedrock upon which understandings of climate change are formed, thus we have selected constructivism as our framework. I now turn to a brief overview of constructivism, the two theoretical perspectives adopted in the book, and the controversy surrounding their inclusion within constructivism.

Climate Change and Constructivism

Social scientists increasingly have adopted constructivism to understand environmental issues in general (see for example Broadhead 2002; Hannigan 1995) and more specifically, as a framework to examine the ocean (Steinberg 2001), nature (Eder 1996; Hajer 1995), and climate change (Cass 2006; Oels 2005; Hoffmann 2005; Demeritt 2001). We seek to build on this growing and useful body of literature.

Power, Knowledge and Constructivism

Conceptually, the book is organized by three interlinked constructivist principles nested within the broad theme of power and knowledge. 1) Privileging material and ideational forces allows for, (2) giving primacy to agents and structures, and thus (3) opens the view to expose processes and change. What follows is a brief discussion of these three principles with the note that dividing them into three is artificial.

Ideational/Material Factors The first principle of constructivism “denies ontological primacy either to ideas or social categories (e.g., war and peace), or to material things (guns, butter). Instead, we hold that social facts (such as war) are real because they always have material consequences, and that material things (such as guns) are real by virtue of social construction” (Onuf 2006). Constructivists, with intent, argue that “the material and ideational are complexly interwoven and interdependent” (Hay 2001, 7). As such, any study of climate change must give value to both. This approach does not negate the power of material realities, but rather, assists in the understanding of how material realities gain meaning through social interaction. For example, as discussed in the beginning of this chapter, interpretations of climate change are shaped by social and physical/material forces. Or, as William Smith notes in his chapter, there would ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: Power, Knowledge and the Social Construction of Climate Change
• PART I: NORM-CENTERED PERSPECTIVE
• PART II: DISCOURSE ANALYTICAL PERSPECTIVE
• Index