Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity Review
Too much social discourse is directed at magnifying disagreement and disparaging the motives and intellect of others (for more evidence on this point read the disagreeable review by Joseph Bast). In this fine book, Mike Hulme takes the position that reasonable people can and do disagree; he then sets off to examine the disagreements and the reasons.
Hulme explores numerous areas of disagreement and organizes his chapters around specific areas. He begins with three mostly (though not entirely) science-oriented sources of disagreement, which involve our conceptualization of climates and climate change, the development of scientific thought regarding climate change, and what science can and cannot tell us. From there, he moves onto disagreements regarding economics, religion, fears, communication strategies, development, and government action. The book ends with a provocative chapter about rethinking climate change.
My own nerdy biases initially drew me into the first chapters, especially the history of scientific thought regarding climate change. Hulme points out that scientific acceptance of the notion that climates change is relatively recent, dating only to the 19th century. Widespread scientific acceptance of the theory of anthropogenic climate change on human time scales is newer still. Although components of the theory, such as the greenhouse effect, were developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it wasn't until the last quarter of the century that broad elements of the scientific began to broadly accept anthropogenic global warming.
However, accepting the likelihood of anthropogenic global warming is only a scientific preliminary. For effective public policy, we need to know much more, including how strong the link between human activities and climate change is, when and how fast systemic changes are likely to occur, how the effects will be distributed, and what the possibilities are for catastrophic changes. As we move into these important areas, the scientific disagreements become larger, and the opportunities for other sources of disagreement to influence scientific discourse also grow.
At a first reading, I was initially disappointed with most of the follow-on, non-scientific "disagreement" chapters. The chapters work well enough in listing and explaining many ways that people can disagree about things. However, they do not explain which disagreements really matter and whether there are fundamental and connecting sources to the disagreements. There are interesting arguments and insights along the way, but much of the material reads like a middle-of-the-road undergraduate term paper--"it could be this (source A), it could be that (source B)," and so on.
Different readers will nonetheless appreciate different things in these chapters. As an economist, I enjoyed an outsider's take on my profession's disagreements. The discussion of development challenges was also very good, especially in reminding us of how many times smart, careful, and concerned people from Malthus to the Club of Rome have predicted doom only to discover that humans have innovated, adapted, and prospered within the then-existing environmental constraints.
The deeper rationale behind these chapters, though, became clearer after reading the final chapter. A central point of that chapter and ultimately of the book is that climate change is here, and the notion of climate change can't be undone. Climate has changed and will change, and humans, to some extent, are affecting this change. Once we accept this, we cannot "unknow" anthropogenic climate change.
Another crucial point in the chapter is that we are unlikely to "solve" the climate change "problem" in any conventional sense in our lifetimes. "Solving a problem" implies meeting a particular objective; in the case, of climate change, what would that be? Suppose that science could give us the magic key to setting the planet's climate--where would we set it? Do we want a pre-industrial climate, a 20th century climate, something warmer, something cooler. Also, (and this is the part where the non-science chapters come in) which objectives do we adopt?
Hulme instead advocates for the more sensible position of living with climate change. To be clear, he does not mean this in a fatalistic sense or as a call for a "do nothing approach." Hulme does mean that we must accept that human activities affect the global climate and that those activities have consequences that impede other objectives. He reminds us that our behavior and policy setting should focus on those objectives rather than the fact of climate change.
Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity Feature
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Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity Overview
Climate change is not 'a problem' waiting for 'a solution'. It is an environmental, cultural and political phenomenon which is re-shaping the way we think about ourselves, our societies and humanity's place on Earth. Drawing upon twenty-five years of professional work as an international climate change scientist and public commentator, Mike Hulme provides a unique insider's account of the emergence of this phenomenon and the diverse ways in which it is understood. He uses different standpoints from science, economics, faith, psychology, communication, sociology, politics and development to explain why we disagree about climate change. In this way he shows that climate change, far from being simply an 'issue' or a 'threat', can act as a catalyst to revise our perception of our place in the world. Why We Disagree About Climate Change is an important contribution to the ongoing debate over climate change and its likely impact on our lives.
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Customer Reviews
Simply superb! A must read for those with a genuine interest in the debate and healthy skepticism - Emc2 - Tropical Utopia
This book is a must read regardless of your side on this debate, and highly recommended for healthy skeptics and those with a genuine interest in the climate change controversy and related policymaking. Not surprisingly the book was included in The Economist list of Best Books of 2009.
Mike Hulme is a renowned climate scientist with a 30 year experience in the field who works at the University of East Anglia, and even was Director at the now famous CRU (though he was not involved in the Climategate scandal). Considering his honest view on this subject and his openness in the discussion of such contentious issue, in order to avoid any misunderstandings, right at the beginning of the book Mr. Hulme makes explicit his position regarding climate change: he believes the risks posed by climate change are tangible and serious, and require human intervention and management, and also that the global climate is influenced by an array of human activities. However, he does not believe that the way the UN FCCC and the Kyoto protocol are neither the only nor the most appropriate way to attack this problem. Also he "feels uncomfortable that climate change is widely reported through the language of catastrophe and imminent peril, as `the greatest problem facing humanity', which seeks to trump all others."
Mr. Hulme presents quite an innovative and insightful approach to the climate change discussion, by looking at it as a social phenomenon, as an "idea" interpreted differently by different cultures and by our different sets of believes, values, and concerns, and therefore, what it means to different people in different places. He explores the different dimensions of this "idea" in several political, economical, cultural and ethical contexts, and by identifying the different meanings of climate change he argues we can better understand why we disagree about climate change. Some of these meanings include climate change as a justification to fight globalization, as a desire to return to simpler times, while for others is a great opportunity to develop to technologies that will solve the problem, the desire of pride and control. He summarizes these views to what he calls four myths: Eden, Apocalypses, Babel, and Jubilee. Simply brilliant! He also looks at climate change as a wicked problem, and presents a very insightful analysis of the possibilities of elegant and clumsy solutions.
Despite the strong sociological and philosophical discourse, Mr. Hulme makes a very strong case for his view of the problem, and his main argument has been confirmed by two recent events, Climategate and the failure of the Copenhagen meeting. On a second thought, I think this book is also recommended for hard-die global warming advocates, so they can begin to understand why their cause is beginning to erode, and it is not because the science is a hoax, as the deniers camp has declared recently in light of Climategate.
For more on Hulme's approach to climate change as a wicked problem read Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World: Governance, Politics and Plural Perceptions (Global Issues), which tackles other wicked problems of social nature. Academic, but a must read!
PS: Some critics have said that Hulme's ideas are naive. Well, if you are in doubt, read the Hartwell Paper published in May 2010 (available for free in pdf format in the web, just google). In this publication Hulme and another 13 academics and energy advocates argued that the Kyoto Protocol has failed to produce any discernable real world reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases in fifteen years, and therefore, after the Copenhagen fiasco, Kyoto has crashed. They argued that this failure opens an opportunity to set climate policy free from Kyoto and they propose a controversial and piecemeal approach to decarbonization of the global economy which will be more pluralistic and much more effective than the policies based on Kyoto. The Hartwell paper strategic approach is partially based on Holme's book regarding wicked problems and clumsy solutions, as well as taken proper consideration of the different views and interpretations of climate change around the world. There is now one more reason to read Why We Disagree About Climate Change. Do not miss it.
excellent book - Osvaldo Caninas - Rio de Janeiro, RJ Brazil
Professor Hulme has a disturbing view on the topic. Very interesting especially due to the monochordial point of view of most of the press. He challenges the accepted courses of action. I definitely recommend.
Climate Con: How It Pays Off - Teresa Platt - Coronado, CA
What if CO2 emissions from 6,000 older inefficient PCs in Duluth could be reduced by half by replacing them with one big 5-acre computer in Des Moines run by just 88 people? Think of what we'd save in CO2 emissions!
We'll establish another UN bureaucracy with green jobbers to monitor this mitigation plan! And we'll finance it all - and a make a ton of money - with an annual fee per ton of CO2 emissions saved - paid by New Yorkers required by law to pony up - every year for the life of the computer in Des Moines, estimated at 20 years. We'll charge fees for any files printed in Des Moines and delivered to Duluth (but ignore the CO2 emissions generated in transit).
Along with the Teamsters, NGOs and bureaucrats, New Yorkers will be thrilled by this plan since these are green jobs and, after all, we're saving the planet!
And what could possibly be better than that?
[...]
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