Vignettes@STS.Next.20

Authors: Jens Marquardt and Kamilla Karhunmaa

“We all worry about the fate of EPA. We worry about the fate of science as we know it because we are under direct attack in terms of making sure that we can’t look at science effectively or independently and that will essentially stop us from being able to move forward. And I think in many ways much of us worry about democracy itself. Are we going to get through this in a way that continues to allow the United States and our core values to be what holds us and binds us together?”

(Gina McCarthy, Professor of Public Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and former Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency)

Coupling the fate of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the fate of science and democracy, Gina McCarthy is acknowledging something that is not always apparent to the scientists, practitioners, and policy-makers working on climate science: concerns about science and its standing in our societies are also concerns about democracy. This fundamental insight is missing in many criticisms of the current U.S. administration, which lament the “first anti-science president” (Tollefson, Morello and Reardon, 2016) and seem to worry more about the fate of science than that of democracy. A workshop hosted by Harvard’s Program on Science, Technology & Society took this disconnect as an opportunity, reflecting on two questions at the intersection of climate science and democracy: (1) What is the basis for claims about climate change and (2) what made this basis stable in the first place? We can begin to answer these by examining how particular values and methods come together in the making of global climate science.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for example, provides a strongly institutionalized basis for universal claims and authoritative knowledge about climate change. The IPCC presents climate change as a global phenomenon that is detached from local meanings and value. Impersonal observations, complex climate models, and economic predictions take precedence over embedded experiences (Jasanoff, 2010). The idea of global temperature rise is popularized through iconic figures such as 2°C or 350ppm, but the impacts of climate change will not be exhibited or felt in the uniform manner that these recognizable figures might imply. In this way, the IPCC provides a stabilized basis for claims, producing universalized knowledge, while marginalizing alternative ways of understanding climate change (Turnhout, Dewulf and Hulme, 2016). Indian environmentalist Sunita Narain, hardly an advocate for fossil fuel industries, points out that this form of climate science disrespects local voices and alternative forms of knowledge production.

Such criticisms are not readily taken up by the IPCC, which has a history of detaching itself from politics and normative debates; its mandate is to produce policy-relevant knowledge without being policy-prescriptive. In the workshop, Rob Stavins described the IPCC as a primarily political body where scientific findings are bound to political agendas and worldviews. However, Narain’s observation suggests that the IPCC is also political in a more fundamental sense. Like any knowledge institution it produces credible claims only via a selective process, where choices are constantly being made about what issues to study, how to study these issues, and what not to study. The values and voices that are included (or excluded) in this process are, in a non-partisan sense, a matter of political choice and representation.

This brings us back to the core workshop questions about the basis for credible climate knowledge. International institutions, such as the IPCC, and scientific practices, such as global climate models, constitute the underlying infrastructure for a universalized and apolitical understanding of climate change (Miller and Edwards, 2001). Science does not simply speak for itself, but it rests on infrastructures, people, and practices that make specific types of knowledge visible and relevant, while it marginalizes others. Instead of perceiving knowledge as natural facts and ideas largely taken for granted, we should view knowledge more as a complex infrastructure that depends on a “widely shared sociotechnical system” (Edwards, 2010). In our workshop, Peter Huybers, in a striking convergence with STS scholarship, concludes that science is only effective in so much as it exists within an infrastructure of credibility. In the case of the IPCC, judgments continue to be made on what topics to study and how to do so, but the values behind these judgments are cloaked under the IPCC’s ideal of a neutral scientific body. Recognizing this feature of scientific knowledge is crucial for understanding and responding to threats to science in democratic societies.

Debating climate science in a time of political disruption inevitably leads to reflections about the integrity and credibility of science as we know it. While the current moment is marked by efforts to discredit scientific institutions, we should take this as an opportunity to ask ourselves what made such institutions stable in the first place. How did the knowledge infrastructures that legitimize some ways of knowing over others come into being and what is it that we want to protect here? Not asking these questions misses out on an essential part of the political disruption we experience today not only in the U.S. but also elsewhere, a re-evaluation of collective values. Advocating an apolitical and value-neutral understanding of climate science often leads to skepticism and lack of trust. Instead, making climate change a public health issue and accountable to local concerns might build public trust in organizations like the IPCC. In either case, it is a choice that is as important for the fate of democracies as it is for the future of scientific institutions.

Keywords: climate science; democracy; IPCC; inclusion; anti-science

For more information, consult the further readings below or hear Gina McCarthy discuss the question of how to practice good science on Vimeo.

References

1. Edwards, P. N. (2010) A Vast Machine : Computer Models, Climate data, and the Politics of Global Warming. Cambridge: MIT Press.
2. Jasanoff, S. (2010) ‘A new climate for society’, Theory, Culture and Society, 27(2), pp. 233–253.
3. Miller, C. A. and Edwards, P. N. (eds) (2001) Changing the Atmosphere : Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance. Cambridge: MIT Press.
4. Turnhout, E., Dewulf, A. and Hulme, M. (2016) ‘What does policy-relevant global environmental knowledge do? The cases of climate and biodiversity’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 18, pp. 65–72.

Further Readings

Hulme, M. (2009) Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jasanoff, S. (2004) ‘Ordering knowledge, ordering society’, in Jasanoff, S. (ed.) States of Knowledge. The Co-Production of Science and Social Order. London: Routledge, pp. 13–45.

Jasanoff, S. (2015) ‘Science and technology studies’, in Bäckstrand, K. and Lövbrand, E. (eds) Research Handbook on Climate Governance. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 36–48.