Why we disagree

about climate change

C limate change is not “a problem” wait-
ing for “a solution”. It is an environ-
mental, cultural and political phenomenon
Professor Mike Hulme argues that climate change is not a
technical issue but a challenge to reinterpret relationships
that is reshaping the way we think about
ourselves, about our societies and about I deliberately present climate change as I have also wondered why controlling
humanity’s place on Earth. an idea to be debated, adapted and used, climate change – limiting our emissions of
My new book, Why We Disagree About as much as I treat it as a physical phenom- greenhouse gases – seemingly remains just
Climate Change, dissects this idea of climate enon that can be observed, quantified and beyond our reach. For example, in the 12
change – where it came from, what it means measured. These two ways of seeing climate years since the Kyoto Protocol was signed,
to different people in different places and change are very different. global emissions of greenhouse gases have
why we disagree about it. It also develops We have slowly, and at certain times and accelerated rather than reduced.
a different way of approaching the idea of in some places reluctantly, realised that I have examined these questions using
climate change and of working with it. This humanity has become an active agent in the concepts, tools and languages of the sci-
essay offers a synopsis of my arguments. the reshaping of physical climates around ences, social sciences and humanities and
Just as the transformation of the world’s the world. As we have done so our cul- the discourses and practices of economics,
physical climates is now inescapable, so tural, social, political and ethical practices politics and religion. From these different
too is engagement with the idea of climate are reinterpreting precisely what climate vantage points it becomes possible to see
change now unavoidable. It is an idea circu- change means. that the idea of climate change carries quite
lating anxiously in the worlds of domestic Far from simply being a change in physi- different meanings and seems to imply quite
politics and international diplomacy. cal climates – a change in the sequences of different courses of action depending on
It is an idea circulating with mobilising weather experienced in given places – cli- whom one is and where one lives. 41
force in the worlds of business, of law and mate change has become an idea that now Science may be solving the mysteries of
of international trade. It is an idea circulat-travels well beyond its origins in the natu- climate, but it is not helping us discover the
ing with potency in the worlds of knowledge ral sciences. And as this idea meets new meaning of climate change. Indeed, climate
and invention, of development and welfare, cultures on its travels and encounters the change means so many different things to
of religion and ethics and of public celebrity.worlds of politics, economics, popular cul- different people. These meanings cannot be
And it is an idea circulating creatively in ture, commerce, international diplomacy read from the pages of the scientific assess-
the worlds of art, of cinema, of literature, ofand religion – often through the interposing ments made by the IPCC, nor can they be
music and of sport. role of the media – climate change takes on extracted from the results of the computer
new meanings and serves new purposes. models that simulate global climate and ten-
A powerful scientific consensus Through my 25 years of work as a profes- tatively predict its future path.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate sional climate change researcher, university
Change (IPCC) has constructed and pre- educator and public commentator, I have Revelatory conversations
sented a powerful scientific consensus about become fascinated with what has hap- Our discordant conversations about climate
the physical transformation occurring to the pened to this idea of climate change. I have change reveal at a deeper level all that makes
world’s climates. This is a reality in which I wondered why climate change has become for diversity, creativity and conflict within
believe. But there is no comparable consen- “the mother of all issues”, the key narra- the human story – our various different
sus – no single perspective or vantage point tive within which all environmental politics attitudes to risk, technology and well-being;
– that allows us to understand what this – from global to local – is now framed. our different ethical, ideological and politi-
kaleidoscopic idea of climate change means cal beliefs; our different interpretations of
for us and our descendants. the past and our competing visions of the
Engaging with climate change takes us In the 12 years since future.
well beyond the physical transformations If we are to understand climate change
that are observed, modelled and predicted the Kyoto Protocol and use it constructively in our politics, we
by natural scientists and assessed by the was signed, global must first hear and understand these dis-
IPCC. We need new ways of looking at the cordant voices, these multifarious human
phenomenon of climate change – an idea emissions of greenhouse beliefs, values, attitudes, aspirations and
circulating and mutating through our social gases have accelerated behaviours.
worlds – and new ways of making sense of To illustrate what I mean, let me cite four
the many different meanings attached to the rather than reduced. contemporary and contrasting ways of nar-
idea of climate change. rating the significance of climate change,
 just some of the more salient discourses cur- We need to reveal the creative psychologi-
rently in circulation. The idea of climate cal, spiritual and ethical work that climate
Climate change is used as a battleground change can do and is doing for us. By under-
between different philosophies and prac- change can stimulate standing the ways climate change connects
tices of science and between different ways new thinking about with foundational human instincts of nos-
of knowing. Arguments revolve around the talgia, fear, pride and justice we open up a
accuracy of data, the validity of models and energy and transport way of resituating culture and the human
the integrity of scientists. technologies. It can inspire spirit at the centre of our understanding of
The subject is also used as justification for climate.
the commodification of the atmosphere and, new artistic creations Human beings are more than merely
especially, for the commodification of the gas in visual, written and material objects and climate is more than
carbon dioxide. Arguments revolve around merely a physical category. Rather than
the adequacy of markets for addressing dramatised media. catalysing disagreements about how, when
environmental concerns. and where to tackle climate change, we must
Climate change is used as the inspiration approach the idea of climate change as an
for a global network of new or reinvigor- physical world, but the idea of climate imaginative resource around which our col-
ated social movements. Arguments revolve change is altering our social worlds. And lective and personal identities and projects
around the hyper-consumption and unsus- this idea is reaching farther and farther can and should take shape.
tainability of western lifestyles. across these social worlds. Rather than ask-
Also, climate change is used to reveal ing: “How do we solve climate change?” we Creative deployment
threats to ethnic, national and global secu- need to turn the question around and ask: As a resource of the imagination, the idea
rity. Arguments revolve around the role of “How does the idea of climate change alter of climate change can be deployed around
the state, the military and the UN in diffus- the way we arrive at and achieve our per- our geographical, social and virtual worlds
ing these threats. sonal aspirations and our collective social in creative ways. The idea of climate change
goals?” can stimulate new thinking about energy
A more interesting story and transport technologies. It can inspire
These perspectives – and many more Different kind of problem new artistic creations in visual, written and
besides – suggest that rather than starting I argue that climate change is not a prob- dramatised media. It can invigorate efforts
with (scientific) ignorance and ending with lem that can be solved in the sense that, for to protect our citizens from the hazards of
(scientific) certainty, telling the story of cli- example, technical and political resources climate.
42 mate change is in fact much more interest- were mobilised to “solve” the problem of The idea of climate change can provoke
ing. It is the unfolding story of an idea and stratospheric ozone depletion or asbestos in new ethical and theological thinking about
how this idea is changing the way that we our buildings. We need to approach the idea our relationship with the future. It can
think, feel and act. of climate change from a different vantage arouse new interest in how science and cul-
Not only is climate change altering our point. ture inter-relate. It can galvanize new social
movements to explore new ways of living of climate change to animate such change,
in urban and rural settings. And the idea of There is a real but it will not bring utopia on Earth, nor will
climate change can touch each one of us as it stabilise climate. Climate change will not
we reflect on the goals and values that mat- danger that a be “solved”.
ter to us. hyperventilating condition
These are all creative applications of the Continued change inevitable
idea of climate change, but they are applica- of despair and panic will The world’s climates will keep on chang-
tions that do not demand global agreement. lead society into making ing, with human influences on these physi-
Indeed, they may be hindered by the search cal properties of climate now inextricably
for such agreement. They thrive in condi- either hubristic and entangled with those of nature. Global cli-
tions of pluralism and hope rather than in authoritarian responses to mate is simply one new domain that reveals
conditions of universalism and fear. our embeddedness in nature. But so too will
climate change. the idea of climate change keep changing
Danger of despair and panic as we find new ways of using it to meet our
As we move from one rhetorical climate needs.
deadline to another, there is a real danger compassion and justice. And we should be We will continue to create and tell new
that a hyperventilating condition of despair promoting actions that contract the time stories about climate change and mobilise
and panic will lead society into making and space scales that separate purposeful these stories in support of our projects.
either hubristic and authoritarian responses actions from their visible benefits. Whereas a modernist reading may once
to climate change. In practice this involves action and have regarded climate as merely a physical
Before we realise it, we may see Paul change that is local and rooted in a sense of boundary condition for human action, we
Crutzen’s howitzers pumping shell after place and community, where the benefits must now recognise climate change as an
shell of aerosols into the stratosphere are both tangible and immediate – improved overlying, fluid and imaginative condition
to wage an almost literal war on climate air quality, enhanced local mobility, greater of human existence.
change. energy and food sufficiency.
We may find new versions of Stalinist Biography Mike Hulme is Professor of
authoritarianism emerging in our political Remote end point creates difficulty Climate Change in the School of
systems as we keep missing our chimerical The problem with trying to “stop climate Environmental Sciences at the University
numerical targets. After all, what sanction chaos” – and believing that we can – is that of East Anglia, Norwich. He was the
does the UK Climate Change Committee the end is too remote in time (50 years or Founding Director of the Tyndall Centre for
have when the government misses its 2018- more) and distant in place (an abstract glo- Climate Change Research. His latest book 43
2022 emissions target? bal climate) for it to have any psychological is Why We Disagree About Climate Change:
We should be using the idea of climate purchase. Understanding Controversy, Inaction and
change to reveal, animate and mobilise Benefits of change need to be now and Opportunity, published by Cambridge
the latent human values of temperance, they need to be visible. We can use the idea University Press, May 2009.