It’s Our Fault: A Global Comparison of Different Ways of Explaining Climate Change

Abstract

International surveys suggest people increasingly agree the climate is changing and humans are the cause. One reading of this is that people have adopted the scientific point of view. Based on a sample of 28 ethnographic cases we argue that this conclusion might be premature. Communities merge scientific explanations with local knowledge in hybrid ways. This is possible because both discourses blame humans as the cause of the changes they observe. However, the specific factors or agents blamed differ in each case. Whereas scientists identify carbon dioxide producers in particular world regions, indigenous communities often blame themselves, since, in many lay ontologies, the weather is typically perceived as a local phenomenon, which rewards and punishes people for their actions. Thus, while survey results show approval of the scientific view, this agreement is often understood differently and leads to diverging ways of allocating meaning about humans and the weather.

What Does the Situation Say? Theorizing Multiple Understandings of Climate Change

“…In a Christian society, God can be understood to punish people for their sins. This kind of selfblame has been described by many climate-change anthropologists (Schnegg, O'Brian, and Sievert 2021). As Peter Rudiak-Gould shows, the experience of climate change often fits into general discourses of decline.…”

Ontologies of climate change

“…But, in Fransfontein and in many other parts of the world, when people say that humans are responsible for the changing climate, they are referring to themselves, not to the main emitters. The actors and the processes they talk about are not the same (Schnegg, O'Brian, and Sievert 2021). Because scientists and Damara people live in different worlds, they often do not even realize this.…”

“…The moralization of a changing climate and “self‐blame” are common across the globe (Rayner 2003; Rudiak‐Gould 2014). While many people agree that humans are the cause for a changing climate, they typically locate “humans” as themselves or as members of their own community and in the present time (Schnegg, O'Brian, and Sievert 2021). Accordingly, many communities identify the problem with how they treat the environment (Friedrich 2018; Gagné 2013, 506; Paerregaard 2016, 257) and sometimes with a more general cultural decline (Rudiak‐Gould 2014).…”

“…[ ǂoab tsî |nanub |khara|kharasens, xūnī |gaub, xūna hōǃâ |gaub, ǃhūbaib, ǂans, ǂnamipeb, |khurub, Namibiab] M ost people have a story to tell about climate change. Over the past decades, a robust literature has shown that these stories merge scientific explanations with those from other worldviews, forming hybrid understandings of what is happening in the environment (Barnes and Dove 2015;O'Reilly et al 2020;Schnegg, O'Brian, and Sievert 2021). These analyses are often built on the ontological assumption that stories offer different, culturally informed representations of the same "thing"-the weather and its change.…”

Climate change reception studies in anthropology

“…If climate is a mirror of societal behavior, and thus operates as “a direct source of moral feedback for behaviour, desirable or undesirable” (Hulme, 2009; Rayner, 2003, p. 278; van Beek, 1999), the idea that humans can be held accountable for bad weather or climate, albeit indirectly for moral ills, is not necessarily at odds with the (scientific) idea of anthropogenic climate change. Michael Schnegg and colleagues also observe that communities across the globe often merge scientific explanations with local knowledge in hybrid ways, because both blame humans for causing climate change (Schnegg et al, 2021).…”