Ozone and climate governance: An implausible path dependence

Grundmann, Reiner

doi:10.1016/j.crte.2018.07.008

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…As a consequence, those who oppose the prevailing climate policy regime often express their dislike as distrust of the science, and the IPCC for that matter. The result of this depoliticization is a lack of progress in climate policy as science has taken center stage but is unable to offer political solutions (Grundmann, ). More, and more specialized, research usually produces contradictory evidence and hence complicates the knowledge base.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…and the many solutions that have been proposed. Below we list 12 such proposals which are political, economic, technical, moral, or a combination thereof (Grundmann, ): rolling out nuclear power plants across the globe; switching all energy supply to solar, wind or biofuels; taxing carbon (or energy) with a) low or b) high rates; implementing emission trading systems; developing carbon capture and storage technologies; develop new zero carbon energy systems that are affordable and have little environmental impact; taking adaptation more seriously; developing geo‐engineering projects; adopting vegetarian or vegan diets and lifestyles; restricting population growth; abolishing capitalism; abolishing democracy. …”

Section: The Potential Of Sociology To Understand Climate Changementioning

confidence: 99%

“…While a linear model would see a straight line going from one body of evidence to policy formulation, our interpretation suggests that the relationship between knowledge and policy making is much more complex. It includes, as stated in section , issues such as how problems are framed, whether there is a technical core that the knowledge can act upon (Sarewitz & Nelson, ), and the number of answers that it provides (Grundmann, ; cf. Weingart, : 156).…”

Section: Reassessing the Link Between Earth System Science And Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sociological Perspectives on Earth System Modeling

Grundmann

Rödder

2019

J Adv Model Earth Syst

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How can we understand climate change from a sociological perspective? In asking this question, we assume that Sociology has something to contribute to such an enterprise. The argument that we put forward is twofold: We argue that Sociology provides a much needed alternative to two dominant approaches that have influenced public discourse, behaviorist theories, mainly employed in Economics, and a belief in the centrality of science in policy making ("evidence first"), mainly entertained by physical scientists. We critically discuss both approaches, showing the limits of behaviorism and the linear model of policy making and provide an alternative framework, which emphasizes the role of social action, of organizations, and of structural differences between different social worlds. We then apply our framework to assess the role of evidence at the climate science-policy interface and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a boundary organization in particular. We argue that science and politics follow different logics and that the IPCC is simultaneously both more political and less policy relevant than its self-description as "policy-relevant, never policy prescriptive" tries to make us believe. We conclude that a depoliticization of politics by IPCC expert advice and a politicization of climate science occur simultaneously and mutually reinforce one another. The result is a lack of progress in climate policy as science has taken center stage but is unable to offer political solutions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Potential Of Sociology To Understand Climate Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Reassessing the Link Between Earth System Science And Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sociological Perspectives on Earth System Modeling

Grundmann

Rödder

2019

J Adv Model Earth Syst

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“…Stratospheric ozone depletion is one such example: the chemical process is very straightforward, captured by a formula of ozone-depleting substances (hydrocarbons) after photodissociation in the stratosphere releases halogen atoms that break down ozone into oxygen. Both the amount of ozone-depleting substances and the size of the hole in the ozone layer are easily and closely monitored (Grundmann 2018;Lovelock 1977). While the potential health impacts are severe, the threat to livelihoods is lower than for sea-level rise or arsenic groundwater contamination.…”

Section: A Typology Of Environmental Problemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tailoring participatory action research to deal with the latent problem of an invasive alien vine on Saba, Caribbean Netherlands

et al. 2020

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Participatory action research (PAR) is an approach for fully co-creating research into environmental problems with the public. We argue this is mostly done for manifest environmental problems that clearly threaten livelihoods and have highly predictable impacts. But the conventional PAR approach is not suitable when the impacts are poorly understood and pose a low threat to livelihoods. Such latent environmental problems do not have a clear conflict to be resolved; instead, the community's inertia should be overcome. In this article, we develop what we call the PAR-L approach, for which we present a step-by-step guide and an evaluation framework. We then demonstrate this approach on the latent problem of the invasive alien Coralita vine (Antigonon leptopus) on Saba (Caribbean Netherlands) and find that it results in thorough understanding of the community inertia. Overcoming the inertia would require a project to run longer and a simultaneous knowledge-gathering effort, but PAR-L is a good starting point.

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“…The “evidence‐first credo” is a case in point of the depoliticization of the political world, as it assumes that political progress in dealing with climate change requires convincing people about the science (Sarewitz, 2011). The result of this depoliticization is a lack of progress in climate policy as science has taken center stage but is unable to offer political solutions (Grundmann, 2018).…”

Section: Earth System Modeling In Historical Philosophical and Sociol...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical, Philosophical, and Sociological Perspectives on Earth System Modeling

Rödder

Heymann

Stevens

2020

J Adv Model Earth Syst

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With the advent of climate change as a major challenge of our time, Earth system modeling has become highly policy-relevant regulatory science. In this situation, the social mechanisms that play a role in any scientific endeavor become particularly exposed. By discussing historical, philosophical, and sociological (HPS) aspects of the field's current "cultures of prediction" together with the physical science community in a physical science journal, we aim to provide an entry point into HPS reasoning for climate scientists interested in reflecting on their field and science in general. This paper, first, introduces our perspective on "science as culture" and climate modeling as "regulatory science" and, second, highlights and connects relevant ideas from the three commentaries that follow it. In so doing, we hope to give a fuller picture of climate science, the interplay it engenders between HPS and the physical sciences, the distinctions that it gives rise to as compared to some of the more traditional, exact, sciences in which it is rooted and its place in society including its role in scientific policy advice. 1. Why Do Historical, Philosophical, and Sociological Perspectives Matter for Climate Scientists? Some 360 years ago, Thomas Hobbes, natural philosopher and author of the political treatise Leviathan, and Robert Boyle, mechanical philosopher and inventor of the air pump, engaged in controversial debates over Boyle's air-pump experiments. In their seminal study of the controversy, historians of science Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer explore how acceptable methods of knowledge production were negotiated and how material technologies (the air-pump itself), literary technologies (the experimental report), and social technologies (Gentlemen witnesses) were mobilized to establish the cultural authority of scientific experimentalism. Shapin and Schaffer (1985) conclude the following: "As we come to recognize the conventional and artifactual status of our forms of knowing, we put ourselves in a position to realize that it is ourselves and not reality that is responsible for what we know." (p. 344). In discussing the role of social factors in the production of knowledge, Shapin and Schaffer (1985) place particular relevance on what they call "technologies of trust" (p. 60). The (virtual) witnessing of a public assured that things had been done in the way claimed and served to "secure the assent of skeptics and bind communities together" (Hilgartner, 2000, p. 11). In much the same way, what historian of science Paul Edwards has called the "climate knowledge infrastructure" (Edwards, 2010, p. 19) has worked as a "technology of trust" in successfully establishing anthropogenic climate change as a scientific fact. At its heart is the "vast machine" (Edwards, 2010) of climate modeling as material technology. The models' ability to integrate the practical cosmos in ways that endeavor to remain faithful to known natural laws-and in so doing approximately reconstruct many features of the observed climate-makes climate ...

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Ozone and climate governance: An implausible path dependence

Cited by 12 publications

References 44 publications

Sociological Perspectives on Earth System Modeling

Sociological Perspectives on Earth System Modeling

Tailoring participatory action research to deal with the latent problem of an invasive alien vine on Saba, Caribbean Netherlands

Historical, Philosophical, and Sociological Perspectives on Earth System Modeling

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