Climate, Science and Society: A Primer

Baker, Zeke (Ed.); Law, Tamar (Ed.); Vardy, Mark (Ed.); Zehr, Stephen (Ed.) Book Climate, Science and Society: A Primer Provided in Cooperation with: Taylor & Francis Group Suggested Citation: Baker, Zeke (Ed.); Law, Tamar (Ed.); Vardy, Mark (Ed.); Zehr, Stephen (Ed.) (2024) : Climate, Science and Society: A Primer, ISBN 978-1-003-82876-1, Routledge, London, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003409748 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/290622 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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The primer consists of 37 short chapters organized within 11 parts written by Science and Technology Studies (STS) and other social science scholars. It covers a range of key topics including communication, justice and inequality, climate policy, and energy transitions, situating each one within the context of STS studies. Each reading translates a focused area of climate change research into short, accessible, and lively prose. Chapter authors open debates where relevant, consider policy implications, critique existing areas of research, and otherwise situate their reading within a larger body of research relevant to climate change courses. Designed as a jumping-off point for further exploration, this innovative book will be essential reading for students studying climate change, STS, environmental sociology, and environmental sciences. Zeke Baker is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University, USA. His research investigates how changes in climate knowledge relate to political dynamics, especially over the historical long term, in the United States and comparative contexts. Tamar Law is a PhD student at Cornell University in Development Studies and holds an MPhil in Human Environmental Geography from the University of Oxford. Her research in the United States and Southeast Asia examines the knowledge and land politics of climate adaptation and mitigation, centering questions of climate justice. Mark Vardy is a faculty member of the Criminology Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Canada. He is interested in drawing from STS to contribute to discussions of climate justice in green criminology. Stephen Zehr is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Southern Indiana, USA. His past research focused on climate change scientific expertise and its representation in the media. He is currently researching maple syrup producers and their adaptation to technological changes, climate change, and labor supply and allegiances. Climate, Science and Society Climate, Science and Society A Primer Edited by Zeke Baker, Tamar Law, Mark Vardy and Stephen Zehr LONDON AND NEW YORK Designed cover image: “Aids to Navigation” © 2023 by Zeke Baker is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0. First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Zeke Baker, Tamar Law, Mark Vardy, and Stephen Zehr; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Zeke Baker, Tamar Law, Mark Vardy, and Stephen Zehr to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Funded by U.S. National Science Foundation, University of Southern Indiana, Sonoma State University. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-53016-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-53017-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-40974-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003409748 Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra Contents List of Contributors xi Acknowledgments xv Introduction xvii ZEKE BAKER, TAMAR LAW, MARK VARDY, AND STEPHEN ZEHR PART I Climate Change Science as a Social Issue: Introduction 1 ZEKE BAKER 1 Future Times and Spaces: Tracing Objectivity, Scale, and Politics in the Social Life of Climate Science 3 ZEKE BAKER 2 Meteorology, Climate Science, and Empire: Histories and Legacies 11 MARTIN MAHONY 3 Rethinking Our Histories and Relations with Climate Change 19 CANDIS CALLISON PART II Theorizing Climate, Science, and Society: Introduction 27 STEPHEN ZEHR 4 We Cannot Afford Not to Perform Constructionist Studies of Mainstream Climate Science 29 MYANNA LAHSEN 5 Political Economies of Climate Science: Beyond Technological Villains and Scientific Saviors 39 ZEKE BAKER vi Contents PART III Media and Public Communication about Climate Change: Introduction 47 STEPHEN ZEHR 6 Climate Change Communication: Simple, Right? 49 STEPHEN ZEHR 7 Public Communication and Perceptions of Climate Change in Brazil 58 ELOISA BELING LOOSE AND ANABELA CARVALHO 8 News and Social Media Imagery of Climate Change: Analyzing the Role and Impact of Visuals in Public Communication 66 MIKE S. SCHÄFER AND XIAOYUE YAN PART IV NGOs, Civil Society, and Social Movements: Introduction 75 MARK VARDY 9 Non-Governmental Organizations and the Environmental Movement: Challenges in Climate Change Framing 77 STEVEN YEARLEY 10 Expert Activists and NGOs: Understanding and Acting on Global Climate Change 86 ADAM FLEISCHMANN 11 Skirting the Frame: Prepping and the Conservative Politics of Climate Change 93 ALLISON FORD PART V Climate Justice: Introduction 101 TAMAR LAW 12 Postcards from Small Town India: Situated Climate Justice, Science, and Technology 103 ANKIT BHARDWAJ 13 Solar Affordances and the Struggle for Climate Justice in Southwest Asia 111 KENDRA KINTZI 14 Upstream Engagement in the Era of Climate Change 118 ROOPALI PHADKE 15 Climate Justice: Taking Back the Commons 127 SHANGRILA JOSHI Contents vii PART VI Climate Governance: Introduction 135 MARK VARDY 16 Climate Change as Ontological Unsettling: A View from the City 137 HANNAH KNOX 17 The IPCC as a Body of Expertise 144 REINER GRUNDMANN 18 Consensus, National Self-Interest, and the Shaping of Climate Knowledge in IPCC Assessment Processes 152 MARK VARDY 19 Trust at the Climate Science-Policy Interface 161 TIAGO RIBEIRO DUARTE PART VII Energy, Sustainability, and Sociotechnical Transitions: Introduction 167 STEPHEN ZEHR 20 Energy Transitions in a World of Polarized Politics 169 DAVID J. HESS 21 Configuring Markets and Transactions for Energy System Transition: A Role for STS Research 174 DANIEL BRESLAU 22 The Role of Users in the Energy Transition 180 MARIANNE RYGHAUG, TOMAS MOE SKJØLSVOLD, AND ROBERT NÆSS 23 STS and the Design of Futures 187 CLARK A. MILLER PART VIII Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience: Introduction 195 TAMAR LAW 24 Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience: Sociotechnical and Knowledge Dimensions 198 TIM FORSYTH 25 Rethinking Climate Change Adaptation 207 MARCUS TAYLOR xiv Contributors Stefan Schäfer investigates the political, ethical, and epistemological dimensions of planetary sciences and technologies. A research group leader at the Research Institute for Sustainability in Potsdam, Germany, he teaches at Humboldt University Berlin. As a member of LiCo collective he makes films, essays, and installations that examine past and future choreographies of mental and environmental life. Julia Schubert is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Speyer. She is a sociologist working in the fields of STS and science-policy studies. Her research explores the interrelation of science and politics, with a special focus on notions of expertise. Tomas Moe Skjølsvold is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His current interest combines an interest in accelerated and just transitions, including the tensions and controversies that arise from competing goals. Karolina Sobecka is an artist, designer, and researcher examining social arrangements that exploit, resist, or accommodate technological change. Sobecka has taught at SAIC, RISD, SVA, and NYU, and has been a visiting scholar at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Andy Stirling is Professor of Science and Technology Policy in the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University where he co-directed the ESRC STEPS Centre, working on politics of uncertainty and diversity in science and society. A fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences and former campaigner and board member for Greenpeace International, he’s served in many policy advisory and academic evaluation processes. Marcus Taylor is Professor and Head of Department in Global Development Studies, Queen’s University, Canada. He has researched and published widely in the fields of climate change adaptation and rural development with a focus on livelihoods and labor in southern India. Mark Vardy is a faculty member of the Criminology Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Canada. He is interested in drawing from STS to contribute to discussions of climate justice in green criminology. Sarah E. Vaughn is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She has conducted research and written on climate adaptation on the intersections of technoscience, climate adaptation, and vulnerability throughout the circum-Caribbean. Xiaoyue Yan is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich. Her research focuses on visual communication of climate change and computational communication science. Steven Yearley is Professor of Sociology of Scientific Knowledge at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He studies the making of environmental knowledge, by scientists, public officials, campaigners, and citizens. Stephen Zehr is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Southern Indiana, USA. His past research focused on climate change scientific expertise and its representation in the media. He is currently researching maple syrup producers and their adaptation to technological changes, climate change, and labor supply and allegiances. Acknowledgments The editors acknowledge financial support for Open Access publishing from the U.S. National Science Foundation Programs in Science and Technology Studies and Ethical and Responsible Research (Grant # 2145997), University of Southern Indiana Office of the Provost, and Sonoma State University Library. Zeke Baker acknowledges the helpful feedback from Siobhan Rodriguez and Matthew Bivens-Sommerville for their work as student research and editorial assistants. Baker also acknowledges support from the Sonoma State University School of Social Sciences and the Office of the Provost for their support in allowing me a course release to see this project to completion. Mark Vardy acknowledges the support of the 0.6% Professional Development Fund from Kwantlen Polytechnic University, which funded a course release to work on this book. Stephen Zehr acknowledges the helpful feedback from the following student workers: Abigail Burton, Chase Debruyn, and Cole Kneer. Finally, the editors together acknowledge the hard work of all contributing authors. We appreciate the spirited effort to collectively bring a diverse and wide range of cutting-edge research to non-specialized student audiences. We trust this effort will serve instructors, students, and next-generation critical thinkers and scholars as they work to understand, grapple with, and address climate change. Introduction Zeke Baker, Tamar Law, Mark Vardy, and Stephen Zehr What We All Know About Climate Change Readers of this primer are already familiar with climate change. Global warming has been a fixture in national news in many nations for three decades. Most readers will have been taught its fundamentals in primary and secondary school years. Most readers will have learned more advanced knowledge at the university level. Except for diehard skeptics, we all know that it is an environmental problem with potentially disastrous consequences. We understand its history is linked to the industrial revolution’s turn toward burning fossil fuels as a flexible, movable, storable, and powerful energy source, and the expansion of their use post-WWII in what is sometimes termed the Great Acceleration. Most of us also understand that climate change is closely linked to global inequality. Per capita greenhouse gas emissions are disproportionately sourced in wealthy nations. We know that inequality from historically differential emission rates is still impactful since greenhouse gases remain in the atmosphere for a long time. But we also know that many nations in the Global South, especially those with high populations and going through rapid development, are catching up and in a few instances surpassing wealthy nations in total annual emissions. We know that while the effects of climate change are felt worldwide, they are particularly impactful to people in the Global South, and poor people everywhere, who face challenges of drought, floods, severe weather, and other climatic impacts with minimal capacity to effectively respond or adapt. Readers who come to this primer with a natural science or engineering background will know that climate change has been extensively scientifically researched across disciplines, carefully constructed scientific reports have been written, and for several decades scientists have persistently warned of future environmental consequences. So why haven’t we heeded those warnings? Most readers will understand the recalcitrance to act largely due to political inertia within and across nations. Our politicians have failed us. Due to skepticism of scientific expertise, ties to the fossil fuel industry, national economies deeply dependent on burning fossil fuel, cross-national challenges between oil-producing and non-oil-producing and richer nations and poorer nations, and so on, our political leaders have been unable to shift us away, quickly enough at least, from fossil fuels to blunt off at least the worst of climate change effects. In sum, readers are likely well aware of these basic features of climate change, and most will hold deep knowledge of some of them. We are aware of the problem largely thanks to scientific research. We also know that the engineering and design communities have developed technological solutions that would allow us to move away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources if only there is sufficient political and societal will to implement them. In sum, most readers will be familiar with the argument that the main sticking points lie with the lack of xviii Zeke Baker et al. political will, along with a general public that lacks sufficient knowledge or is resistant to making necessary everyday life adjustments. How Does STS Disrupt What We All Know: Key Questions for the Primer So why is there a need for yet another academic book on climate change? Our answer is both simple and complex. The editors and authors in this primer approach climate change from an interdisciplinary perspective called Science and Technology Studies (STS), sometimes also referred to as science, technology & society. STS has been around since the 1970s, involving researchers from the social sciences, history, philosophy, and some natural scientists, engineers, and architects and designers. Without too much detail, STS researches the social, political, cultural, and economic shaping of scientific knowledge and technology and how they are communicated and reshape societal infrastructure, institutions, structures, and everyday life. Climate change is only one of many topics of interest, but it receives much STS attention because of its importance as an environmental and societal issue. What does STS add to what we already know about climate change? The primary and general point, and key motivation for this primer, is that STS opens up important questions that may challenge what we already know about climate change. It challenges and destabilizes some of the truisms contained in the first four paragraphs above. Now some readers might immediately react to this with the thought – “oh, just another book that attacks science and gives fodder to climate change skeptics and the fossil fuel industry.” But please read on. Here are some of the key questions and points raised in this primer. The Social Construction of Climate Change STS understands climate change as a socially constructed phenomenon that could have been, and still could be, understood and shaped differently. Climate change is not a set, objective entity situated in nature. It is not just one thing though it is often represented as such. Rather, climate change evolved from a history of knowledge-making that centered it as one global environmental problem, albeit with many diverse effects in different parts of the world. This history of knowledge-making could have been otherwise. Does this mean that climate change as we know it is not “real” or involves “false truths,” as some skeptics might claim? No. It means that climate change is open to being interpreted and understood differently and that these alternative narratives are not necessarily wrong. Climate change can mean many different things to many different people. This diversity of thinking about climate change is explored in Parts I and II, and throughout the primer. Media Representations of Climate Change STS understands that the information/knowledge flow from knowledge producers (typically scientists) through the media and to the public is far more complex than a simple linear process of accurate communication and careful listening to the scientists. We have all heard that popular request/admonition – “just listen to the science” – as it pertains to climate change and other issues. It makes a great deal of sense. We may feel morally smug because we listen to the science. STS unpacks communication complexities that make just “listening to the science” overly simplistic and less meaningful. Climate change itself is heterogeneous and there are many ways that knowledge about it can be framed for different reasons and for different publics. There are diverse types of spokespeople and organizations that present “the science” and they do so in Introduction xix diverse ways, highlighting, downplaying, or ignoring issues depending on their interests and what they think their audience needs to know or wishes to confirm. The result can be mixed messages. The media are not just a standardized filter through which scientific information flows, but diverse sets of agents and technologies for choosing, adjusting, and adapting it for their audiences. Also, different publics bring their own knowledge, values, and interests to climate change, making them not only selective consumers but also active shapers of what climate change is. This complexity is explored in detail in Parts III and IV in this primer, as well as in other locations. Social Movements and Climate Change Media are not the only way in which understandings of climate change are shaped. Social movement organizations and environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are also important – indeed vital – when it comes to shaping the public understanding of climate change. Environmental NGOs enact climate change campaigns in ways that borrow from other social movements such as the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights, and Gay Liberation movements that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s to demand justice. That is, we often see environmental NGOs staging protest rallies, marches, strikes, and teach-ins to demand action on climate change. At the same time, conservative and libertarian cultural movements, which argue against governmental regulation of the economy, are contributing to alternative understandings of climate change held by many people. Both the conservative and environmental movements profoundly impact public understanding of climate change, and interestingly, both of them often refer to science in a similar way. That is, both movements tend to treat science as a unified body of knowledge, the credibility of which is dependent on adhesion to a single scientific method. For environmentalists, this model of science lends authority to their claims (“just listen to the science”), while for others any deviation from the supposed purity of this model is given as a reason to discredit all of climate science. STS, in contrast, rejects the idea that science is a unified body of knowledge that can be distinguished from other forms of knowledge due to its adherence to a singular scientific method. The chapters in Part IV take this perspective to explore in more detail the relations between environmental NGOs, the conservative and libertarian movements, and public understanding of climate change. Climate Change Inequality and Justice STS expands and poses new questions about climate change inequality and justice. There is more complexity to these issues than the historical inequality across nations in greenhouse gas emissions and the fact that low-income nations and poor people in general face more damaging climate change impacts with less resilience to cope. To these valid and important concerns, STS poses questions about inequality in access to and ability to mobilize scientific and other knowledge about climate change. It also examines the justice implications of how climate change is addressed on the ground, through adaptation and mitigation efforts. STS poses questions about the unequal authority of scientific and Indigenous and other local knowledge about climate, its changes, and impacts. STS also opens questions about how we actually conceptualize inequality and justice in the context of climate change. What are the dimensions of environmental inequality and how do we know them when we see them? What forms might “climate change justice” take and which ones could be practically reached? Importantly, STS also opens questions about the means through which climate change inequalities can be addressed by introducing new methods for public engagement and for integrating inequality and justice concerns into imagining climate change futures. Part V of this primer focuses specifically on matters of climate change inequality and justice, but one also finds these issues infused in chapters throughout the primer. Climate Change Governance and Expertise The linear model of science for policy informs many representations of climate change. In the linear model, scientists first determine the truth of a given phenomenon, and then politicians and policymakers act upon the knowledge thus generated. This perspective can be seen in the challenges voiced by Greta Thunberg, who many of us admire, when she admonishes world leaders for failing to take immediate action when scientific warnings are so clear. STS challenges the linear model by opening up questions about the structure and operation of advisory bodies, scientific experts, and expertise. Instead of assuming that science and policy exist, or should exist, in two separate and distinct spheres, STS asks questions about how boundaries between scientific advice and political decision-making are drawn in the first place. In Part VI, chapters explore the complexities of climate governance from the city scale to the international. Different questions crop up at each of these levels. For example, how can cities transform their governance practices from historical concerns, such as economic growth, to becoming climate neutral, or how does the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) differentiate between science and national and international governance bodies? What role does trust play in scientific expertise, and why might countries in the Global South mistrust science that is rooted in the Global North? Climate Change and Sociotechnical Transitions How do we actually reduce greenhouse gases and adapt to climate change? In social science, natural science, and engineering disciplines, as well as in public and political circles, there are sometimes polarized views about whether technological changes or social and cultural changes should lead the way. With the former, human ingenuity is called upon to develop new technologies and retrofit old ones to wean societies from burning fossil fuels and to build resilient infrastructure that can withstand climate change. There are many examples of efforts in these directions. With the latter, lifestyle and social structural changes are expected to save the day. People, especially in wealthier countries, must adjust their culture, social structure, and societal institutions to radically reduce dependence on fossil fuels, while also shifting resources to more vulnerable people globally, enabling them to develop their societies in environmentally benign ways and adapt to climate changes. For the latter, dependence upon technological development – “technical fixes” to societal problems – may solve one problem but open others due to unanticipated consequences. Technological optimists, on the other hand, assert that it is naïve to think that entrenched human societies and culture can adjust rapidly enough to prevent the worst climate change problems. STS disrupts this polarity, not by claiming a middle ground, but very simply by analytically combining the technical and the social. For STS scholars, technical changes are also social changes and vice versa. For STS they form hybrid arrangements, so it makes little sense to try to separate them out. STS employs the concept “sociotechnical” or one of its variants (used throughout this primer) to refer to how so-called technologies are also social entities with the capacity to act upon, be impacted by, and resist other social and technical forces. STS questions and demonstrates how movement to renewable energy sources, for example, requires inseparable technical, social, political, cultural, economic, and so on, changes that are often resisted, xx Zeke Baker et al. Introduction xxi complex, open to failure, have unpredictable consequences, but are potentially transformative. We refer to this process as sociotechnical transition. Different aspects of sociotechnical change involving energy transition are addressed in Part VII of the primer and to some degree in Parts VIII–XI. Art, Infrastructure, and Design An enduring impact of STS on other academic disciplines is its insistence that the social sciences and humanities analyze objects and processes once historically reserved for the physical and life sciences. From feminist philosophies of science, for example, we learn that knowledge is always developed through the specific ways in which humans are embodied in the physical world, not through – as much Enlightenment thought presupposed – the ability of humans to cut their ties to it. STS’ impact on other disciplines’ approaches to climate change can be found in Part IX. The central presupposition shared by these chapters is that climate change challenges humans to rethink how we live, and that art – and critiques of art – are a vital way for reimagining how this can be individually and collectively accomplished. STS is used to engage with other philosophies such as phenomenology to articulate connections among increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, extreme weather events, and urban stormwater infrastructure designed for outdated climatic norms. But just as importantly, STS connects these elements with the social imaginaries that guided the growth of cities as centers for the accumulation of capital in the first place. Art is a way of depicting these connections visually, and STS is a way of talking about them. There is an additional element of speculation or mental experiment that chapters in Part IX ask us to engage in. For example, what happens if we think of clouds and atmospheres as media? This may seem strange or counterintuitive at first – after all, aren’t media things like movies, newspaper articles, and Instagram feeds? But STS provides a way to see the atmosphere as a giant canvas on which industrialized humanity has inscribed its mark. Once so inscribed, the atmosphere becomes an active agent, authoring events that impact humans. In other words, whereas we normally think of the atmosphere as “out there” or “in nature” separate from humans, and which we can know objectively through science, Part IX encourages us to think how the atmosphere is already a part of who we are. Climate Engineering (Geoengineering) What about some of the worst scenarios where we are unable to gravitate away from fossil fuels quickly enough and face calamitous effects of climate change? Are climate engineering projects (also referred to as geoengineering) potential solutions, or are these the worst form of technical fixes noted above? One also finds polarized positions on this issue from social science and natural science scholars. For some (environmentalists and many scholars), even climate engineering research is envisioned as creating a loophole for avoiding the more difficult challenge of weaning ourselves from fossil fuels. Moving down this path allows political decision-makers to hesitate, thinking that perhaps some major climate engineering technology will sufficiently remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere or reduce solar radiation reaching the earth’s surface to avoid (expensive) policies that their constituents will oppose. Opposition to climate engineering research also recognizes the likely outcome of unfavorable unanticipated consequences that large technological projects often bring. Those in favor of pursuing climate engineering research, on the other hand, often see it as a Plan B that can be drawn upon should things get out of hand. It’s only research after all. We will still hold the option of implementing the technology or not. Relatedly, some scholars argue that it will be impossible to reach targeted concentrations of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) without implementing some climate engineering technologies. Research now will position us with the capacity to choose the most effective technologies with the fewest likely unanticipated consequences. STS scholars hold a more nuanced perspective on climate engineering. They understand that there is an important history to technological projects to control climate and the weather, dating at least to post-WWII cloud seeding research, and how this history has shaped perceptions of climate engineering research today. STS analyzes the above polarized opinions in light of this history, emphasizing their limitations as discourses. STS addresses the politics of climate engineering, both as an empirical project and to help formulate ethical guidelines for less risky and more just implementation of the technologies should that decision be made. STS researchers analyze the potential implementation of climate engineering technologies, understanding them as sociotechnologies that combine technical, social, political, and cultural components. Along this path, a goal of STS research is to anticipate the unanticipated consequences such that wiser decisions are possible earlier in the development of the technology. Part X of this primer focuses on this research. Climate Change Futures Climate change has a past and present, but it also has a future. While much of the past and present are extensively researched with knowledge readily available, climate change futures are more uncertain and pose significant challenges to (especially social science) researchers. From environmentalists and often the scientific community we receive doomsday scenarios, with the caveat that if we act immediately, we can prevent the worst outcomes. Technically, these scenarios take shape in climate change models that predict future warming under different future greenhouse gas emission scenarios. These scenarios range from “business as usual” yielding very stark global warming outcomes to a scenario where strict emission reductions have been implemented in line with the Paris Agreement or other national commitments. STS critiques climate change modeling research and scenario development for their inability to integrate social and political constraints and opportunities and their singular, global predictions when climate change futures will be experienced locally and differentially by people worldwide. STS emphasizes the need for multiple pathways for building climate change futures and offers a protocol for facilitating and judging them. These pathways typically expand beyond emissions reductions and basic adaptation to address broader sustainable development goals of building more equitable societies, improving human well-being, while also protecting the environment. STS employs the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to describe the methodological process and outcomes of doing this future building work. Rather than a technical procedure like scenario development in climate change modeling, developing sociotechnical imaginaries is more democratic and localized, recognizing that people at local levels necessarily need to be involved in building community resilience to climate change and adjusting away from fossil fuel-dependent daily lives. The emphasis in STS research is on the plural – pathways, rather than one dictated pathway or limited set of future outcomes that emerge from scenario building based on climate change models. STS scholars also have collaborated with artists, designers, and architects in their thinking about designing infrastructure and using art and other aesthetic ideas for building more sustainable futures. These concerns are addressed in Parts VIII, IX, and XI in the primer and are also addressed in chapters in Part VII. xxii Zeke Baker et al. Introduction xxiii History and Suggested Uses of the Primer The idea for this primer emerged from discussions at a workshop in June 2022 funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (Programs in Science and Technology Studies and Ethical and Responsible Research). The workshop, held at the University of Southern Indiana, centered around STS research on climate change. The four editors of this primer took the lead, soliciting chapters from workshop attendees and other STS scholars researching climate change. Funding from NSF (Award #2145997) and from the University of Southern Indiana and Sonoma State University enabled Open Access publication of the full primer. The model for this primer is based on the American Sociological Association Journal Contexts, which publishes cutting-edge research, policy-oriented pieces, and essays written to be accessible to and integrated within sociology undergraduate courses. The editors have aimed for primer chapters that discuss focused STS research projects or that review an area of STS research on climate change. This book is not a textbook and is not intended to provide a comprehensive overview of STS or social science research on climate change. Rather, the primer is more selective and specialized, highlighting key topical areas of research that can be used as depth pieces or examples of broader topics raised in social science or natural science climate change or environmental studies courses. Chapters might be selected and used individually as they relate to specific course topics, or the primer as a whole can be easily integrated into a course. Chapter authors were asked to minimize their use of references and academic jargon. Readers will therefore find fewer references in chapters than normally found in peer-reviewed academic articles. We did this to improve readability, but also recognize that each chapter owes credit to a larger body of research. To support readers in understanding and defining theoretical ideas, key concepts and theories have been bolded with their definitions close to their initial introduction. The reader will find some repetition across chapters of bolded concepts in order to reinforce them, while also acknowledging and embracing that individual concepts can be put to a range of uses across topical domains. At its conclusion, most chapters contain a selective set of further readings separated from the reference list. These readings are judged by authors to provide the best introduction to research topics contained in the chapter and are a good starting point should the reader wish to pursue their own research project on that topic. 6 Zeke Baker responsibly address social needs and advance equity in the face of climate change impacts. For context, operational meteorology in the U.S. is presently organized in government through the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS). My focus here is on how NWS forecasting can address socially relevant time frames ranging from days to months to decades. Among weather forecasters, timescales like 24-hour, 5-day, and one-month periods are difficult to link together from a meteorological standpoint. A weather forecaster’s predictive skill will stop when inter-model comparison makes weather forecasts more like noise than knowledge. Longer range (e.g., seasonal and beyond) outlooks can represent probabilistic trends, but with a questionable sense of whether or not a highly uncertain outlook will be useful to people. (A field of tailored, decision support services, called DSS, has arisen to confront this problem.) In this context, STS scholars can patch together the perspectives that collectively make “future weather” meaningful, thus enriching what sorts of knowledge are possible and desirable. In the Alaskan Arctic context, where I conducted fieldwork in 2020, of keen interest to many is the fishing season for various commercial and subsistence fisheries. Such a season is determined not only by a calendar but also by regulatory and economic pressures, availability or abundance of the target species, and weather patterns and conditions that render marine activity safe, risky, or impossible. Based on my research with mariners in the Bering Sea, complex rituals structure how mariners evaluate weather forecasts, consider risk, and make decisions. Furthermore, marine-dependent communities express deep uncertainty regarding their livelihood, which may be tied to specific animal species, the populations of which are undergoing rapid shifts because of the changing Bering Sea ecosystem. The timescales of everyday weather, season (broadly construed), and climate thus interact to shape mariners’ courses of action. Yet, meteorologists poorly understand the processes through which weather and climate information come to matter for mariner decision-making. These scientists and information providers, indeed, may never have been to the communities they serve. Analysis of the social life of weather and climate science permits us to see scientific information with reference to the range of other factors influencing how people go about anticipating the future. This process of reconstructing what I have called “anticipatory culture” can improve weather forecasting and the value of weather forecasts to people (Baker, 2021). In the case at hand, it will help them fish more safely and think about long-term economic and livelihood strategies. Such an approach to following the rescaling of weather and climate information provides a way to consider climate change impacts across multiple timescales, especially among communities underserved or poorly understood by climate science. Despite helping communities anticipate the future, are there perhaps some problematic social outcomes regarding the novel capacities to predict and prepare for disasters at smaller geographic scales? To address this question, we need to ask who gets to use this science and who doesn’t, and for what purposes. To assess aspects of these questions, meteorologist Friederike Otto and colleagues (2020) performed a study of event attribution in cases of extreme weather events and found stark inequalities in how climate science is rescaled and refined across countries. They identify “discrepancy between where attribution studies are conducted and where the largest damages associated with extreme weather events are,” resulting in “a systematic (selection) bias in attribution studies toward focusing on places with lower vulnerability.” So, wealthier countries with greater ties between science and government have greater capacity to mobilize attribution science to support forecasting and adaptation efforts. By contrast, poorer countries face greater vulnerability to extreme events and have less scientific capacity to forecast and prepare for such events. What the cases of event attribution science and operational meteorology on Arctic seasonality show is first that climate science is changing, specifically by scaling to national, regional, Future Times and Spaces 7 and local contexts. Scientists are likewise working across timescales. We might call this innovation. However, the key takeaway is that the social life of climate science is necessarily tied up with other social institutions and interests. It may therefore “rescale” in a way that responsively solves the needs of some groups (in the case of refined forecasting techniques), while also generating new forms of social inequality (in the case of unequal access to event attribution and related novel directions for climate science). How Climate Science Articulates Power Weather forecasts and climate services form one way in which climate science relates to, or is provided by, the government. These are largely within what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has called “the left hand” of the state, which invests in citizen well-being by responding to popular demands for welfare and services. We can also follow the social life of rescaled climate science over to the “right hand” of the state. This climate-impacted hand of the state centrally features issues of territoriality, economic and military/geopolitical hegemony, social control, national security, and the political demarcation of what Buxton and Hayes (2015) discuss in the context of climate crisis as “the secure and the dispossessed.” How are recent trends in the social life of climate science implicated in state-making projects that aim to govern climate in these terms? An initial answer begins by recognizing that a major shift in efforts to govern climate change occurred around the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, when social actors converged through efforts to know and govern climate change in its effects (e.g. by preparing for disasters) and not only in its causes (e.g. by finding ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions). A governmental logic had come to center on strategic anticipation of and preparation for impending climate risk, perhaps even catastrophe. Although social movements like Extinction Rebellion have more visibly framed climate change with reference to catastrophe, the U.S. national security state is also active on this front. Yet, how did the logic of national climate security form, given that environmentalists and scientists had long emphasized climate change as a quintessentially global environmental problem? Following the social life of climate science helps put together how scientific developments at the national and regional levels have come to inform a whole new arena for connecting the national state to climate science. To understand what climate security looks like, let us turn to the rise of climate security experts and the rise of security technologies. Climate security expertise comprises the actors and expert organizations that are oriented toward rendering catastrophic climate futures governable in the present. Security technologies can be defined as the array of scientific products, surveillance activities, and modeling techniques that represent future risks in order to facilitate strategic action based on anticipated political and military instability or widespread social dislocation. Climate security experts, who in the U.S. context have arisen out of think tanks, the defense establishment, and the peripheries of climate science and policy, are emerging as one sort of prophet of a governable order amid impending crises. Despite the claims among climate security experts that their activities transcend the polarized context of partisan politics, the way in which future threats are considered, evaluated, and governed is hardly an apolitical exercise. Changes in climate-impacted patterns, like agricultural productivity, the frequency of high-impact disasters, water availability, coastal zone inundation, human displacement and migration flows, and conflicts featuring natural resources are considered in light of governmental priorities and visions of security. Of special importance is the categorical distinctions made between, on the one hand, those who deserve protection and are to be politically incorporated into the body politic, and on the other hand, those who are to be excluded. Recent history is important to consider how future 8 Zeke Baker climate impacts might be governed in part through climate security expertise. Over the first decade of the twenty-first century, a militarized U.S. migration system was fortified along with an international War on Terror, just as a deeply politicized climate science led to climate policy failure. (In 2001, President George W. Bush renounced any intention to abide by the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty that would have required the United States to regulate and reduce carbon emissions.) A growing cadre of experts thus drew upon the security implications of climate change as a powerful framing to spur climate policy action. Given the politics of migration and terrorism, climate-migration and terrorist expertise have gained special relevance to those invested in governing climate change as a real-world threat. Thus, the 2014 U.S. Department of Defense Quadrennial Defense Review emphasized that climate impacts “are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors,” leading to “conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.” Climate patterns themselves hardly determine such framings of the climate problem and their uptake in defense and security policy. Let us turn to security technologies. Several scientific developments are central to how climate security expertise works. First, as introduced in the previous section, rescaled climate models at finer-scale resolution provide an important way for scientists to project how climate change will impact specific areas, resources, populations, and economic sectors. Second, scientists can then use regional modeling to attribute geographically delimited sociopolitical events to global warming. Regional climate modeling techniques, when utilized by climate security experts, can become a powerful technology through which to govern future security threats. Security experts have long recognized that national security threats entail high-risk, low-probability events, like a resource conflict transforming into an international military crisis. Yet, climate security experts have only recently used event attribution studies, adapted from meteorology, to anticipate such events. One example is Kelley et al.’s (2015) study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which evaluated the impact of global warming on conflict in Syria and subsequent migration. The topic—serving as a case of a “threat-multiplying” climate event—has received widespread attention among climate security experts in recent years. In the cases of the war in Syria or the Arab Spring, studies link drought, urbanization, and armed conflict as events that will likely become more common in the future because of climate change. Particularly significant in these regional climate studies is the relatively novel scientific capacity to isolate the impact of anthropogenic climate change on regional-scaled patterns and events—in this case, regarding Mediterranean drought. We see this elsewhere, too. In the Arctic, anticipated climate security threats include geopolitical tension around what states get to control or regulate Arctic shipping routes that are projected to open with an ice-free Arctic. Such is the social life of climate security expertise. These developments in climate expertise can be engaged critically by assessing how they matter to various “hands” of the state. Although many changes in science and government are not so simple, it remains possible to ask: is the social life of climate science (1) facilitating situations of inequality and exclusion, or is it (2) building equity in the face of increasing climate risk? Questions remain about where the field of climate security expertise is headed, and how it might gain prominence as the climate crisis becomes an operating assumption rather than a political challenge to state power. Will developments in climate science be successfully enrolled in climate security projects, or might they reorient to alternative institutions and values? If right-wing political parties disavow climate change denial and weaken their ties to the fossil fuel industry—a situation that would contrast sharply with recent decades—then would a new consensus consider climate security expertise and security technologies as the most important kinds of climate science amid deepening climate crisis? Answering these questions centrally involves following the social life of a fast-changing climate science, with a particular focus on Future Times and Spaces 9 how climate scientists and their tools are embedded in, and dynamically configured with, various hands of the state. Conclusion In this chapter, I have argued that climate science can be treated less as a body of facts and claims and more so a dynamic field of practice configured with a range of social institutions. This basic perspective permitted exploration of the objectivity of global climate science, an attention to the changes happening within climate science, and finally unfolding relations between climate knowledge and power. In this account, climate science claims and representations did not carry their own meaning or their own implied actions, and they did not emerge from an invisible hand of scientific rationality or innovation. The climate does not explain itself. Nor does the character of science. Rather, the dynamics of social practices come to shape what climate science “is,” what it “does” or performs (and for whom), and how it becomes consequential for social institutions, including, in this case, the state. This means we can have our cake and eat it too: First, we can advance objectivity—strong objectivity—regarding climate realities, specifically by diversifying the voices within climate science and reflecting upon the presumed values and goals that shape research and information. Second, we can critically engage or question novel directions within climate science while also seeking to improve existing science and its public uses. Finally, we can retain commitments to climate policy goals and social causes like climate justice while also committing to rigorous empirical analysis of how climate science articulates power relations. Such are some of the wide avenues opened up by STS approaches that follow the social life of climate science. Further Reading Dalby, S. (2022). Rethinking Environmental Security. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishers. McDonald, M. (2021). Ecological Security: Climate Change and the Construction of Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781009024495 Yua, E., Raymond-Yakoubian, J., Daniel, R. A., and Behe, C. (2022). “A Framework for Co-Production of Knowledge in the Context of Arctic Research.” Ecology and Society 27(1). doi: 10.5751/ ES-12960–270134 References Baker, Z. (2021). “Anticipatory Culture in the Bering Sea: Weather, Climate, and Temporal Dissonance,” Weather, Climate, and Society 13(4), pp. 783–95. doi: 10.1175/WCAS-D-21–0066.1 Buxton, N. and Hayes, B., eds. (2015). The Secure and the Dispossessed: How the Military and Corporations are Shaping a Climate-changed World. Amsterdam: Pluto Press/TNI. Go, J. (2016). Postcolonialism and Social Theory. London: Oxford University Press. Haraway, D. (1988). “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies, 14(3), pp. 575–599. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066 Harding, S. (2008). Sciences from Below: Feminisms, Postcolonialities, and Modernities. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kelley, C. P., Mohtadi, S., Cane, M. A., Seager, R., and Kushnir, Y. (2015). “Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112, pp. 3241–3246. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1421533112 Marlon, J., Neyens, L., Jefferson, M., Rosenthal, S., Howe, P., Mildenberger, M. and Leiserowitz, A. (2022). “Perceived Harm from Global Warming Is Becoming More Widespread,” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Available at: https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/ perceived-harm-ycom-2021/ 10 Zeke Baker Moon, T. A., Druckenmiller, M. L., and Thoman, R. L., eds. (2021). Arctic Report Card 2021. htpp://doi. org/10.25923/5s0f-5163 Nelson, A. (2016). The Social Life of DNA: Race Reparations and Reconciliation After the Genome. Boston: Beacon Press. Otto, F. E. L., Harrington, L., Schmitt, K., Philip, S., Kew, S., van Oldenborgh, G. J., Singh, R., Kimutai, J., and Wolski, P. (2020). “Challenges to Understanding Extreme Weather Changes in Lower Income Countries,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 101(10), E1851–60. doi: 10.1175/ BAMS-D-19–0317.1 DOI: 10.4324/9781003409748-3 Introduction In an article written for Time magazine in 2022, environmental scholar Gaia Vince explored the pressing question of human migration in response to climate change. Vince suggests that everyone on the planet will either need to move to escape the worst impacts of a changing climate or will be involved in welcoming (hopefully) migrant communities to their new homes, communities, and countries. Vince reasons that on the whole, humanity will have to move northwards and upwards. Areas like the Rocky Mountains in North America or the Alps in Europe will provide refuge from extreme heat and drought, but the article focuses largely on the Arctic – areas like northern Canada, Alaska, Siberia, and Greenland – suggesting that as these regions thaw, they’ll become new hubs of settlement, agriculture, and trade. The question of what would become of these regions’ current inhabitants, especially indigenous communities and native wildlife, is left largely unanswered. Instead, Vince focuses on how the global community will need to: look at the world afresh and develop new plans based on geology, geography, and ecology. In other words, identify where the freshwater resources are, where the safe temperatures are, where gets the most solar or wind energy, and then plan population, food and energy production around that. (Vince, 2022) Vince’s call for a new way of looking at the world through the lenses of ‘geology, geography, and ecology’, in order to support a radically new form of political planning based on the global redistribution of human populations and settlements, is certainly radical, and perhaps necessary. Over the last few hundred years the practice of ‘planning’ has been largely a state-based affair, and one might argue that humanity’s collective failure so far to adequately deal with climate change is a product of our most powerful institutions being wedded to the geographical form of the nation-state and being seemingly unable to effectively cooperate beyond borders. Nonetheless, Vince’s ‘new way of looking’ is not entirely unprecedented. In fact, it has curious and – I’ll suggest in this chapter – consequential echoes of how things like ecology and climate were thought about and dealt with in earlier colonial contexts, particularly during the period of European ‘high imperialism’ from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries. Indeed, we can locate the origins of many of the modern sciences of the environment in this period. Understanding these histories is vital for making sure that the connections between climate science and decision-making do not reproduce colonial modes of thought and action. We need to understand where climate data comes from, historically, and how their production and use was 2 Meteorology, Climate Science, and Empire Histories and Legacies Martin Mahony This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. 12 Martin Mahony shaped by local contexts of power and exploitation. Doing so can help us guard against unjust exercises of power in the name of things like climate change adaptation, and to help redress uneven patterns of participation in climate science today. An STS Approach to the Problem Research in science and technology studies (STS) emphasises the power of science in the making of worlds. What does that mean? Well, one way to think about the role of science in making worlds is in relation to long historical processes, like the emergence of nation-states or the rise and fall of empires. Scholarship by historians and STS researchers has shown how scientific practices like geometry and statistics were central to the emergence of the nation-state as a political form in places like Europe and East Asia. Simply put, the nation-state is the conjunction of political power and administrative bureaucracy. To govern effectively, you therefore needed to be able to count, measure, analyse, and perhaps predict things like population changes, agricultural yields, and territorial extent. The similarity of the terms ‘state’ and ‘statistics’ is no coincidence. And when we look at the rise of European empires – Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, and British, for example – from the 16th century onwards, other techniques of making robust knowledge to serve powerful interests come to the fore. Sciences like astronomy, hydrography, and meteorology were crucial for maritime navigation; experts in ecology, cartography, geology, and anthropology were crucial for ‘taking stock’ of new colonial territories and their peoples, environments and resources; and areas of scholarship like tropical and veterinary medicine and ‘acclimatisation’ were deemed crucial for maintaining the health of transplanted people, animals, and plants in new places. As such, many of the major modern disciplines of the natural, physical, and social sciences were crucial to the expansion and functioning of empires. In turn, those sciences did very well out of imperialism. Money flowed into them, and careers could be made and fame achieved through feats of exploration, experimentation, and discovery. If science shaped imperial fortunes, imperialism also shaped the development of sciences. Put another way, science and empire were co-produced. Research questions and priorities were informed by imperial interests, and colonial ways of seeing the world (e.g. as ripe for exploitation, defined by racial hierarchies, and full of scarily different climates, environments, peoples, and diseases) had profound impacts on how disciplines developed into the forms we see today (Chakrabarti, 2021). Researchers in STS try to understand this two-way traffic between science and empire, asking how they shaped each other, and how the ongoing legacies of imperialism continue to shape how science is done, by whom, on what or who, and to what end. With these questions in mind, let’s turn to the specific contexts in which meteorology and climate science were co-produced with empire. Science and Empire: Piecing Together the Global Climate? Arguments about the science and politics of a changing climate have a longer history than you might think. As European adventurers, settlers, and colonists set out for new (to them) corners of the globe from the 16th century onwards, they encountered new climates which, to their frequent disappointment and puzzlement, differed greatly from those at home. European settlers in North America were particularly vexed by the climates of places at similar latitudes to Europe, which nonetheless seemed much more varying and extreme than those of the ‘Old World’. For much of this period climate was understood as varying chiefly by latitude. But these new climates raised an intriguing question. Perhaps humans had overridden the natural, latitudinal determinants of climate? What if, over centuries of settlement, deforestation, and agricultural intensification, Meteorology, Climate Science, and Empire 13 European climates had been somehow moderated, their rough edges – as found in the freezing winters and humid summers of New England – smoothed off by human modifications of the landscape? If that was correct, perhaps American climates could be ‘tamed’ by embarking on a similar programme of landscape transformation – a convenient climatological justification for the rapid colonisation and settlement of new lands. Elsewhere, debate raged about whether deforestation was having more negative impacts on local climates. On islands like St Helena and Mauritius, scholars and administrators worried about whether deforestation had ruined local climates, decreasing the rainfall upon which things like sugar cultivation depended. Forest reserves were instituted in places like Mauritius with the expressed intention of protecting the climate, although scholars have pointed out that economic interests (such as the expansion of sugar plantations) often trumped these early conservationist and climate-protecting efforts, in an interplay of science, politics, and economics that is reminiscent of present-day climate change debates. During the period of early European colonial expansion from the 16th to early 19th century, climate was seen as something that could make or break imperial fortunes, and as something that was subject to human influence and perhaps even control. But it was also seen as something that determined the enduring characteristics of different people and races. A racial climatology popular in Europe and North America posited that inhabitants of the tropics were inherently less hard-working and productive, and more ‘passionate’ and sensual, than their distant relatives in the temperate latitudes. This kind of climatological thought, since dubbed climatic determinism, was a self-serving, racist means by which Europeans, and people of European descent, sought to give a veneer of scientific legitimacy to their own notions of white superiority, while trying to justify the ‘civilising mission’ by which white people would spread a more civilised way of life through invasion, colonisation, and settlement. This train of thought travelled well into the 20th century, maintaining that climate was not so much something vulnerable to human influence but rather something unchanging and all-powerful in shaping human fortunes. Climatic determinism continues to reverberate within more recent scientific research on questions like which temperatures are most amenable to human ‘productivity’ and, like in Gaia Vince’s analysis, which parts of the world in the future are likely to be most economically productive, based on their new climates. While there are undoubtedly physiological limitations to how human bodies and minds can function in extreme meteorological conditions, STS studies of the history of such lines of thought can help us guard against problematic generalisations, and can help us keep in view the diverse adaptations that different communities have made to extreme climates to allow them to live flourishing lives in different times and places. Towards the end of the 19th century, ‘climate’ was increasingly seen as something stable – tied to place, and amenable to statistical analysis. Zeke Baker has argued that this ‘stabilisation’ of climate occurred because of a confluence of scientific findings and economic interests – the idea that climate was fundamentally stable on human timescales played into a new interest in using climatological expertise within government to plan and predict things like agricultural output, particularly in the United States (Baker, 2020). This was also a period when weather and climate were starting to be understood on a global scale. The rapid expansion of European empires towards the end of the 19th century saw a corresponding expansion of systems of meteorological observation. Roving naval and merchant ships, many of which took careful weather measurements, were joined by an increasing number of land-based weather stations, recording things like temperature, pressure, rainfall, and wind direction on hourly or daily bases (see Figure 2.1). Note how meteorology, as represented here by its weather stations, expands in this 150-year period from being a science largely confined to Europe and North America, to something much 14 Martin Mahony more global in scope. The stations mapped in Figure 2.1 featured thermometers for measuring temperature at certain times of day, or for recording daily maximum or minimum temperatures, alongside other instruments for measuring rainfall, atmospheric pressure, and wind. Some would feature instruments that recorded observations onto paper automatically; others, particularly in earlier periods, would be read and maintained by local officials – people like police officers, harbour masters, teachers, priests, and missionaries (Figure 2.2). But a significant number of these weather stations didn’t spread in order to further our understanding of the global atmosphere. Rather, they cropped up in service of colonial interests. Those interests might concern working out which crops could profitably be grown in different environments, delineating areas where European settlement might be encouraged, or even staking a claim to territory and performing cultural superiority. In one disputed area in the northern region of present-day Nigeria, for example, the presence of a British weather station was used in arguments over who could really lay claim to the territory. And the Australian historian Ruth Morgan has shown how efforts to monitor and predict the weather were used politically to showcase the apparent intellectual and cultural superiority of the settler-colonial project (Morgan, 2020). By the 1920s, aviation became a key driver of the expansion of meteorology, with the consequence that the siting of things like barometers (for measuring atmospheric pressure) and anemometers (for measuring wind) was increasingly designed not to serve things like colonial agricultural interests on the ground, but imperial aviation and military interests in the skies. This was much to the annoyance of some colonial scientists who were more interested in doing things like agricultural meteorology than producing on-demand weather forecasts for pilots, the utility of which was largely spent by the time a flight had been completed. Such squabbles aside, Figure 2.1 The spread of meteorological infrastructure as recorded in counts of station records included in the International Surface Temperature Initiative database: a) 1800–09, b) 1850–59, c) 1900– 09, d) 1950–59. Source: Reproduced with permission from Rennie et al (2014). Meteorology, Climate Science, and Empire 15 imperial meteorology significantly impacted how climate came to be understood in increasingly global terms. The expansion of the meteorological infrastructure shown in Figure 2.1 meant that colonial scientists were beginning to piece together pictures of climatic variability across continents. For example, weather records from British India and Australia showed joint fluctuations in barometric pressure, giving colonial scientists an early sighting of the El Niño phenomenon. But we shouldn’t just read this science as a precursor to a later, better science of the global atmosphere. Rather, STS approaches urge us to understand how that science was used in practice and must be understood in its local context. Here the work of historian Mike Davis is relevant. In his study of the famines that ravaged India in the late 19th century, he argues that growing scientific understandings of climatic variability in India allowed the British authorities to blame famines on the vagaries of the weather, rather than on things like colonial taxation and traditional agricultural systems being disrupted by the forced introduction of market economies (Davis, 2001). Cuttingedge meteorology helped to ‘naturalise’ the famines, and helped let the colonial authorities off the hook. In understanding this spread of meteorological and climatological infrastructure, and the emergence of ‘global’ understandings of the atmosphere, it’s important to look beyond individual imperial systems and beyond state-based scientific institutions. The historian Gregory Cushman has shown how techniques for understanding and forecasting cyclones developed during the middle to late 19th century through a globe-straddling network of observatories and scientists, made up as much by Jesuit missionaries and business interests as by weather-watchers Figure 2.2 Meteorological station in Barombi, German Cameroon, c. 1900. Source: Bildarchiv der Deutschen Kolonialgesellschaft, Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main: 043-3026-05. Reproduced with permission. See also Lehmann (2018). 22 Candis Callison can be seen in many forms, both systematic and non-systematic – for example, in the form of highly accurate observations of change made regularly over time (not unlike Western science) or in the form of stories passed down through generations that tell of changes to lands, waters, and nonhumans (all of which are also often seen as having agency). Patricia Cochran (2013) and her co-authors, which include both Indigenous and non-Indigenous scientists, emphasize that “Indigenous understandings of climate change are as diverse as the many environments and cultures in which they are situated,” and that there are “common features and differences compared to western science.” Indigenous people are diverse in their social situations, cultures, methods, practices, and relations with nonhumans, lands, and waters. The UN estimates that there are approximately 370 million Indigenous people in 90 countries. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) was adopted in 2007 after over a decade of discussion involving how to define Indigenous people. The UN considers a range of factors in defining groups as Indigenous: “(1) people whose ancestors were first to occupy their land; (2) self-definition as Indigenous; (3) collective physical and cultural survival based on ancestral claims and distinctive cultural practices related to land; and (4) experiences of subjugation, marginalization, and dispossession” (Callison, 2017; United Nations, 2013). Given this definition, it’s not difficult to see how colonialism, land issues, and self-determination are deeply intertwined for Indigenous people, and how climate change forms an additional layer of interlaced new problems, in part because of the vulnerabilities already created by colonialism. Most historical narratives in countries that are built on settler colonialism don’t include even a passing mention of either how diverse Indigenous people are or how diverse and deep their relations are with nonhumans (animals, plants), lands, or waters. Many Indigenous people consider nonhumans to be relatives or kin, and Indigenous systems of knowledge are a result of thousands of years of data, experimentation, and adaptation alongside one another. Indigenous knowledge has in recent years become an area of study and an important contributor to climate discussions, particularly in the Arctic region where observable changes have been happening more rapidly and for a much longer time. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment released in 2004 was the first formal assessment to integrate Indigenous knowledge with scientific knowledge, involving Indigenous people throughout the process of drafting the report. Inuit knowledge experts worked with over 300 scientists on the assessment, demonstrating both the sensitivity of the Arctic (temperature increases will be much higher compared to mid-latitude regions) and the subsequent impacts for the rest of the world (e.g. glacial melt and sea ice reduction resulting in global sea level rise). In contrast, the first United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) document to mention Indigenous knowledge was the Paris Agreement in 2015, but it still said nothing about working with Indigenous people. Working with Indigenous communities and experts continues to be a challenge for both scientific and political organizations and systems (Ford et al., 2016; Smith and Sharp, 2012), but it is essential if Indigenous knowledge is to become more widely useful in navigating our shared climate futures. Deborah McGregor explains it this way: One does TEK [traditional ecological knowledge]; it is not limited to a “body of knowledge.” Non-Aboriginal [Non-Indigenous] views of TEK are more concerned with what the knowledge consists of and how it is transmitted. TEK is not just knowledge about the relationships with Creation, it is the relationship with Creation; it is the way that one relates. (2004, p. 394, emphasis added). Rethinking Our Histories and Relations with Climate Change 23 McGregor’s definition pushes against early ideas that Indigenous knowledge could be supplemental to Western science in part because “the how you know what you know,” the epistemological basis, is configured differently and stems from a different way of apprehending, being in, and making sense of earth systems and change (Callison, 2014). However, Indigenous knowledge and Western scientific knowledge can be complementary and correlative (e.g. Western science has confirmed in many cases what Indigenous knowledge experts have said about both the recent and distant past). Scholars have continually recommended that instead of seeing differences between Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge as a barrier, they should be seen as an opportunity for collaboration between scientists and Indigenous communities. One of the earliest and most famous cases of this involves the number of migratory bowhead whales in Alaska. Iñupiat whalers, who have long been in close relation with whales (Langlois, 2018; Sakakibara, 2020), successfully challenged scientific data related to bowhead whales that suggested the population was in steep decline. Iñupiat whalers worked with scientists to help them improve how they collected data and where. This work in turn confirmed Iñupiat knowledge of a much healthier bowhead whale population than previously documented. Subsequently, the moratorium on subsistence whaling, put in place in 1977 by the International Whaling Commission (IWC), was lifted (Huntington et al., 2021). Wildfires and forest management provide a more recent example in which there are hopeful new collaborations. In the U.S., Canada, and Australia, the past decade has seen a rapid increase in the volume, intensity, and reach of wildfires, and there has been a turn to Indigenous knowledge in Western Canada and Australia. Kukpi7 Ron Ignace is a leader from the Secwépemc Nation, located in what is now the province of British Columbia in Western Canada where in 2017, a devastating massive wildfire lasting 76 days spread over 192,000 hectares. Ignace directly attributes the devastation to a lack of cultural burning that declined beginning in the 1860s due to the imposition of colonial laws and policies. Ignace’s community is part of a three-year recovery program in cooperation with the BC government and eight Secwépemc communities. He described the program as resting on a different foundation: thinking about forests in “a different way” as “living infrastructure” (Wood, 2021). The Secwépemc Nation is not alone in their efforts in the region. Just north of their territory, the Tsilhqot’in Nation similarly suffered from massive wildfires in 2017. In turn, they formed a multi-year partnership with Australian Indigenous fire expert, Victor Steffensen (2020), who has been helping to support and revitalize burning practices that have not been used for many decades due to colonial disruptions. Steffensen described Indigenous burning as not only about preventing wildfires but also about “activating the landscape to look after biodiversity, to improve its health” (Boutsalis, 2020). Indigenous journalists and scholars have been leading the way in telling these stories that amplify the efforts of Indigenous experts, who are articulating how these practices are re-emerging in the wake of massive, destructive wildfires, while also acknowledging the long rejection and resistance to Indigenous burning practices (see also Bourke, Atkinson, and Neale, 2020; Krol and Herrera, 2018; Gilio-Whitaker, 2019). Indigenous burning practices prevent large wildfires through culturally and regionally specific use of smaller fires that prevent larger devastating fires. Colonial fire management generally rested on the suppression of all fires, and in some jurisdictions, Indigenous burning practices were criminalized in the 19th and 20th centuries. Clear-cut forest logging and an overall decline in the diversity and age of forests have also created more vulnerabilities for forests. In writing about the boreal forest in North America, Christianson et al. (2022) stress the need for scientists to collaborate with Indigenous communities, most of whom live near or among large forested areas, and to rewrite historical narratives 24 Candis Callison such that they take into account Indigenous knowledge. “Indigenous peoples in the boreal have applied fire on their landscapes for a multitude of reasons. They understand fire as an active, alive agent. As an agent, fire is capable of movement, destruction, and creation, acting on the landscape to create order, within a living, connected environment” (2022, p. 271). As “the Great Dying” study and many historical records confirm, Indigenous people in close relation with their lands, waters, and nonhuman relatives had a long history of cultivation and management practices that were “unrecognizable to settlers upon their arrival throughout the Americas and the Pacific” (Callison, 2021b). Indeed, the notion of forests as a “living infrastructure” remains a leap for many, even now. Nevertheless, these kinds of interventions, practices, and approaches to relations with forests, lands, and other nonhumans may most meaningfully influence climate adaptation planning (and potentially also climate mitigation). Vulnerability, a much-discussed aspect of assessing risks related to climate change, is not a natural state for Indigenous people. Much of the vulnerability related to climate change facing Indigenous people, whether it be wildfire risks or the location of communities in high-risk areas are due to colonial policies. Whyte (2013, p. 521) suggests that “the ecological challenges of climate change are entangled, or coupled, with political obstructions” and that societal institutions can either create more constraints or opportunities for collective continuance. In order to create more opportunities for navigating climate change, it is essential to see Indigenous communities as navigating often burdensome colonial histories and systems that have emerged from settler-colonial frameworks. Furthermore, it is critical to acknowledge that Indigenous peoples also offer distinctive knowledge and approaches to being in good relations with both human and nonhuman worlds. Conclusion Climate change is what anthropologists might call “lively.” How we talk about it shifts with cultural changes, and that shifting has stakes and consequences for the politics, systems, and institutions associated with climate change (Fischer, 2009; Rajan, 2012). When I initially began to study climate change in the early 2000s, I found that how climate change got talked about reflected social concerns – that facts had “communal lives” and that climate change was a “form of life” that evolved culturally and socially rather than being a fixed, scientific issue (Callison, 2014). In corporate social responsibility discourse, for example, climate change became “climate risk” in order to tap into concerns about value and investment that are already embedded in financial markets. For American evangelicals active at that time, it was a matter of “caring for creation,” and climate facts required a “blessing” from “trusted messengers” that made climate change a real and actionable issue for evangelicals. For Inuit leaders, climate change was already a direct experience. Therefore, advocating for the Arctic and their communities required both “putting a human face” on climate change and navigating colonialism, science, and varying kinds of political institutions and legal systems. In many ways, the emergence of “crisis” and “emergency” as ways to talk about climate change reflect widening cultural anxieties, as assessments and reports mount with dire predictions and we watch as some of those predictions, like massive and devastating wildfires, become reality. For many who see climate change as the first epic crisis for humanity, the past is seen as a paragon of stability. Yet, our understanding of both stability and change are culturally specific and have much to do with how we see humans in relation to nonhumans and the level of awareness of the destruction and devastation wrought by colonialism. In an Indigenous knowledge framework, stability is something that must be continually assessed and maintained; it is a result of being in good relations with nonhuman relatives and kin that include lands, waters, forests, animals, and others. There are reciprocal obligations and responsibilities that are part of Rethinking Our Histories and Relations with Climate Change 25 these relationships – many of which have been disrupted by colonialism. As the work related to Indigenous burning practices shows, moving toward reciprocity and relational thinking, based on Indigenous knowledge and expertise, provides a path forward through devastating impacts related to climate change. By situating a term like the Anthropocene that has been widely used as a means for understanding and articulating the present as deeply affected by humans – and in crisis – within broader discussions about colonialism, the aim of this chapter has been to show how climate change is a crisis, but not necessarily a new one. Indigenous scholars, who have looked closely at Indigenous knowledge and lifeways alongside scientific rationales and methods, recognize the past and ongoing impact of colonialism, and the ways in which climate change amplifies vulnerabilities created by colonial impositions. In this sense, climate change is indeed a continuation of the crises begun with colonialism and empire-building that span the last 500 years. Yet, Indigenous communities, along with their care for lands, waters, and nonhumans, have persisted and offer a wealth of approaches, knowledge, and expertise about how to navigate and adapt to a climate-changed future. 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(2020) “Against crisis epistemology.” In: Hokowhitu, B., Moreton-Robinson, A., TuhiwaiSmith, L., Larkin, S., and Andersen, C. (eds) Handbook of critical indigenous studies. New York: Routledge. Wood, S. (2021) “After the fire: The long road to recovery.” The narwhal. https://thenarwhal.ca/bc-forestfires-restoration-secwepemc/ (Accessed: January 19, 2021). World Meteorological Organization (2023) “WMO global annual to decadal climate update (Target years: 2023–2027).” World Meteorological Organization. https://library.wmo.int/index.php?lvl=notice_ display&id=22272 (Accessed: June 25, 2023). DOI: 10.4324/9781003409748-5 A distinct section on theory might seem expendable in a primer on climate change. Why bother when so many other issues need attention? Why not cut to the chase, avoid academic posturing, and limit theoretical points to essential locations within topical chapters? It is the editors’ view, however, that understanding some key Science and Technology Studies (STS) and social science theories is essential for a deeper and more meaningful understanding of climate change. Why theory? What does it do? Who is it for? In general, STS and social science theories provide guidelines for seeing the world – in this case, how to see climate change and its relationship to human beings and their knowledge systems and technologies. The social and natural worlds are very complex, and even more so when integrated within problems like climate change. Where does one look and how does one look at climate change? What questions need to be posed? This is where theory provides guideposts. A theory makes certain questions important and indicates where and how one should look for answers. In more technical words, theory provides an ontology and epistemology. Ontology refers to the nature of what one is studying. On its surface, this might seem obvious in the case of climate change. Are we not just studying the buildup of greenhouse gasses and their impacts on climate, terrestrial and aquatic systems, and human societies? In STS and social science research this is too simplistic. Climate change is also about global power arrangements and inequality, human perceptions and knowledge of the environment, technologies that cause the problem and potentially provide solutions, and so on. A theory guides you into seeing whether this or that is an essential substance of climate change. Epistemology refers to how one understands and can develop knowledge about climate change. It includes research methods but much more. In the case of climate change, should one proceed by ignoring what people think about the issue because people are often wrong, and focus instead on more “objective” data gathered by scientists or governmental agencies? Or should we focus on people’s perceptions and beliefs about climate change because they significantly impact their reactions to it? Should one research the natural environment and social arrangements, scientific knowledge, and technologies as separate entities or combine them together in some way? Collectively, the ontology and epistemology of social theory inform us of the substance of issues we are researching and how to obtain knowledge about them. Myanna Lahsen introduces and emphasizes the importance of social constructionist (sometimes referred to as constructivist) theory in climate change research. Social constructionism has a long history in STS research and an even longer history in sociology and other social sciences. The basic idea is simple. We study how humans construct the world around them through their culture-producing activities. Part II Theorizing Climate, Science, and Society Introduction Stephen Zehr 28 Stephen Zehr We might study common discourses, framing, ideologies, everyday actions, or other symbolic practices that produce joint understandings and order in the world. Where social constructionism becomes more provocative and sometimes controversial is when it is directed to scientists’ research and truth-claims about the natural world. Historically, it was generally assumed that through application of the scientific method scientists possessed the ability to develop truthful, reliable, and universal knowledge, resulting over time in a one-toone correspondence between nature and what scientists said about it. While social constructionists acknowledge that scientific knowledge is generally reliable and useful, they emphasize its development as a socially and culturally contingent activity, opening the door that it could be otherwise in different social and cultural circumstances. Thus, social constructionists view the ontology of climate change as a varying but sometimes stable set of truth-claims across scientific communities, political actors, publics, environmentalists, fossil fuel industry spokespeople, media, and so on. Epistemologically, social constructionists research the procedures these social actors have used to build stable claims. Lahsen explores opposition to social constructionist theory in the study of climate change. Lahsen argues that some influential social scientists are fearful that social constructionist approaches may empower climate change skeptics, open the door to relativism (i.e., everyone’s claims about climate change are equally legitimate), and hinder progress towards mitigation and adaptation. Lahsen then discusses the utility of social constructionist theory, noting how it opens new and important questions about climate change as a singular global problem and the relationship between scientific knowledge and political action. Zeke Baker takes a historical approach to clarify the close linkages between industrial fossilfuel-dependent technologies and capitalism’s drive towards ever-growing profit to locate causes of the climate crisis experienced today. Baker shows how these close linkages form the backdrop to a dominant political-economy theory in the social sciences often called “treadmill of production theory”. This theory emphasizes the capitalist economic forces that historically and currently drive a fossil-fuel-dependent world that has as one consequence a changing climate. Baker questions the role and position of both science and technology in this theoretical framework. Are they clear saviors and villains or is their positioning much more complex? Baker also introduces the social science theory of ecological modernization, which emphasizes that societies are now going through reindustrialization, introducing technologies that are more environmentally benign. Within this theory, capitalism is flexibly open to different types of environmental consequences from damaging to beneficial. Its emphasis is on researching the importance of environment and environmentalism in contemporary societies and how it impacts the scientific knowledge and technologies we produce. Baker also introduces empirical studies that comment on the capabilities of the treadmill of production versus ecological modernization theories to explain the current relationship among science, technology, capitalism, and climate change. Baker argues that STS research on climate change must always be cognizant of and address the economic interests that underpin climateimpactful behavior. Baker demonstrates how it can be done. DOI: 10.4324/9781003409748-6 Introduction Reflecting skepticism about modern cultural conceptions of science, technology, and rationality as engines of emancipation and progress, social constructionism, with its method of deconstruction, became one of the most influential currents in social science and humanities during the 1970s and 1980s, and a central theoretical orientation in Science and Technology Studies (STS) (Fuchs and Ward, 1994). Social constructionism seeks to understand the role of social contexts, processes, power dynamics, and cultural beliefs and values in shaping the development, interpretation, and impact of scientific and technological knowledge. It recognizes that scientific knowledge and technological artifacts are developed within specific social, political, and historical contexts, and that they reflect the perspectives, biases, priorities, and power structures prevailing among the individuals and communities involved in their creation. The method of deconstruction involves “opening up” (critical examination) of knowledge claims to identify social and cultural meanings and influences that make them convincing, and in that sense stable, in particular contexts. The notion that human understanding of the world is determined not solely by natural or inherent properties but also by power-inflected human interpretation, language, and social interactions challenges the premise of a singular objective reality. The implication of these social filters is that scientific and technological knowledge is not merely discovered or revealed but also shaped (“constructed”) through human perceptions, activities, and social negotiations. STS researchers vary in the relative weight they grant to social and subjective versus more objective factors, but most, if not all, recognize that objective reality significantly restrains what can be plausibly presented as truth. In other words, they do not subscribe to ontological relativism (that is, the view that reality only exists as constructions, lacking a material objectivity), despite common misunderstandings to that effect (Jasanoff, 1996). However, STS researchers working within a social constructionist tradition do generally subscribe to methodological relativism. This methodological approach requires the researcher to remain agnostic about the truth value of scientists’ claims, attending instead to how reality is subject to multiple interests, perspectives, and interpretations, mediated through interactions, language, and cultural contexts. Constructionist analyses “open up” science and technology in the sense of revealing assumptions, interests, and social and cultural forces that underpin the very stability of knowledge claims. They ask critical questions: Who is the knower? On what basis do they claim to have authority and speak the truth? Where do they see from, with what limits to their vision, and with what political consequences? Adopting social constructionism in the 1980s, the Strong Programme in the sociology of science also urged “symmetrical” sociological inquiry and explanation in scientific controversies. 4 We Cannot Afford Not to Perform Constructionist Studies of Mainstream Climate Science Myanna Lahsen This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. 30 Myanna Lahsen Regardless of scientists’ or societies’ perceptions of which side was correct, all sides of the controversy would be equally analyzed. This approach reacted against (“weak”) sociological and historical studies of science and technology that sought to explain “failed” technologies or “false” theories in terms of extra-scientific factors, such as scientific subcultural particularities or broader socio-political biases and interests, while assuming that “successful” technologies and “correct” scientific theories were consistent with natural forces and captured a singular reality perceivable by all (Barnes and Bloor, 1982). Thus, for example, social constructionist studies of the acid rain controversy in the 1980s did not start with the assumption that acid rain exists and has damaging environmental consequences because mainstream scientists tell us so. Rather, these studies remained agnostic about the reality of acid rain. Instead, they sought to explain both mainstream and non-mainstream scientific claims in terms of contextual social, cultural, economic, or political forces. In other words, these studies took a symmetrical approach to each side of the controversy, as did social constructionist research on social problems such as drug addiction, homelessness, or violent crime. Importantly, this was a methodological tool to ensure rigorous sociological analysis. It did not imply skepticism or denial that acid rain existed. Apprehension About Constructionist Studies of Environmental Science and Technology With the rise of the anti-environmental movement in the 1990s, some scholars increasingly weighed the value of constructionist research against concerns to protect science and support environmental protection. They feared that revelations of science as a human and political enterprise complicated appeals to hard scientific authority to justify desired policies. This response grew in a context of intensifying, politically motivated attacks on environmental science as variously corrupt and insufficiently certain to merit environmental protective policies (Lahsen, 2005b). The utility of deconstructions of environmental science thus grew less immediately obvious, especially among staunch science defenders. STS scholars continued to stress the importance of constructionist studies of science, but they increasingly adopted the idiom of co-production. In constructionist STS, the term co-production emphasizes the mutual influences and restraints that science and political structures impose on each other. Science restrains what can be plausibly and legitimately said and done in politics, but politics also shape and restrain what passes as scientifically true and worthy of study. As such, work in science and engineering not only produces knowledge and technologies; it also shapes social and political arrangements around them. The term “co-production” sharpened conceptualizing language, but did not help overcome an aversion to constructionist analysis in mainstream environmental science – an aversion expressed in the “omission strategy” that involved ignoring and quietly devaluing and discouraging constructionist analyses of mainstream environmental science. Apprehension about deconstructions of environmental science is apparent in peer-reviewed literature, but commonly kept to more private conversations. Environmental sociologists have been especially critical of constructionist STS studies of climate science, albeit rarely in the open. For example, in informal comments to me, two top environmental sociologists expressed, separately, mindfulness about anti-environmental actors’ thirst for ammunition. In that context, they shared their opinions that (1) those who produce constructionist analyses of mainstream climate science are “naïve” and, in the words of another, (2) that little of value has emerged from STS perspectives on climate change. In reviewer comments I received as editor with a journal, one of them suggested that the limited value of such scholarship was reinforced by “LaTour’s Constructionist Studies of Mainstream Climate Science 31 [sic] admission that it is hard to tell the difference between a ‘strong’ constructivist position in STS and climate change denial,” so little can be expected from expanding this line of work. This reviewer was referring to Bruno Latour, a leading figure in STS scholarship. This reviewer defined “the problem of a social constructionist view of science” as consisting in its usefulness to climate change denial: “If science is a social construction strongly influenced by power relations and professional and organizational ambitions, then we can assert that climate change is just a construction by climate scientists seeking to increase research funding and/or promote their socio-political agenda.” The phrasing reveals a set of interlined assumptions that rarely are explicit and tested: social constructionist analyses of environmental science (1) are negative for environmental policy, (2) yield findings about power relations and incentive structures in science that contrast with common (idealized) understandings of science, and thereby (3) weaken the authority of science for environmental policy. Similarly, a 2008 report (Nagel, Dietz, and Broadbent, 2010) from a sociology workshop funded by the US National Science Foundation shows how misgivings about constructionist studies of mainstream science have shaped the climate research agenda in environmental sociology. The two-day workshop convened 40 sociology faculty, graduate students, and policy experts to define how sociological research can contribute to global efforts to understand the human dimensions of climate change and support and design strategies for mitigation and adaptation. Summarizing existent research and defining research needs going forward, the report presented one of sociologists’ tasks as consisting in mapping and analysis of “social and cultural processes that shape attitudes, discourses, and ideological dimensions of climate change in public debates and policy processes” (Nagel, Dietz, and Broadbent, 2010, p. 16). It did not mention mainstream climate science as meriting sociological attention, however. While it devoted a chapter to the backlash coalition and associated scientists, it made only a single, brief reference to the possibility of studying the scientific mainstream. This reference was in a sentence that called for analysis of the consequences of contrarians’ use of non-scientific outlets for their work versus the scientific mainstream’s reliance on traditional, refereed journals (p. 69). In other words, when it came to mainstream climate science, Nagel, Dietz, and Broadbent (2010) called for sociological analyses only when it was a positive foil serving to highlight the negatives in the case of contrarians. Anthropology shows similar tendencies to environmental sociology. For example, few anthropological studies exist on the socio-political dimensions of integrated assessment models (IAMs), even though these are deeply social, political, and central in climate policy, where they help justify delay of aggressive mitigation (Dyke, Knorr, and Watson, 2021). Socio-political dimensions are built into how they model the interactions of climatic and economic factors. Both present trends and supposedly desirable and possible alternative future pathways. Apprehension about constructionist theory and symmetrical analysis of climate change science is found beyond the fields of environmental sociology and anthropology. One of the most influential books on climate science over the past two decades also steers clear of symmetry. Written by historians, Merchant of Doubt (Oreskes and Conway, 2010) received special attention and endorsement by Science, which expressed a desire to make it required reading for “all those engaged in the business of conveying scientific information to the general public.”1 A hard-hitting exposition of the network and campaigns of some high-level scientists and science advisers working to undermine public faith in scientific knowledge, Merchants of Doubt documents four decades of efforts to cast doubt on the science showing that global warming, smoking, acid rain, and the ozone hole are real and dangerous phenomena. The book performs a thoroughly researched historical and sociological analysis of these actors’ efforts to undermine mainstream science. Although one of the authors is a trained STS scholar, the book does not present a balanced account of scientists involved in the knowledge controversies that one 38 Myanna Lahsen Nagel, J., Dietz, T., and Broadbent, J. (2010) “Workshop on sociological perspectives on global climate change.” In. www.asanet.org/research/NSFClimateChangeWorkshop_120109.pdf. National Science Foundation. Oreskes, N. and Conway, E. M. (2010) Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. New York: Bloomsbury Press. Pielke Jr, R. and Ritchie, J. 2021. “Distorting the view of our climate future: The misuse and abuse of climate pathways and scenarios, “ Energy Research & Social Science, 72, 101890. Stevens, M., MacDuffie, J. P., and Helper, S. (2015) “Reorienting and recalibrating inter-organizational relationships: Strategies for achieving optimal trust,” Organization Studies, 36(9), pp. 1237–1264. Swyngedouw, E. (2010) “Apocalypse forever? Post-political populism and the spectre of climate change,” Theory, Culture & Society, 27(2–3), pp. 213–232. DOI: 10.4324/9781003409748-7 Introduction: Some Partial Truths Let’s begin with a simple narrative—a story neatly structured with characters, a grim setting, and an opportunity for redemptive action. It goes something like this. First, there enters a set of people who invent technologies fueled by burning extracted and refined stocks of fossil energy. Let’s call them industrial technologists. The impacts are marvelous: a new world of machines that accelerates the human capacity to transport themselves and goods (think cars and container ships). A world marked by the globally transformative factory system of commodity production. And for many—but by no means all—of us, an electrified world with temperature-controlled environments and gadgets in our pockets. And yet, of course, the story has a twist. Next, the production, consumption, and life cycles of these very technologies generate climate change that threatens to deeply disrupt, if not wholly upset, the social and economic systems they helped to create. What’s more, those people with the most money and power, whose interests in commodity production, economic growth, and profits helped push the fossil economy into so many aspects of life, apparently cannot risk an alternative path. Still further, elected government officials and those nominally in charge of fulfilling the will of the people have yet to develop solutions that have meaningfully mitigated global warming by bringing down global greenhouse gas emissions. Many in turn cry foul: greed, injustice, evil! Perhaps we are slaves to technologies that bring benefits, but which may spell doom? But alas, the sounding calls for another way can be heard, growing louder. Scientists, working worldwide, gain consensus on the nature of the problem, the issues societies likely face in the future, and ways to transition energy and economic systems away from fossil fuels and economic models based on compound growth to successfully mitigate major climate disasters. And so, an inflection point, a climax, is reached: will people come together, listen to scientists, and save themselves whilst casting down the old guard fossil-industrial technologists—those damned wolves in sheep’s clothing? If it is not yet apparent, the preceding story is a sketch, a gross caricature of some four centuries of modern history and a whole range of social groups in the space of a single paragraph. Even so, I believe it contains some provocative partial truths hidden in the grander myth. Stepping out of the story, we may take away the following questions and consider them more seriously as issues for intellectual and public debate: First, what role did technological forces play in global warming—if not as villains now unmasked, then what? How do scientific and technological developments actually relate to the economic and political forces that have come to dominate modern fossil-industrial, capitalist societies? Second, can scientific practices and products—coming from climate science, environmental science, green design, engineering, and so on—form the critical solutions to climate crisis? Can technological innovation and scientific ingenuity, if not “saviors,” go so far as to “decouple” our economy from our current modes of 5 Political Economies of Climate Science Beyond Technological Villains and Scientific Saviors Zeke Baker This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. 40 Zeke Baker over-exploitation, waste, ecological destruction, and pollution? How can we situate technical ideas and products that are, on the one hand, central to our complex, global, and energy-hungry society and, on the other hand, invested in radically innovative ways of resolving environmental problems? If we move beyond villainizing technology and holding science up as savior, what perspectives and possibilities might open up for exploring, questioning, even rebuilding, the relationship between science and technology, politics, and the economy? In the remainder of this chapter, I draw from my own and others’ research, primarily historical in nature, to take up these questions. This chapter will thus help to introduce some basic ways of thinking about the economic and political aspects of climate change and science, while going beyond the partial truths—the villains’ and saviors’ narrative—sketched out above. The concepts introduced can then serve as a guiding theoretical framework, called the political economy of climate change, that may be usefully applied or challenged in the other chapters in this book, and indeed, when engaging other studies and media regarding climate change. Did Technology Get Us Into This Mess? Technology, Economy, and Engines of Modernity Fossil fuel extraction and energy consumption most rapidly began to increase globally around 1950—when scholars roughly date the initiation of the Great Acceleration (Steffen et al., 2015). At this time, global integration of financial and commodity markets (and in a more limited sense, integrated governance and culture), correlated with a wide range of socially and ecologically impactful patterns: increasing rates of GDP (albeit with clear ups, downs, and inequalities), rapid human population increase, increasing rates of deforestation, increase in greenhouse gas emissions, decline in fisheries stocks worldwide, steep increases in automobile use, air miles flown, cement production, and more. It is tempting to focus on this time period as the most relevant context in which to explore the political and economic causes of global warming. Indeed, it is clear that the technologies of globalization (ranging from supply chain logistics and freight shipping to corporate conglomeration and automated production, to the internet and innovations in financial instruments, to bioengineered agriculture and synthetic soil inputs) have bound together and accelerated economic production, exchange, and consumption. This has, in turn, led to environmental disruptions that are global in scope, with climate change among them. Yet, I would argue that it was the time of the Industrial Revolution that is centrally important to the social, economic, and technological context in which fossil fuels took hold, and that this context shows how fossil fuels were inseparable from industrial capitalism as an emergent economic and political system. So, let’s talk about coal. Coal and the steam engine, when wed together in the late eighteenth century, provided a new means of transforming through combustion the energy held in England’s rich coal stocks into motion that could power machinery. This wedding is a critical moment in the history of technology and of capitalist economic processes. Machines, particularly standardized ones with interchangeable parts produced on assembly lines, could be manufactured and put to use in empowering other mechanical processes, for example, English textile looms and mills. James Watt, often credited with the invention of the transformative Watt engine, initially did so under the logic of efficiency, thus his famous 1769 patent, titled “A New Invented Method of Lessening the Consumption of Steam and Fuel in Fire Engines.” Previous models, especially the Newcomen steam engine, were remarkably wasteful in terms of energy use. As it took shape as a technology, the steam engine can reasonably be called a revolutionary engine of modernity. It connected diverse parts of the world through resource extraction Political Economies of Climate Science 41 (e.g. raw cotton dependent upon slave labor in the U.S. South), factory production (in a rapidly urbanizing England that entailed the growth of a working class), and the early development of industrial-capitalist economies that globally linked people, markets, states, and colonies with natural resources and manufactured goods. So, fossil fuels and the technologies for converting energy stocks into mechanical energy helped power the Industrial Revolution and, ultimately, globalizing economic markets. Importantly, the technologies (including the steam engine, innovations in coal extraction and burning, the factory system of production, etc.) are only poorly understood in isolation from the economic interests and social investments in the systems that have produced them, put them to use, and made them meaningful. Marxist geographer Andreas Malm’s (2016) treatment of coal and steam power in his historical account of the rise of capitalist English manufacturing helps demonstrate a leading approach in STS, namely the social construction of technology. This approach treats technologies as artefacts that only make sense when analyzed and situated within their contexts of production, use, and meaning. For his part, Malm draws upon archival evidence to show that coal’s utility to steam-powered manufacturing industries was not just about its material qualities. Indeed, water-powered wheels were widely in use in powering cottage industries and some larger-scale manufacturing. Waterpower was quite efficient at the job—not to mention renewable. Rather, the wedding of coal and steam power had more to do with the capacity for industrialists and factory owners to centralize production in economically advantageous places. Like landless peasants who could populate urban slums and factory floors, and machines that could be installed and made to run, coal could be dug up in the countryside, stored, and transported for use whenever it was needed. Thus, coal, wage labor, machines, large factories, shipping facilities, and the capital to finance manufacturing operations could all be physically brought together into a new social and ecological system, namely modern industrial cities populated by a growing class of urban workers and powered by fossil energy and steampowered machinery. The development and use of technology and the birth of fossil capital (the accumulation of capital through the exploitation of human labor and fossil fuels) fit hand in glove. This basic principle can be extended to other commodities that link together fossil fuel, natural resources, technological development, and economic interests: automobiles and highways, airplanes, plastics, oil rigs, liquified natural gas terminals—all of it. Perhaps these and many other technologies that characterize a fossil-fueled world can be understood best when situated as economic artefacts, rather than as stand-alone inventions that move, run, and perform on their own. The social and economic construction of technologies can also help us think anew about science. Drawing from studies of early modern England and its colonization of Ireland, STS scholar and sociologist Patrick Carroll (2006) argues that modern science was buttressed by a mechanical philosophy and the use of experiments. Pioneered by the likes of Robert Boyle, William Petty (and, later, yes, James Watt), modern science emerged most powerfully as what Carroll calls engine science. Engine science is less characterized by the refinement of ideas, the testing of theories, and the making of knowledge through standard methods, and more about the development, engineering, tinkering, and use of engines, diversely understood to include meters, scopes, graphs, and chambers. James Watt, in his work with the steam engine and economic investment in factory production, specifically Birmingham’s Soho Foundry that mass produced steam engines, was a quintessential disciple of engine science. Engineering, mechanical philosophy, and economic investment in the capitalist production of commodities mark the initial expression of a fossil-based, incipiently global economic system. If this is the case, then it stands to reason that technology and science are fundamental causes of global warming, even as technological artefacts are hardly villains in their own right. 42 Zeke Baker The Treadmill of Production: Economic Growth and the Role of “Production Science” A leading political-economic theory that helps explain the modern industrial economy in ecological terms—including the science and technology that help comprise it—is treadmill of production theory. In this theoretical model, the treadmill represents the cyclical, but expanding, use of resources to produce commodities, often with increasing energy intensity and complexity over time. In this model, business owners, who exist in competition with one another, are interested in expanding their production to maintain market share in a given sector of the economy. For example, when U.S. corn producers introduce new farming methods to increase yields (say, through GMO technologies and new forms of chemical pest control), Mexican corn farmers are structurally required to do likewise if they want to stay in business—regardless of whether the new methods are environmentally costly or toxic. (Free trade agreements mean, in this case, that U.S. and Mexican farmers are not necessarily protected through tariffs or price controls.) Likewise, governments are invested in the growth of the treadmill, because making and selling more commodities leads to economic growth, in turn bringing jobs, wealth, and opportunities to levy taxes on incomes and economic exchange. If production (that is to say, the treadmill) slows down, as in a recession or depression or through regulation on economic activities, governments risk losing legitimacy from their citizens and investors will likely try to pack up, shift their capital, and move production and business elsewhere. Workers and consumers are often also invested in the expansion of the treadmill because they want jobs and opportunities for higher levels of consumption. The more successful that working people are in advancing their vested economic interests (e.g. by winning high wages in a time of labor demand, or through advancing the political power of labor unions), the more businesses will try to innovate technologically to displace workers. This in turn causes problems of unemployment and an increasingly technical division of labor. But more important for our concerns, it also leads to situations of highly complex systems that may boost economic productivity but will tend to involve environmental risk, for example, health and biodiversity costs associated with pesticide use in agriculture, or higher energy costs of production that has turned to machines or robotics instead of human labor to perform tasks. Technology is important here. Treadmill of production theory explains technological innovation primarily insofar as it helps business owners and states boost economic capacity, often at the expense of the environment and resulting in a more complex ecological system. How does science fit into this process? Treadmill theorists have a useful account of science as a social institution. Allan Schnaiberg, in his 1980 book The Environment: From Surplus to Scarcity, initially proposed the treadmill of production theory to explain aspects of what was discussed above as the post-WWII Great Acceleration. Schnaiberg situated science with reference to the post-war treadmill, namely differentiating production science from impact science. Production science is that which is institutionally, practically, and intellectually connected to the growth of the treadmill. Although post-WWII science, in the U.S. and the Soviet Union most prominently, related also to geopolitical rivalry—what Stuart Leslie (1993) and others have termed the “military-industrial-academic complex” of Cold War science—the development and use of science to generate economic growth has been a basic tenet of science policy and government research funding. On the other hand, Schnaiberg argues that impact science, especially in the environmental sciences but also in public health and some social sciences, fundamentally sheds light on the impacts of the treadmill of production to human life and ecologies, thus making legible the relative (un)sustainability of current social and economic systems. Political Economies of Climate Science 43 The treadmill approach to science/technology is important when considering the topic of global warming because it calls into question the relevance of economic interests, values, and goals that play a hand in directing scientific and technological developments. By extension, this approach would have us analyze not only “climate science” to understand the scientific and technical aspects of global warming, but also the technologies and sciences that have played a role in climate change, whether in centuries past or on the other end of university campuses from the halls of “climate and environmental science.” The geology of hydraulic fracturing, the chemistry of oil refinement, the aerodynamics of wind turbines, the invention of financial instruments that move money around the world and finance economic production—these are all relevant aspects of modern technoscience implicated in global warming. To compare, I would argue that social constructionist approaches (see Lahsen, Chapter 4, this volume) that center around the technological, scientific/intellectual, cultural, and political construction of “climate” may miss important dynamics linking science/technology to climate, namely the dynamics of economic production that link technology, science, and climate. Climate change, from a politicaleconomic view, is the outcome of structural processes, and focus should thus remain on the basic underlying economic mechanisms. It is worthwhile to note that distinguishing science in an either/or fashion as “production”/ “impact” science is overly simplistic. Interestingly, in my own historical research on three centuries of climate science, I do not find that climate (and related) sciences ever neatly fit into this binary model (Baker, 2021). It would seem reasonable that contemporary climate science is centrally about registering among the largest impacts of the Great Acceleration. As an impact science, climate science has fundamentally helped to make legible, explain, and predict how the fossil economy is impacting human and ecological systems. Yet, climate researchers who began to build the first mathematical models of the global climate in the 1950s and 60s—just as the treadmill and its impacts were accelerating globally—were more invested in the use of their science to inform economic gains (e.g. through improved forecasting or even climate engineering—see Schubert, Chapter 31, this volume) than to call attention to environmental problems. And today, the burgeoning field of “climate services” remains as much about protecting economic investments from climate impact shocks as it is in informing systemic change with respect to the economic drivers of climate change. Recently, meteorologists and climate scientists themselves have brought attention to the vast inequalities in access to climate impact science: In other words, those that may be most vulnerable to climate impacts are systematically less likely to have scientific and related resources to forecast and anticipate those impacts (Otto et al., 2021). Therefore, neat delineations between climate-relevant sciences along the lines of production/impact have their limits. Even so, the lesson here is that to understand the contours, emphases, and questions of a given scientific field, it is worthwhile to consider how its institutions, organizations, and individuals relate to prevailing economic interests and the political institutions that support them. Such is the guiding hypothesis in the field called the political economy of science (Tyfield et al., 2017). Are Innovation and Science our Salvation? Ecological Modernization and the Promise of Innovation If connecting change in science and technology to the dynamics of economic interests and political institutions makes sense, then it stands to reason that we would expect science/technology to change if economic actors became deeply concerned about, or otherwise pressured to deal with, climate change and related environmental problems. For example, if the investment risk of 44 Zeke Baker constructing a new coal-fired power plant was too high, or concern for climate impacts too salient, or renewable energy systems more easily exploited, then governments or corporate utilities would not invest in coal plants. Instead, they would take them offline and invest more heavily in renewables. In turn, the available technology in this sector would be scaled up by orders of magnitude, and research and development would proceed apace in line with calls for energy transitions (see Part VII, this volume). Ecological modernization theory (EMT) is an approach in the environmental social sciences (and to some extent engineering and design fields) that explains how environmental values, issues, and processes are now independent of, but increasingly influential in existing economic, industrial, and governance processes. EMT argues that modernization centrally entails reflexivity about society and nature. Modernity, in other words, has historically entailed a recognition, embrace, and active pursuit of a society that shapes, if not controls, its own destiny. The modern world makes itself, its history, and its future, rather than being subject to divine or natural forces. Industrialism (and engine science) had harnessed the power of science and technology to bolster productive capacity. Capitalism likewise harnessed the power of markets to exchange goods and meet human needs. Of course, these historical forces caused problems too, namely exhaustion of some natural resources, disruption of ecological processes, and pollution. Yet, just as industrialists (think, James Watt and his engine) sought to innovate their way out of the economic problem of scarcity through machine production, rather than relying on God to ease their suffering, so too have major social institutions sought to innovate their way out of environmental problems. They are institutions of ecological modernization. The environmental movement, environmental agencies in most national governments around the world, economic pricing of pollution, international organizations like the IPCC (see Part VI, this volume), and the rise of environmental sciences—all represent institutional manifestations of environmental values and interests in sustainability. Ecological modernization and related programs for sustainable development rely heavily upon the promise of technological solutions to problems of unsustainability and pollution as well as poverty and scarcity. Only through technological innovation can the current chains linking energy use and economic growth be broken, a controversial prospect often called the decoupling of energy and economy. As An Eco-Modernist Manifesto (2015) has put it, the goal is to innovate technical, economic, and social systems to “liberate the economy from nature.” In this view, the problem is not so much that human societies are alienated from their natural environments, but rather that they are too reliant upon their exploitations of nature. Cutting down Amazonian rainforests to plant soybeans to fatten cattle to feed beef-loving people halfway across the world represents an extreme reliance on an exploitative use of nature to meet human needs and wants. It’s technically possible, but absolutely stupid. The same could be said with structures that require collecting wood to cook food over polluting, indoor ovens in rural villages around the world. Returning to nature—as traditional environmentalism would have it—is not the answer. Rather, the powers of technological innovation should invest in methods of deepening our ability to reorganize, reinvent, and manipulate nature so that people, businesses, and governments can increase efficiency, enhance ecosystems’ functions, and escape the whims and harms of nature. Examples include product development in the field of “industrial ecology,” which uses materials and systems sciences to create more cyclical productionconsumption-waste systems, often termed “cradle to cradle” (as opposed to cradle to grave) production. Industrial ecologies cannot escape the rules of thermodynamics, but they can indeed use design and cutting-edge science to create products that involve minuscule waste of energy in resources—say, compared to the original steam engines or today’s “fast fashion” that is halfway to the landfill by the time it is first worn. Political Economies of Climate Science 45 Questioning Innovation in Sociotechnical and Economic Systems EMT acknowledges that “innovation” is hardly sufficient to explain or predict the uptake of technologies. This is because technological change or stasis necessarily happens within sociotechnical systems, including economic pressures and incentives (see Part VII, this volume). For example, it is widely accepted that airplane travel is a significant contributor to global warming. Yet, air miles flown per capita are exploding. Furthermore, in a recent study of commercial aviation, Bruce and Spinardi (2018) show that although more efficient airplanes, fuel systems, and air travel systems exist, current forms of air travel are entrenched, or “locked in,” because large corporate players like Boeing face economic risk in innovation and face significant barriers in seeing new, available technologies brought into the mainstream. This example shows that ecological modernization may be a partial or segmented process, rather than a general theory useful for explaining widespread economic trends. Even so, EMT helps to center the possibilities of design and innovation that incorporate “natural capital” and ecological values. Science and technology in themselves may not have a salvation function, but they can help confront environmental problems caused by the “aberrant” industrialism of old that failed to effectively value nature and relied too heavily upon unsustainable resource use, including non-renewable fossil fuel stocks. Although EMT may help to explain growing concern in civil society about environmental sustainability, and growing state and business interest in dealing with environmental problems, the theory has been criticized for being idealistic. Let’s return to coal. As an energy source, coal is decreasingly used in some places, like the U.S. and Europe. Ecomodernists may see this as a sign of ecological modernization. Globally, in the case of coal and renewable energy technologies, there is a different and perhaps more treadmill-like story: there has yet to be a year since 2000 when retirement of coal-based energy productive capacity outpaced growth in global energy output from coal (I encourage you to explore the Global Energy Monitor to observe global and national trends in energy production and use, specifically the Coal Plant Tracker: https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-coal-plant-tracker/dashboard/). In other words, despite coal plants being retired in many countries, more energy is being drawn from coal right now than last year, and so on. In the important case of China, the share of coal-based power dropped from 53 percent to 44 percent in less than five years (from 2018 to 2022). Even so, the total amount of coal-based power in China rose over that same period (from 1010 to 1121 GW). The International Energy Agency found over a 1 percent increase in total worldwide coal consumption in 2022, and the Agency has projected around the same level of total annual consumption through 2025. This would suggest that the sociotechnical system that involves coal is relatively robust. It is a treadmill with significant business and policy momentum despite general recognition or reflexivity about environmental costs. Conclusion This chapter situated climate change and science with reference to economic and political structures. In the process, I argued that the technologies and sciences we think of as related to global warming should be expanded. The steam engine installed in a new textile mill in 1840s Manchester and the petrochemical fertilizer being sprayed on a wheat field in Alberta, Canada, each have their place: these, and many others besides, are products of technoscience; they form moments in the growth and functioning of a capitalist economy, manifest in the last 75 years as the Great Acceleration and the economic drivers of the treadmill of production. To consider climate, science, and society together, central attention must remain on the simultaneous economic and technological basis of a fossil-based global society. 46 Zeke Baker Even so, the process of ecological modernization is undeniable: climate change and environmental sustainability are increasingly woven into nearly all scientific disciplines. And the chances your hometown, state, or province’s government has a “Climate Action Plan” are pretty high. Environmental values are a feature of the modern world, as is the will to incorporate them into policy and economic decision-making. STS scholars, including many in this volume, see this as an opportunity to study, evaluate, and even help design technological systems and ways of knowing that are democratically accountable, transparent about their underlying values and assumptions, and when necessary, modest or critical about their “salvation” potential. Technology as villain. Science as savior. These are simplistic and problematic propositions. They have little basis in the history of science and the history of fossil capital. Worse, they obscure the variegated, and indeed contradictory, ways that science/technology relate to global warming, environmental problems and attempts to deal with them. But the partial truths that opened this chapter remain salient: follow the economic interests, and the relationship between climate, science, and society will likely come into better focus. Further Reading Alkhalili, N., Dajani, M., and Mahmoud, Y. (2023) “The enduring coloniality of ecological modernization: Wind energy development in occupied Western Sahara and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights,” Political Geography 103, 102871.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.102871 Bonneuil, C. and Fressoz, J. (2021) The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us. New York: Verso. Ellul, J. (1990) The Technological Bluff. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Jorgenson, A. K. and Clark, B. (2012) “Are the economy and the environment decoupling? A comparative international study, 1960–2005,” American Journal of Sociology 118(1), pp. 1–44. https://doi. org/10.1086/665990 Hawken, P., Lovins, H., and Lovins, A. (1999) Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution. New York: Little, Brown & Company. References Baker, Z. (2021) “Agricultural capitalism, climatology and the ‘stabilization’ of climate in the United States, 1850–1920,” British Journal of Sociology 72, pp. 379–396. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12762 Breakthrough Institute. “An ecomodernist manifesto,” (June 2015) DOI:10.13140/RG.2.1.1974.0646 Bruce, A. and Spinardi, G. (2018) “On a wing and hot air: Eco-modernisation, epistemic lock-in, and the barriers to greening aviation and ruminant farming,” Energy Research & Social Science 40, pp. 36–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.11.032 Carroll, P. (2006) Science, Culture, and Modern State Formation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leslie, S. W. (1993) The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford. New York: Columbia University Press. Malm, A. (2016) Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming. New York: Verso. Otto, F. E. L., Harrington, L., Schmitt, K., Philip, S., Kew, S., van Oldenborgh, G. J., Singh, R., Kimutai, J., and Wolski, P. (2020) “Challenges to understanding extreme weather changes in lower income countries,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 101(10), pp. E1851–60. https://doi.org/10.1175/ BAMS-D-19-0317.1 Schnaiberg, A. (1980) The Environment: From Surplus to Scarcity. New York: Oxford University Press. Steffen, W., Broadgate, W., Deutsch, L., Gaffney, O. and Ludwig, C. (2015) “The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration,” The Anthropocene Review 2(1), pp. 81–98. https://doi. org/10.1177/2053019614564785 Tyfield, D., Lave, R., Randalls, S., and Thorpe, C. (eds.) (2017) The Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of Science. London: Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003409748-8 As climate change was constructed as an environmental problem in the 1980s and 1990s, one of the first topics Science and Technology Studies (STS) researchers addressed was the movement of scientific knowledge and information into political deliberations and the public realm. These topics were not unique to STS. Other social science disciplines (especially sociology, political science, and communications studies) also contributed research, but as we see with the chapters in this Part, STS asks a mostly unique set of questions and takes a different approach. While Part VI addresses the policy context for climate change, this Part addresses the media’s role in knowledge translation to publics. It is important to understand both “media” and “publics” as pluralities. Media is plural in its form (television, social media, newspapers, etc.), ideological orientation (politically conservative, liberal, etc.), source of revenue (advertising, public, or government support), and targeted audience (international, national, regional, or local). Publics are diverse along the typical lines studied by social scientists – social class, gender, race, ethnicity, urban/rural, religion, political leaning, and so on. Consequently, the same knowledge or information may be interpreted, represented, and understood differently by diverse media and publics. That doesn’t necessarily mean that some media are irresponsible, and some publics uninformed or unintelligent. Rather, they bring with them different interests, mental models, values, and so on, through which climate change knowledge is processed. A dominant approach in the social sciences is to study the types of frames, storylines, topics, and so on that would be of interest to diverse publics and persuade them to take climate change seriously and change their behavior. This approach is sometimes referred to as the “science of science communication”. Social scientists also research how different media are influenced by the fossil fuel industry and other social actors who oppose transitions to renewable energy in what they claim as the disruption of economical and dependable fossil fuels in the energy supply sector. These actors work through subtle or overt political pressure, or by directly financing media outlets that reproduce their claims. While these topics also are raised in STS research, the primary foci are media translations of scientific knowledge on climate change, sociotechnologies proposed as solutions, and the interaction of knowledge and values amongst diverse publics. STS critiques both the “deficit model” of public understanding of climate change and the “linear path model” between scientific knowledge production, its uptake in the media, and public reception. Working outside these models, STS research emphasizes the interactions among scientific knowledge, media attention, and public knowledge, values, and local concerns as climate change in all its complexities reaches them as an environmental problem. Attention is placed on diverse framings of climate Part III Media and Public Communication about Climate Change Introduction Stephen Zehr 54 Stephen Zehr the 16 years provided methodological continuity for the longitudinal study. Using LexisNexis (now Nexis Uni) articles were identified with search terms “climate change” or “global warming” appearing in the headline. Approximately 3500 articles were read and coded for the presence of major news frames or “subframes” (i.e., a specific subcategory of a news frame such as “drought” as a subframe of environmental impact). Table 6.2 lists frames and subframes that were identified and coded in the analysis. They also were coded for presence of hybrid frames – when two or more news frames were seamlessly merged such that the elimination of one would largely negate the meaning of the text. A hybrid frame addressed a heterogeneous climate change frame, rather than two or more separate frames. Table 6.2 Climate change news frames and subframes Frames Subframes Economic Costs of corporate actions Economic impacts of GCC Economic opportunities of mitigation or adaptation Policy impacts on economy Causal factors Fossil fuel extraction & use Capitalism/consumption Land use change/deforestation Natural causes Environmental impact Adaptation (non-human adaptations) Biodiversity/species loss Health Sea level rise/flooding Desertification/drought/fire Extreme weather events Environmental imposed security threat Agriculture/fishing Fresh water Political Policies Policy actors Political deliberation Science Discoveries, new studies, new reports Science funding or infrastructure Scientists Public GCC education Public norms, values, behaviors Understanding, knowledge, beliefs Environmentalist/civil society action Social inequality Unequal contributions to GCC Unequal mitigation-adaptation obligations Unequal vulnerability to GCC Technological/Design developments Adaptation Mitigation Geoengineering Climate Change Communication 55 News Frames The quantitative results indicate that political, science, environmental impacts, and economic frames and subframes dominated the time interval across newspapers. Of these four, political framing was the most dominant. Receiving much less attention were frames around causal factors; public knowledge, education, understanding, and environmentalist/civil society action; social inequality; and technological or design developments. There was some variability across newspapers and over time (e.g., the Financial Times gave more attention to economic issues, and across the newspapers and nations attention to public and social inequality framing slightly increased over time), but the dominance of political framing stood out across both dimensions. This finding suggests that climate change was primarily represented as a political problem rather than a problem endemic to the capitalist economic system, consumer practices, lack of public knowledge, or national or global inequalities. How might we interpret the significance of these results? My preferred option draws upon the social theory of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas distinguished between the “system,” within which he included the economic and political institutions, and the “lifeworld” which consisted of the everyday world of social and community relations. His argument was that these have become differentiated in capitalist societies. Furthermore, crises occurring in capitalist societies are often transferred from economic to political institutions where the government may be blamed for flaws within the capitalist system (e.g., a president, prime minister, congress, or parliament blamed for high inflation or high unemployment). The political system may, in turn, transfer the crisis to the lifeworld where people blame each other or themselves (e.g., a crisis around a pandemic is transferred to governments which in turn may transfer it to the lifeworld where people blame each other for not following rules, not getting vaccinated, etc.). Turning to climate change, we understand that at its roots the problem is generated through economic production and consumption activities. However, over time it could easily be transferred to governments whom we hold responsible for the problem and for generating solutions. It may also be transferred to the lifeworld where we blame ourselves and others’ wasteful lifestyles. Without addressing Habermas’ theory in more detail, the empirical results mentioned above indicate that climate change was primarily framed as a political problem in major newspapers from 2000–2015, rather than as a problem of capitalist production and consumption or everyday life activity. Newspaper reading publics were predominantly pushed to the view that governments and politicians were responsible for finding solutions, rather than economic leaders or communities and individuals. Because of its global and complex nature – its “wickedness” – governments were ill-equipped at developing treaties or passing legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, economic organizations such as corporations or people in their everyday lives may have felt exonerated from engaging in profit-reducing or life-changing behavior. The crisis was not represented as inherently part of their world. This imbalance in newspaper framing of climate change may have facilitated inaction. Rather than pulling together because we are all at fault and part of the solution, newspaper frames pushed members of these nations in the direction of holding governments and politicians accountable. Through an STS approach that recognizes climate change is about many heterogeneous things (represented here simply as news frames), we then empirically see how newspaper coverage from 2000–2015 did not represent this diversity in proportionate amounts. Hybrid Frames What about hybrid frames? As noted above, concern has been expressed that the media “get the science right” when writing about climate change. Within the deficit model there is the 56 Stephen Zehr expressed concern that members of the media may not sufficiently understand the science of climate change and consequently misrepresent or ignore important features. An STS perspective deconstructs this way of thinking by challenging the meaning of “getting the science right.” Is getting the science right simply describing scientific knowledge accurately as scientists communicate it in scientific papers, professional conferences, or personal interviews, perhaps simplifying it a bit for public consumption? Or is getting the science right a process of combining scientific knowledge with other climate change concerns as they relate to public knowledge and values, social inequality, economic matters, and other frames described above? This is where hybrid framing is relevant. We might consider hybrid frames as more accurate descriptions of climate change because they combine different frames together in ways that describe deeper, relational, and more complex aspects of climate change. That is, they tap into the wicked nature of the problem. The 2000–2015 study indicates that hybrid framing was common in these newspaper accounts. In general, journalists did an effective job of seamlessly combining frames to tap into the problem’s complexity. However, one notable shortcoming involved situations where science frames were part of hybrid frames. As expected, there were many instances of hybrid frames involving science and environmental effects. In these articles, journalists seamlessly integrated environmental effects with the scientific research and researchers who teased them out. However, there were far fewer hybrid frames involving science and other news frames such as politics, public knowledge or values, or social inequality. The combination of science and environmental effects made up around 50% of all instances where science was involved in a hybrid frame, with some variability across newspapers. From an STS perspective, this finding suggests that journalists were reticent about making strong associations between the science of climate change and other dimensions. To say it differently, climate change science was not often incorporated into climate change’s complexity or wickedness. Why might this be the case? Some clues came from personal interviews with journalists. For example, a New Zealand journalist mentioned that he was afraid to get something scientifically wrong due to the angry pushback he’d receive. “[T]he sensitivity is something I’m very aware of. People jump at the chance to take us to the Press Council, which is our newspaper standards council here. If you make one slight slip up there are a lot of eager eyes …. I just have to be careful to be very accurate about what I’m saying” (Personal Interview, New Zealand Journalist). Other journalists expressed difficulties interviewing academic scientists who considered themselves “burned by the press” in the past. An acceptance of the deficit model and related linear model (i.e., scientific knowledge comes first followed in a linear path to political action) by scientists and some journalists may also be a reason. Within these models, an assumption (false according to STS research) is that objective scientific research is conducted first without regard to political, public, or economic implications. Only later is that knowledge interpreted for its political, public, and economic relevance. Translating this to journalist activity, then, perhaps some journalists felt pressure to precisely describe scientific knowledge without further interpretation, elaboration, or combination with other news frames to make certain they “got the science right.” Opportunities to bring science into the heterogeneous, wicked nature of climate change were consequently lost. Conclusion It is important for the media to give good balance across climate change issues, but not necessarily in a form that gives equal voice to climate change believers and naysayers. Balance, instead, emerges with representations of diverse dimensions of climate change, as depicted in Climate Change Communication 57 the news frames and subframes mentioned above, and in representing its heterogeneous, wicked character. Success in doing so gives publics fuller information about climate change – its effects on them, public knowledge about it, its integration with global inequality, policy possibilities, and so on. We can ask how well the media has performed in providing balance. The above empirical study provides a partial answer by examining news frames and hybrid frames in national newspapers from 2000–2015. The results are mixed. While a range of news frames appear, there was also an imbalance toward political framing and away from closely tying climate change to the lifeworld and to production and consumption activities that cause the problem. As for hybrid framing, one detected limitation is a gap in representing climate change science as seamlessly associated with other frames, with the exception of environmental impacts. What this study does not tell us is how the media has been doing over the past several years, especially as social media has become a more salient mode for obtaining news. Perhaps readers of this chapter can design a study to address that gap in knowledge. They might also consider other types of climate change frames not covered in this study. More generally, an STS approach to media coverage of climate change steers clear from an overly simplistic deficit model, that all people need is more information in more striking language and images to change their minds and importantly their behaviors. Climate change and most other environmental problems are far too complex. My research above only looks in one direction – at diversity in news frames and hybrid framing in newspapers. STS research also looks at many other research problems such as different patterns between national and local media (see Loose and Carvalho, Chapter 7, this volume), the use of images in climate change reporting (see Schäfer and Yan, Chapter 8, this volume), representations of uncertainty and ignorance, distinctive features of social media representations of climate change, and so on. Readers of this chapter might, as a matter of course, reflect upon how climate change and its different dimensions are constructed in the media they attend to. What is included? What is excluded? What are the implications of those media decisions? Further Reading Boykoff, M. (2019) Creative (Climate) Communications: Productive Pathways for Science, Policy and Society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. References Corner, A. J., Markowitz, E., and Pidgeon, N. F. (2014) “Public engagement with climate change: The role of human values,” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 5 (3), pp. 411–422. Hulme, M. (2009) Why We Disagree About Climate Change. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.4324/9781003409748-10 Climate Change Communication in Brazil Matters How is China’s growing appetite for pork and the USA’s massive consumption of beef linked to Brazil’s contribution to climate change? How does political populism exacerbate climate change? What is the social distribution of gains and harms involved in greenhouse gas emitting activities? These questions illustrate some of the complexities of human-environment relations in the current world. They also point to connections between different scales and spaces involved in climate change, as well as to important social justice issues. Climate change communication plays a critical role in shaping public perceptions. The way in which the mentioned connections are represented and debated in public spaces, including mainstream and alternative media, can reinforce current trajectories of climate (in)action or stimulate transformation. Therefore, it is essential to consider whether different media outlets make the relationships between economic, political, and social systems visible or opaque, whose voices and perspectives are given prominence, and what needs and values are privileged in media discourses on climate change. Before we delve into media and communication, let us look at some important climaterelated aspects of Brazil. It is widely recognized that the Amazon, a vast portion of its territory, possesses exceptional biodiversity and plays a vital role in the natural regulation of the climate system. Yet, both the Amazon and other critical biomes, like the lesser-known Cerrado, have been disappearing at alarming rates over the last few decades. Most of the deforestation, deliberate burning, and other forms of environmental destruction are carried out to “free” land for cattle raising and food production, which are tied to national and international economic interests. In recent times, vast swaths of Brazil’s territory have been planted with soy, which is exported to China to feed a rapidly growing pig farming industry (meeting the demand for meat of a fastexpanding middle class). Meat and agricultural exports to the USA and to Europe have been contributing to changes in Brazil for longer. All of this helps explain why Brazil is one of the top ten countries in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Land use changes (especially deforestation), together with agriculture and animal farming, produce about three quarters of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions (SEEG, 2021). The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has highlighted in a report on the economics of climate change that the low environmental sustainability development model adopted in the region is obstructing the fight against climate change (CEPAL, 2015). Like other Latin American nations, Brazil heavily relies on environmental resources and is highly susceptible to the consequences of climate change due to its demographic and socioeconomic status. Environmental governance in Brazil faces several challenges. For years, public policies and protections have been weakened, and under the government of Jair Bolsonaro (2019–2022), state supervision of destructive practices was largely halted. Arguing that 7 Public Communication and Perceptions of Climate Change in Brazil Eloisa Beling Loose and Anabela Carvalho This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. Public Communication and Perceptions of Climate Change in Brazil 59 the country’s economic growth should be prioritized even if that meant taking down a “few trees,” populist Bolsonaro stimulated the plundering of Brazil’s natural spaces and resources. During his tenure, deforestation increased by 60% compared to the previous four years, and illegal mining activities expanded significantly in the world’s largest rainforest, resulting in severe environmental and humanitarian consequences for indigenous populations such as the Yanomami. In a very unequal society like Brazil’s, a powerful agricultural and industrial elite tends to accumulate wealth at the cost of all others. A host of international corporations also lie on the earning side. On the other side lies a large part of the population that struggles to make a living and that is highly vulnerable to extreme weather events due to poor quality housing or other forms of insecurity. Given the above, Brazil represents a crucial case to explore public communication and public perceptions of climate change. To address climate change, it is important to understand its causes and perceive it as a risk that already impacts the present and will be even more challenging in the near future. Quality journalism and engaged citizens may contribute to public debate and exert pressure toward public policies and other actions to mitigate climate change. This public engagement can also help reduce the risks of climate disasters and prepare for a reality with higher temperatures, more irregular rainfall patterns, and more intense and frequent extreme events. In 2020, 78% of Brazilians rated climate change as a very important issue, and this figure increased to 81% in 2021 (based on surveys by ITS-Rio and Yale University, 2022). Despite high levels of concern, knowledge about climate change remained insufficient, with only 21% of respondents indicating that they had extensive knowledge of the topic; 46% felt that they had a moderate understanding of climate change; 24% said they knew little; and 8% said that they knew nothing (1% did not choose any answer). Public perceptions of climate change are largely influenced by the media. While public understanding of climate change is also influenced by psychological, social, cultural, and political factors, news media’s perceived credibility and reach make them a vital area to study social representations. However, not all media outlets are the same and their coverage of climate change may differ significantly. The remainder of this chapter looks at trends in media coverage of climate change in Brazil and examines differences and similarities between various types of journalism, namely national mainstream media, a regional media outlet with hegemonic characteristics, and two digital alternative media platforms (see the next section for explanations on mainstream and alternative media). The Media Landscape of Brazil The media play a crucial role in informing the public about the causes, consequences, and stakes involved in climate change, as well as in discussing response pathways and proposals. They have the ability to influence public opinion, and to legitimize or contest public policies. Despite being commonly referred to as a singular entity, the media are made up of multiple and often distinct institutions, ranging from public to privately-owned, with different communication styles and methods. Media diversity is an important indicator of social and political health, as well as a crucial factor in the quality of democracies. In Brazil, control of the media has historically been in the hands of a few families. According to the Media Ownership Monitor (https:// brazil.mom-gmr.org/en/), the Brazilian media system exhibits significant concentration in terms of ownership, audiences, and geography. Mainstream media can be distinguished from smaller, alternative, media. The former are typically owned and/or have strong connections with large corporations, and prioritize profit as their goal. Given their economic and cultural dominance, mainstream media may be termed 60 Eloisa Beling Loose and Anabela Carvalho hegemonic. Their approach to journalism is “top-down,” with a prevalence of official sources and a relatively rigid and hierarchical organization of news production. Alternative media adopt a “bottom-up” perspective in their journalistic practice, giving more space to citizen sources and to those without a voice in the news of major media groups. Alternative media are financially sustained by public contributions or temporary subsidies, which makes the production process more flexible and freer from the constraints of a single model. In principle, this can allow for more critique of the established political and economic systems. In Brazil, access to journalistic information remains a significant challenge for many small towns located far from major urban areas, particularly those situated outside of the South and Southeast regions. The rise of messaging applications like WhatsApp and Telegram has contributed to the spread of disinformation, partly filling the information void left by traditional media outlets. Television still dominates in terms of advertising expenditure within the media industry, although it is gradually losing ground to digital alternatives (Reuters Institute, 2022). Although Brazil boasts more smart devices than people, internet access is still uneven across regions and social groups. While in power as President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro often tried to discredit journalism. Numerous attacks on the press and journalists were carried out, and public information became more difficult to obtain. This led some news media to repeatedly question Bolsonaro’s policies and, as the disruption of environmental protection was flagrant, a large part of the Brazilian press began to cover environmental issues more frequently, including climate change. Trends in Coverage of Climate Change by Brazilian Mainstream Media According to Climate Radar’s monitoring of climate coverage in Latin American newspapers (https://conexioncop.com/radarclimatico/), there has been an increase in climate-related news in recent years. However, such news items, which may discuss the climate crisis or simply mention it, only constitute around 2% of the total news analyzed. Over time, there has been significant fluctuation in media coverage of climate change, primarily influenced by international factors. In Folha de São Paulo, a highly influential Brazilian newspaper, the number of news stories quadrupled between the second half of 2006 and the first half of 2007 (Fioravanti, 2007). This surge in attention was attributed to significant events during that period, such as the release of multiple Working Group reports by the IPCC and a Group of Eight (G8 – group of eight leading industrial nations) meeting. Similar trends were observed in an analysis of 50 newspapers between 2005 and 2008 (Vivarta, 2010), confirming the impact of international events on news agendas. Coverage of climate-related topics is often driven by major scientific reports like those from the IPCC, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conferences, or disasters that may be connected to climate change. What do we know about mainstream media coverage of climate change in Brazil? Various studies have demonstrated that there is a strong dependence on news agencies, both domestic and international, resulting in limited coverage of climate change at the regional or local level. News reports primarily rely on sources associated with the government. Representatives of the scientific field also feature frequently. In contrast, mainstream media do not give much visibility to environmental activists, indigenous peoples, traditional communities, and other citizen sources. Political-economic frames have dominated news coverage of climate change. For instance, Veja, Isto É, Época, and Carta Capital, Brazil’s largest newsmagazines, have emphasized the costs involved in addressing climate change (Girardi et al., 2013) and Folha de São Paulo has focused on political decisions and disputes in international summits, giving prominence to governmental sources (Rodas and Di Giulio, 2017). There is a notable research gap Public Communication and Perceptions of Climate Change in Brazil 61 in the coverage of climate change on television, which is particularly concerning as television remains a leading source of information and opinion-shaping in Brazil. Of particular interest are major broadcast networks like TV Globo, both in their regular news coverage of climate change and in their special programs and documentaries that explore the topic, such as the 2019 series “Planet Extremo” (“Extreme Planet”). What about media coverage of the Amazon? Given its biophysical and symbolic significance, it is worth considering how the Amazon is covered in Brazilian media. Despite their clear connection, the climate crisis and the destruction of the Amazon are often addressed separately. The Amazon has historically been depicted as a pristine and untouched landscape, with the human presence often erased (except for indigenous populations), rendering the relationship between local communities and the forest invisible. For many years, the focus was on the forest’s exuberance and what was considered exotic, while only a few reports of environmental crimes were produced, and not systematically. In recent years, the media have increasingly covered issues related to the Amazon, particularly illegal logging, the expansion of the agricultural frontier (including cattle ranching and soybean cultivation), and deforestation. This coverage is due to national public policies and the intensification of climate change consequences. During the period of the Bolsonaro government, there was an increase in media coverage on issues such as illegal mining (supported by the President), as well as failures of or opposition to the preservation of indigenous lands. Additionally, the growth of the global climate debate and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and preserve the forest’s ability to capture carbon dioxide have contributed to the Amazon receiving more attention. National coverage of the Amazon is typically produced by newsrooms located in the distant Rio de Janeiro-São Paulo axis, which adds to the challenge of adequately reporting on the region. Although there have been some improvements in media coverage about the Amazon, significant problems persist. The historical metropolis-colony relationship, stemming from the colonial era, still persists in what is referred to as internal colonialism. Local communities continue to be excluded from decision-making processes that determine the future of the region, and nature is often viewed solely as an economic resource, benefitting groups that do not reside there. The notion of the Amazon as an empty and backward region, waiting for development, has been prevalent for a long time and was reinforced by Bolsonaro’s rhetoric in favor of exploiting it for economic gain. Overall, the IPCC’s perspective – that climate change is happening and is a result of anthropogenic action – has been prevalent in the Brazilian press. However, with the antienvironmental government of Bolsonaro, some political authorities and media outlets have aligned with policies propagating climate change denial. The widespread dissemination of misinformation through social media and messaging apps, the former government’s attempt to discredit the press, and an increase in political polarization are factors contributing to the strengthening of views opposed to scientific evidence. An opinion poll conducted in July 2019 by DataFolha (https://datafolha.folha.uol.com.br/opiniaopublica/2019/07/1988289-para-85-dos-brasileirosplaneta-esta-ficando-mais-quente.shtml) found that 15% of the Brazilian population did not believe in global warming – almost double the number from a survey conducted about a decade earlier (8%). Regional Media Focusing on National and Global Scales How is climate change represented in media that operate at the local or regional scales? Given that climate change is a global issue, do they matter at all? Local and regional journalism is 62 Eloisa Beling Loose and Anabela Carvalho an important arena for connecting climate change with citizens’ daily lives. It can link climate change to specific social sites and experiences and can offer qualified information for exercising environmental and political citizenship. Research has shown that the local scale is more accessible to citizens and offers more opportunities for engagement with climate change. Local journalism is also better suited to expose local vulnerabilities to climate change, examine socioeconomic inequities, and scrutinize official policies to tackle the sources and consequences of climate change in a given area. After all, all greenhouse gas emissions occur in particular spaces (although very unequally around the world) and climate change impacts also materialize in specific locations. In Curitiba, the capital of the state of Paraná and the most populous city in southern Brazil, Gazeta do Povo is one of the main news media. Although Curitiba is often cited as a model city in environmental terms, it faces climate change-related risks such as floods, landslides, and storms, especially hail. Precarious dwellings and underprivileged social groups are particularly exposed to these impacts, and there are also forecasts of a higher incidence of climate changederived diseases. A study of news pieces published in Gazeta do Povo in 2013 (Loose, 2020) revealed interesting hints on climate change journalism at the local scale. The analysis showed that the general message was that the climate was changing and that humans contribute significantly to the acceleration of this phenomenon. This message was consistent with propositions of the IPCC. Scientific knowledge was the dominant macro-frame in the newspaper’s coverage. Despite the infrequent use of the term “risk,” its meaning was conveyed frequently, particularly in news headlines, subtitles, and leads covering scientific reports and projections regarding the impacts of climate change. The coverage, however, emphasized climate hazards that were distant from the local community, such as the melting of polar ice caps. These findings provide insight into the decisions made by journalists when reporting on scientific studies. Although risks were utilized to capture readers’ attention, the detachment of climate-related risks from people’s daily lives reduced readers’ awareness of the proximity of these risks. The constant use and reproduction of materials from news agencies created a distance between the reports of Gazeta do Povo and the reality of the state of Paraná or the city of Curitiba. While the global scale is relevant and necessary to discuss climate change, its disconnectedness with citizens’ daily lives tends to obscure nearby responsibilities over a problem that affects everyone, albeit in different ways. The newspaper’s reports did not address the governance of climate change beyond international politics nor encourage public debate on such matters. Possible forms of action to avoid or reduce GHG emissions or to develop adaptation and resilience at the local or regional levels were hardly explored. Similar to its coverage of climate change policies, Gazeta do Povo drew extensively on materials from national and international news agencies when reporting scientific knowledge on climate change. It predominantly contributed to the dissemination of prevailing scientific views on climate change, especially those of the IPCC and Brazilian Panel on Climate Change (PBMC), with little room for other perspectives, such as those of Brazilian and Latin American scientists interested in local aspects. Different, But Not So Much: Climate Change Coverage by Alternative Media To explore journalistic discourses beyond those constructed by national and regional mainstream media, this section focuses on alternative media outlets. While both types of media share a set of values and techniques, they tend to differ in their coverage. Alternative media outlets, being non-commercial, have greater freedom to report on the causes and responses to the climate Public Communication and Perceptions of Climate Change in Brazil 63 crisis, highlight diverse voices and actions from the Global South, and value local perspectives and knowledge. Historically, alternative journalism has taken a stance against injustices and inequalities, rejecting the notion of neutrality, impartiality, or objectivity that dominates mainstream media. The question then arises: how does alternative climate journalism fare in Brazil? Conexão Planeta (https://conexaoplaneta.com.br/) and Colabora (https://projetocolabora. com.br/) are two digital news projects specializing in environmental issues that are part of the alternative media landscape. Their editorial lines are dedicated to promoting a more sustainable society, and they frequently cover climate change-related issues. In a study of the 2019–2020 period, Loose (2022) analyzed how and when these media outlets covered climate change. Three peaks in coverage were observed: during the COP-25 period, the student climate strikes in September 2019, and in April–June 2020 in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. Content related to climate change was categorized based on its focus on causes, effects, solutions, proclimate actions (such as demonstrations and campaigns), and criticism of inaction. Discursive markers were also examined to reveal silences, representations, and the most recurring players in the news. A significant portion of news stories focused on global impacts rather than on scales and realities closer to the audiences of these alternative media outlets. The stance was predominantly characteristic of the Global North. Most coverage presented science as the sole authoritative source of knowledge, similar to the approach of mainstream media. Scientists held considerable influence in the climate debate within these alternative media and were often cited in support of the discourses of activists and promoters of climate solutions. While scientists are crucial actors in combating denialism and misinformation, their prominence reinforces a single perspective (the scientific one), which can hinder the pluralization of voices in climate coverage. Traditional knowledge based on a closer relationship with nature, for example of indigenous peoples, riverside communities, and quilombolas communities (descendants of enslaved Brazilian-African people), was underrepresented in news reports about climate change in alternative media. The need for economic growth was left unquestioned, with only occasional criticism of the neoliberal discourse (i.e., discourse that emphasizes free market economics) when compared to the promotion of a green economy during the post-pandemic recovery. Managerial solutions, such as increased energy efficiency, less polluting transportation, and carbon pricing, were often mentioned. These observations suggest that the dominant values, routines, and criteria of newsworthiness in the journalistic field strongly influence climate change coverage even in alternative media. Despite this, several distinctive traits were identified in the coverage. Regular reporting was dedicated to pro-climate actions, such as street demonstrations, celebrity statements and political pledges, exhibitions, fundraising and campaigning, as well as other events aimed at raising awareness and promoting climate action. This reflects an engaged journalism that also emphasized blunt criticism, a rare occurrence in mainstream media due to commercial interests. Civil society sources were given more coverage than official sources, particularly political sources. However, the activists that were most frequently consulted or quoted were only a few individuals, namely celebrity-activists that were already well-known figures such as Greta Thunberg. Local activists, including indigenous people fighting for the protection of Brazilian forests, did not receive as much attention as might be expected. This coverage limited the diversity of voices and consequently the range of perspectives. One distinctive aspect of the alternative media that were analyzed concerns the positioning of journalists alongside activists. In their editorial self-presentation, these media outlets openly declared their commitment to expanding environmental awareness by providing qualified information, and did not try to hide subjectivity behind discursive strategies that pretended to be 70 Mike S. Schäfer and Xiaoyue Yan impacts of visuals have shown that fear appeals (messages aiming to elicit fear by highlighting dangers and suffering), which often appear in climate change communication, can elicit negative emotions and stifle action – while other, less commonly used visuals (like depictions of solutions) evoke positive emotions and can improve people’s belief that they can take action to address climate change. Analyzing Social Media Visualizations of Climate Change The emergence and rise of social media have changed how issues like climate change are publicly communicated, perceived, and engaged with. Social media have become important sources of climate-related content for many. They have changed the fundamental logic of public communication by allowing for many-to-many communication, bypassing established gatekeepers like journalists, and enabling members of the public to author, distribute, share, or comment upon content and take an active part in the public discussion of climate change. So far, however, only very few studies have analyzed climate change imagery on social media. They mostly employ discourse analysis, qualitative or quantitative content analysis that rely on manual coding and modest sample sizes (from one to 200 visuals). Often, they are case studies focusing on single well-known organizations or persons, like Greenpeace and Greta Thunberg, or prominent events like the COP summits. They frequently employ multimodal Table 8.1 Core findings from the research field Analyses of News Media Imagery Analyses of Social Media Imagery Typical research approach Mostly quantitative or qualitative content analyses of print media imagery from Western countries. Mostly manual variants of content analysis of small samples, usually from one social media platform. Core findings The use of imagery in news media has increased. News outlets around the world adopt relatively similar imagery of climate change. The selection of news imagery can be problematic. News imagery of climate change is influenced by journalists, news producers, but also many stakeholders. Visual content has considerable influence on audiences. Visuals on social media differ from news imagery. Number of videos supporting consensus views about climate change and skeptical videos differ considerably from platform to platform. Activists and activist groups have been shown to use social media visuals extensively. Different types of visuals receive different levels of engagements on social media. Limitations Lack of multimodal analysis that is taking imagery as well as written text, sound, or video into account. Focus often on case studies and lack of large-scale (e.g. computational) analyses. Focus largely on English-language data and Western countries. Mostly single platform studies, often analyzing Twitter. Lack of quantitative and computational analyses. Focused largely on English materials and Western countries. News and Social Media Imagery of Climate Change 71 approaches, taking visual and textual attributes of posts into account. Several findings can be distilled from the field: First, even though few studies have compared this systematically, visuals on social media seem to differ from news media imagery. On Twitter, memes, motivational quotes, and screenshots have been shown to be the most common visualizations of climate change, followed by portrayals of individuals like politicians and celebrities. Visualizations of climate change consequences, the most popular visual category in the news, are less important on social media. When focusing only on “top tweets” (defined by Twitter as “the most relevant” tweets for a search query based on the platform’s “popularity” measure that contains interactions, shares, and other factors), the use of visuals changes. While the imagery in top tweets often portrays individuals, these are more often citizens rather than politicians and celebrities who are prominent in news media. Images of climate consequences and solutions are the second most prevalent category among top tweets, followed by images depicting protests and scientific imagery. Memes on Instagram and Facebook have been shown to call mostly for awareness and action against climate change, followed by memes attacking liberal and conservative political views and politicians. Second, studies analyzing audio-visual content have shown that the number of videos supporting consensus views about climate change versus climate-skeptical videos differs considerably from platform to platform. A YouTube analysis in 2018 showed that among 200 randomly selected videos on climate change, the majority opposed the scientific consensus (Allgaier, 2019). On TikTok, the science of climate change is rarely a topic, but a large majority of videos on the platform support the scientific consensus, often coupling sincere appeals with humorous text or visuals when mentioning the issue. It is notable, however, that some widely viewed videos exist on TikTok as well that refute anthropogenic climate change, and that a substantial proportion of TikTok videos with climate-related hashtags are irrelevant to the issue. They just “hijack” the buzz generated by the hashtags to draw attention to themselves. Third, activists and activist groups use social media visuals extensively to broadcast their views, mobilize their audiences, and illuminate the absence of news media coverage. This was especially true for young activists, who are more accustomed to social media logics. The prime example is activist Greta Thunberg who communicated her weekly climate strikes on social media and has become a global icon and an important communicator of the issue. She has been shown to frame climate change as a moral and ethical issue on Instagram and to use visuals to motivate collective action, for example, by depicting protest signs and smiling peers while engaging in activism. Activists sometimes come together and protest during important climate events like COP meetings. In their protest videos on YouTube during COP15, activists visually portrayed themselves as soldiers or freedom fighters. The visual discourse focuses on the nodes of war, injustice, and resistance. Among activist groups, Greenpeace uses three main visual themes on Instagram to communicate a “climate crisis” in Indonesia: climate crisis threats, an urgent need to switch to renewable energy, and calls for more environmentally friendly political regulations. Environmental NGOs also post advertisements about climate change on Facebook, in which they frequently combine texts on pollution and efficacy with visuals of climate impacts and texts about protest with visuals of collective action. Fourth, different visuals receive different levels of engagement on social media. Social media allow individuals to become both content producers and reproducers by sharing, liking, and commenting on specific content. Therefore, understanding the drivers of social media engagement is important for analyses of (visual) communication of climate change. Several scholars have focused on this question. They have shown that despite their infrequent occurrence, protest visuals regularly received the highest engagement on Twitter, followed by people-related visuals. In contrast, memes, motivational quotes, and screenshots generated limited amounts of 72 Mike S. Schäfer and Xiaoyue Yan engagement despite their prevalence. On YouTube, videos in favor of the scientific mainstream perspective barely outnumbered those against it in terms of views. On TikTok, videos of natural disasters and the environmental effects of climate change typically get more views, likes, and comments than other videos. Although making up only a small portion of climate videos on TikTok, videos that spread misinformation about climate change earned many views as well. Limitations and the Way Forward Generally, researchers have paid less attention to climate change images than merited by their importance. Consequently, several of the findings above are less definitive than they should be. Since the amount of climate change visuals is clearly rising in news and social media and their effects on audiences are significant, more research is urgently needed in this field. In addition, this research needs to be more diverse – in the cases it analyses, the contexts and countries it draws them from, and the news and social media it focuses on. With their unique conceptual and methodological approaches, more STS research would be particularly helpful in providing an additional conceptual grounding. In addition, current research on climate change communication in news and social media has clear gaps and limitations. Most research analyses print media and often focuses on single news media or social media (mostly Twitter) within each study. Even though visuals are disseminated across borders and socio-political contexts, and can travel across language barriers, research continues to concentrate almost entirely on English-language materials and Western nations. Often media within cultures and nations more vulnerable to climate change are ignored such as coastal countries in south and southeast Asia. Despite the importance of understanding how climate visuals affect audiences, existing research frequently does not investigate impacts. A significant gap in news media studies is their lack of multimodality. Studies usually concentrate only on visuals such as still images and photographs. But visuals function in concert with other modalities, such as texts, and can have varying effects on audiences accordingly. More studies examining news visuals in conjunction with other modalities should be conducted. Social media analyses should go beyond Twitter and expand their view to include social media platforms with large user bases like Facebook and centered around visuals like Instagram. In addition, studies across platforms are required since different social media platforms have unique logic and affordances. Scholars should also pay attention to specific online visuals like memes, screenshots, and gifs and consider their potential for use by climate change skeptics. In general, the role of visuals for the dissemination of disand misinformation and climate-related conspiracy theories needs questioning. Finally, the role of generative artificial intelligence, which provides original responses to user prompts based on supervised and reinforcement machine learning techniques, for the visualization of climate change should be analyzed (Schäfer, 2023). Tools like DALL.E, Midjourney, or Stable Diffusion can already produce photo-like visualizations that could change visual communication about climate change (among other issues) considerably. Further Reading Burri, R. V. and Dumit, J. (2008) “Social studies of scientific imaging and visualization.” In Hackett, E. J., Amsterdamska, O., Lynch, M., and Wajcman, J. (Eds.). The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 297–317. Metag, J. (2020) “Climate change visuals: A review of their effects on cognition, emotion and behaviour.” In Holmes, D. and Richardson, L. (Eds.), Research Handbook on Communicating Climate Change. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 153–160. News and Social Media Imagery of Climate Change 73 O’Neill, S. J. and Smith, N. (2014) “Climate change and visual imagery,” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 5(1), pp. 73–87. Schäfer, M. S. (2020) “Introduction to visualizing climate change.” In Holmes, D. and Richardson, L. (Eds.), Research Handbook on Communicating Climate Change. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 127–130. Wozniak, A. (2020) “Stakeholders’ visual representations of climate change.” In Holmes, D. and Richardson, L. (Eds.), Research Handbook on Communicating Climate Change. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 131–142. References Allgaier, J. (2019) “Science and environmental communication on YouTube: Strategically distorted communications in online videos on climate change and climate engineering,” Frontiers in Communication, 4: 36, pp. 1–15. Gieryn, T. F. (1999) Cultural Boundaries of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Guston, D. H. (2001) “Boundary organizations in environmental policy and science: An introduction,” Science, Technology, & Human Values, 26(4), pp. 399–408. Jasanoff, S. and Kim, S. H. (Eds.) (2015) Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Marres, N. and Moats, D. (2015) “Mapping controversies with social media: The case for symmetry,” Social Media+ Society, 1(2), 2056305115604176. Schäfer, M. S. (2023) “The Notorious GPT. Science communication in the age of artificial intelligence,” JCOM – Journal of Science Communication, 22(2), Y02. Star, S. L. and Griesemer, J. R. (1989) “Institutional ecology, ‘translations’ and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39,” Social Studies of Science, 19(3), pp. 387–420. DOI: 10.4324/9781003409748-12 Building on the work of Part III, the chapters in this Part continue to explore how knowledge about climate change is framed and mediated. But instead of looking at the media, the chapters in Part IV turn their attention to social and cultural movements. These movements, and the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) who are often referred to as social movement organizations, have a profound impact on society. Critical sociologists used to think about social movements in terms that were largely informed by Marxist analysis; the working class was considered as the locus of social change. But this changed during the 1960s and 1970s. Rather than the working class, it was a different set of social movement actors who emerged to profoundly impact the shape of society in the Global North, including the Civil Rights, Women’s, Gay Liberation, Peace, and Environmental Movements. Sociologists and other social movement scholars spend considerable effort to study these social movements, examining topics such as how, when, and where social movements emerge, grow, mobilize, and dissipate, as well how they shape society. Science and Technology Studies (STS) has important areas of affinity with social movement scholarship. Social movements are an integral part of democratic societies, giving voice to positions of dissent or opposition. For this reason, a large part of STS is concerned with how ordinary people can have greater participation in the decisions that affect them (Chilvers and Kearns, 2016). In addition, many STS scholars argue that STS should help open up issues of public importance that are dominated by the presumption that scientific expertise has a takenfor-granted authority to determine how social issues should be understood and what should be done about them (Wynne, 2003). Here we can see the constructivist roots of STS showing through. That is, STS is well suited to analyzing how environmental issues are debated in public because it refuses to grant science the ultimate say in how problems should be defined. Sociologists and historians working in areas adjacent to STS also research the climate denialist movement as a “countermovement.” Tracing connections between the fossil fuel lobby, conservative think tanks, public relations firms, politicians, and individual scientists, these scholars have argued that climate denialism is motivated by the belief that governments should not regulate the market and should not impede the ability of individuals to pursue private profit (Brulle, 2021; Dunlap and McCright, 2015). In other words, just as there are social movements urging governments and businesses to act on climate change by reducing emissions, so too are there social movement actors who urge the opposite. STS scholars point out how a key area of similarity between these two seemingly contradictory movements is an image of science that is unified and capable of producing certainty through a singular scientific method (Latour, 2015). For environmentalists, climate science grounds their claims that we should reduce fossil fuel use; for climate denialists, any supposed deviation or misstep from a highly idealized version of science is reason to discredit the entirety of climate science. Part IV NGOs, Civil Society, and Social Movements Introduction Mark Vardy 76 Mark Vardy As Steven Yearley details in Chapter 9, there is a plurality of ways that environmental NGOs intervene in the public framing of climate change. Considering the School Strikes and Fridays for the Future movement, Yearley asks if the climate justice movement might have found a new historical actor. That is, the School Strikers can be considered on the same scale and scope as the new social movements identified earlier, which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. But new climate movements (NCMs), such as the Extinction Rebellion, face similar challenges as the earlier generations of environmental NGOs, which pertain to their reliance on the social authority of science. In considering these issues, Yearley raises important points to consider about how the plurality that STS sees in science can be extended into the climate justice movement. In Chapter 10, Adam Fleischmann draws from his ethnographic research with NGOs to engage with questions of how to make climate change a tractable social problem. Through his in-depth and long-term research with Climate Interactive, Fleischmann shows how the framing of science and policy can be reworked by actively engaging ordinary people in simulations of international climate negotiations. In these sessions, individuals adopt the roles of various nation-states and enter into negotiations as if they were acting on that country’s behalf. In this way, Fleischmann shows us how climate change is not just a matter of communicating the correct science but also engaging with difficult, contentious, and all-too-human politics. While the first two chapters in Part IV expand our understanding of the plurality of ways NGOs are acting to make climate change a social and political problem, the third chapter considers a conservative cultural movement associated with climate denialism. More specifically, Allison Ford draws from her ethnographic research to show how people who identify themselves as “preppers” understand and deal with disaster. Preppers actively prepare for future disasters by making themselves as self-sufficient as possible. The preppers who Ford discusses in Chapter 11 envision a future in which disasters have rendered many of the infrastructures, goods, and services that are part of life in industrialized nations unavailable or unworkable. Ford shows us how preppers share a common reality with environmentalists, namely a realist understanding of the potential for disaster, such as those caused by floods, fires, and droughts. But while they are aware of the potential for disaster, preppers are skeptical of climate change precisely because of their conservative and libertarian beliefs, which are against governmental regulation. Ford shows how their commitments to ideological beliefs lead them to “skirt the frame” of anthropogenic climate change that is promoted by the very NGOs that Yearley and Fleischmann consider in their chapters. As the chapters in Part IV remind us, climate change is not just a scientific issue. In order for us to understand it as a social and political problem, we need to pay attention to the myriad ways it becomes known, communicated, and understood by people, including the NGOs and other cultural and social movement actors. References Brulle, R.J. (2021) “Networks of Opposition: A Structural Analysis of US Climate Change Countermovement Coalitions 1989–2015,” Sociological Inquiry, 91(3), pp. 603–624. Chilvers, J. and Kearnes, M. (2016) Remaking Participation: Science, Environment and Emerging Publics. Abingdon: Routledge. Dunlap, R.E. and McCright, A.M. (2015) “Challenging Climate Change,” in Dunlap, R.E. and Brulle, R.J. (eds.) Climate Change and Society: Sociological Perspectives, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 300–332. Latour, B. (2015) “Telling Friends from Foes in the Time of the Anthropocene,” in Hamilton, C., Bonneuil, C., and Gemenne, F. (eds.) The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis. London: Routledge, pp. 145–155. Wynne, B. (2003) “Seasick on the Third Wave? Subverting the Hegemony of Propositionalism: Response to Collins & Evans (2002),” Social Studies of Science, 33(3), pp. 401–417. DOI: 10.4324/9781003409748-13 Introduction Environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and advocacy groups have long been renowned for their stunts and campaigning, not least in relation to issues around climate change. They mount noisy protests in the face of airport construction projects; at international climate negotiations they stage marches and “shadow events” to exert pressure on the delegates; and they have adapted earlier anti-nuclear mobilizations to oppose new coal-fired power stations, fracking, and those carbon capture and storage facilities that depend on links to fossil fuel industries. In the last few years, new groups have emerged that apply direct action in novel ways, such as the Sunrise Movement in the USA. In the USA and Britain, and in numerous other countries, one prominent group is the Extinction Rebellion, known as XR, which was founded in the UK in 2018. XR focuses on direct action events to draw attention to the climate crisis and threats to biodiversity. Its methods resemble those of the Occupy movement that protested banks and capital in the context of economic austerity after the financial crisis of 2007–2008. In one standout XR protest, in 2019 a former Paralympic athlete managed to super-glue himself to the top of a British Airways plane at a London airport favored by business travelers, disrupting many flights for the day. Urgency is the key theme of XR, as memorably communicated by its logo, which uses a stylized “X” to evoke an hourglass or glass timer, highlighting that our time is running out. Some members of XR in Britain then reshaped themselves into the more precisely focused Insulate Britain (2021), a campaign organization demanding that government intervene so that new social housing and the existing stock of dwellings be adequately insulated (it is widely agreed that the UK wastes a lot of natural gas in heating poorly designed domestic spaces). Insulate Britain supporters caused consternation and delays by blocking roads, thus highlighting society’s addiction to fossil fuels. A later spin-off, Just Stop Oil (dating from 2022), built on this tradition of non-violent protest and began by “occupying” trucks transporting petroleum products and by using various means to block traffic on freeways and major bridges. In October 2022, two Just Stop Oil activists threw canned tomato soup at a celebrated Van Gogh picture of sunflowers in London’s National Gallery as part of a move toward protests in the cultural sectors. Safe behind protective glass, the Van Gogh painting was undamaged, but the incident, which was intended to stimulate discussion about what society values and why, sparked outrage. The stance of these groups is radical. Protestors are often arrested for not compromising their commitments to their goals. They mobilize through social media and to some extent online but have very little administration or overhead, making them distinct from groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, who – these days – are professionalized groups with offices and rents to pay, and who need to solicit donations from foundations and middle-class supporters. But this makes it all the more notable that on Just Stop Oil’s website they choose to have a 9 Non-Governmental Organizations and the Environmental Movement Challenges in Climate Change Framing Steven Yearley This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. 78 Steven Yearley prominent quote in very large letters attributed to Sir David King, the former Chief Scientific Advisor to the British Government: “What we do over the next three to four years, I believe, is going to determine the future of humanity” (Just Stop Oil, 2023). King made this comment in a speech he gave at the 2021 Climate Emergency Summit in Australia where he went on to say, “We are in a very, very desperate situation.” King’s remark has been cited by XR also; their website invokes him, stating “This stuff is real. The science is clear. Our future is not” (Extinction Rebellion, 2023). The key point is that, despite their activism and spontaneity, their supergluing and soup-based protests, these climate pressure groups are keen to show that their claims are ratified or endorsed by senior scientific figures. This indicates something important about environmentalism and climate change. Climate Framing and the Role of Science This conspicuous role for scientific authority arises precisely because the convincingness of these groups’ message depends on the notion that their claims have a basis in factual accuracy – that they are not simply matters of opinion or ideology, but can withstand expert, scientific scrutiny. Environmentalists, more than any other type of campaigner, need to persuade the public that things are in fact the way they say things are, even when some of the claims they are making seem – at first glance at least – to be counter-intuitive or implausible: that methane-heavy “burps” from cows and sheep can warm the atmosphere significantly, that minute plastic spheres in cosmetic products can end up accumulating in ocean creatures, or that burning coal, gas, and oil can unsettle the entire global climate. Most other social movement claims are based around justice, fairness, or rights, as with the Civil Rights movement, the Women’s Movement, and activism around LGBTQ+ identities. In the case of climate change, a big challenge has been to express the strength of evidence for the reality of climate effects and to combat those who have set out to sow doubt. The difficulty for environmentalists arises from two sources. In part, there is the fact that climate change has generally been a gradual process so that ordinary people have mostly not been able to detect it or distinguish it from general weather variability on a casual basis. This means that environmentalists have had to rely on the social authority of science to argue that the climate is indeed changing and that particular instances of observed changes are attributable to anthropogenic causes. Second, since climate change has arisen primarily from fossil fuel consumption (and is thus tied to all sorts of economic activity), attempts to take steps to combat global warming have been opposed or questioned by many in industry and intensive agriculture, by lots of vehicle manufacturers, by right-leaning politicians and policy makers (who are often inclined to view it as a left-wing attempt to regulate the market), many bankers, and most directly by fossil fuel industries and producers themselves. Even some established labor unions have voiced skepticism, based on perceived threats to workers’ livelihoods. All of these groups, motivated by ideological, economic, or political concerns, have questioned the scientific basis of climate change, which can make the environmentalists all the more insistent that science be granted authority. Since their formation in the 1970s, celebrated environmental movement organizations in the Global North have often protested against the establishment, including establishment scientists, over issues such as nuclear power, agricultural chemicals, and the desirability of genetically modified crops and foods. In the climate case, environmentalists have thus found themselves in an unusual situation. What they see as the world’s leading environmental problem is fully endorsed by the mainstream scientific community and, in principle at least, by most world governments whose representatives have now signed off on six sets of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports and, overwhelmingly, signed up to the 2015 UN Non-Governmental Organizations and the Environmental Movement 79 Figure 9.1 Screenshot of homepage of Scientist Rebellion. Source: See https://scientistrebellion.org/. Let’s begin with a fundamental insight in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and related fields like anthropology: the incredible but simple fact that things have been different in the past, they are different in some places on Earth right now, and they can and will be different in the future. This idea, in one way or another, also motivates the actors and organizations whose work is the focus of the research I will discuss in brief in this chapter. For nearly a decade, I have conducted a series of studies of a network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operating at the intersection of expertise in climate change politics and climate science in North America. Through their work, these expert activists recognize that things can be different than the present state of things, however entrenched, including accelerating climate change. The people and organizations who make up the network address the challenges of global anthropogenic climate change in different ways: through science communication and education, policy and data analysis, coordination and convening, computer modeling, and grassroots organizing. However, they all have this in common: they are all experts in shaping the space where political and scientific knowledge meet. In my research, I use tools and perspectives from STS and related fields like anthropology and social movement studies to study how these groups help people understand and act on global climate change. This study is part of a larger research agenda about the challenges and possibilities of addressing global anthropogenic climate change both politically and epistemologically (that is, regarding knowledge about climate change, its history, how we know what we know about it, and, even, how climate change can be known in the first place). In doing this work, I regularly contend with the high-stakes questions that trouble researchers, expert activists, and, I’m sure, many students. How do we understand and act on the scale of the global climate? How can humans even grapple with the vast consequences of our collective action? My research shows how, in my interlocutor’s spaces of expertise, both climate change science and politics are negotiated, problematized, and made intervenable. In other words, it shows how these groups make climate change a vivid and concrete issue for their publics. In this chapter, I first explore some STS insights about global anthropogenic climate change, which help us understand both the challenges couched in the above questions and the work of expert activists to shape the space of climate science and politics. I then turn to this work more directly, focusing on an example of ethnographic field research in climate movement NGOs, providing ethnographic details and a narrative anecdote, before concluding by considering the insights STS and NGOs offer for rethinking climate change, its challenges, and possibilities. STS Insights: Understanding Global Climate Change Climate change as it is understood by climate science is global. That is, it is a phenomenon that encompasses the whole planet and all five spheres of the Earth’s planetary system—the 10 Expert Activists and NGOs Understanding and Acting on Global Climate Change Adam Fleischmann This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. DOI: 10.4324/9781003409748-14 Expert Activists and NGOs 87 atmosphere (gases), the lithosphere (rocks), the hydrosphere (water), the cryosphere (ice) and the biosphere (living things). Global climate change is also anthropogenic, meaning it is caused by humans (some more than others). Global anthropogenic climate change, as a way of describing human-caused changes in the global climate system, is an issue that is known through the concepts and institutions of Western science. This global thinking has an ongoing history, often enmeshed with the histories of colonialism and imperialism. As some STS scholars have put it, “Conceptions of the world as a globally connected system ordered by physical, chemical, and biological laws have a long history, animated not just by abstract theoretical advances but by processes of European expansion and the imperial thirst for both facts and resources” (Beck et al., 2016, pp. 1060–1061). This means that the scientific concept of a global climate is inherently tied in with—cannot be understood disconnected from—social, cultural, and political histories. It is in this sense that it is “constructed” as a concept. And this construction has a history and is actively reproduced. While now understood with increasing degrees of specificity, that specificity is made up of a complex constellation or assemblage of phenomena, people, things, and events. The idea of climate as a single, global unit had already been proposed by the mid-19th century. However, early theoretical models of atmospheric circulation—the movement of energy and air through the atmosphere and oceans—had serious limitations in tackling the staggering complexity of the problem of a global system. This place-based, at most regional, conception of the climate remained until technological advances following the Second World War. It was the advent of computer models, during and after the war, that could begin to handle the practical task of confirming a theory of general atmospheric circulation. This allowed for the realization of the concept of a global climate, previously imagined in terms of physical laws but not practically calculable. This breakthrough led the way to systems theories of general circulation, which connected the oceans, land, geology, living things, and ice (all five spheres of the Earth’s system) in the latter half of the twentieth century (Fleischmann and Yip, 2019). The notion of a global climate thus emerged, produced by the complex set of relations through which we have come to know and understand it (Edwards, 2010): a constellation of scientists and meteorological phenomena, discourses and institutions, national meteorological services and massive computer models, satellites and weather stations, and archives—physical things and actual events in time. Yet as STS scholar Paul Edwards put it in his influential history of climate science and modeling, “No one lives in a ‘global’ climate. Without scientific guidance, not even the most cosmopolitan traveler could perceive a global average temperature change of about [1.2°C], the amount we have seen so far” (Edwards, 2010, p. 4). We can’t see changes in climatic averages over 30 years and we can’t perceive the global climate itself, in all its globality, per se. We can, of course, see its meteorological impacts and cumulative effects, the “natural” elements that form part of its constructed nature. We can witness how its accumulating, interacting systems change how we experience the day-to-day variation of the state of the atmosphere with respect to its effects on human life (otherwise known as the weather). We can measure the global climate, and model it, projecting it into the future and the past. But in its very globality, it is a sum greater than its knowledge-production-system parts. No one lives in a global climate. Global climate change is both constructed by and beyond humans. The dynamic and perhaps counterintuitive challenges of understanding and acting on climate change described above are due in large part to the global nature of climate change. But, of course, this does not mean the global climate is not “real.” It is grounded in observations and other empirical data, a global knowledge infrastructure, and requires active reproduction throughout this system—in other words, its realness is reproduced in all the elements that make 88 Adam Fleischmann it up. The labor and maintenance of this knowledge-production system is the very reason why we can even think of a planetary climate as something to be observed, understood, affected by human activities, cared about by the general public, and managed through the political regulation of the composition of the atmosphere. Knowing this concept and its history can help us understand and address many of the challenges surrounding climate change that can feel overwhelming and inevitable. In sum, STS perspectives have taught us that perhaps more than other complex and challenging social and natural problems of a certain intercontinental magnitude, the changing global climate is always a combination of phenomena and knowledge. Yes, climate change is partially made up of massive and changing phenomena like weather patterns. And STS teaches us that we can only know these changing phenomena on a global scale because of a global scientific knowledge system and the history of imperialism and expansion that proceeds it. It is both constructed by humans and exists beyond us. This tension is inherent to the issue of climate change and must be continually taken up anew, including in research. Next, I’ll share some of what I’ve learned from one group within the network I’ve studied. STS Research: Fieldwork in Climate Movement NGOs Climate Interactive is a small US-based nonprofit climate change NGO and one organization whose staff and participants formed a key group of interlocutors for my study. Through my research with the Director and Co-founder of Climate Interactive, Drew Jones, I have learned that the dynamics of the global climate system are not intuitive. We drive cars, producing carbon emissions in the US or Canada, yet the effects are seen, much sooner and more intensely, faraway in Bangladesh or Greenland, for example. People produce emissions today, but it is our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who will deal with growing consequences like drought, sea-level rise, and increasingly extreme weather. To put it another way, climate change is complex and heterogeneous, with dynamic characteristics across time and space. All of this makes effective action on climate change difficult to inspire or enact, or even to imagine, for most people. Yet just telling people this information doesn’t do much. In fact, Drew Jones integrated this insight into the organization’s very foundation. STS insights on the dilemmas of the complex, global problem of climate change help explain why simply telling people about the challenging global characteristics of climate change is not enough to help galvanize action to solve the issue. As MIT Sloan School of Management professor and Climate Interactive senior adviser John Sterman liked to say during my study, “Research shows that showing people research doesn’t work.” Through his pithy and clever turn of phrase, Sterman is summarizing the insufficiency or weakness of the deficit model, which is sometimes referred to as the information deficit model or science deficit model. The deficit model suggests that if only the public had the correct information, they would understand the problem, take appropriate action, and create political or social change. Under the assumptions of this model, political action on climate change plays out in particular ways: climate scientists bestow knowledge about climate change upon diverse publics, who are then rationally incited to take action in the form of lobbying, petitioning, protesting, and other environmental work; this, in turn, influences expert leaders to act through legal and policy engagement. While this model is prevalent in public discourse, it is criticized extensively by STS scholars, as well as by Climate Interactive. As my interlocutors at Climate Interactive explained, just telling people what “the science says,” that is, explaining what scientific research claims, does not work. For issues like climate change, telling people what to think or how to act doesn’t have an impact on convincing people of the importance of the issue or inspiring them to act. As Expert Activists and NGOs 89 interdisciplinary STS, anthropology and journalism scholar—and author of Chapter 3 in this book—Candis Callison, writes, climate change “enables questions beyond what the realm of what science offers” (Callison, 2014, p. 23). That is, simply knowing the complexity of global climate change does not help people form answers to the high-stakes emotional and existential questions that climate change, and inaction on it, provokes. Ethnographic data from my study on climate change NGOs builds upon these insights. Today, following decades of work from scholars in STS, anthropology, sociology, and related fields, researchers conduct ethnography in organizations like NGOs, among scientists and activists, as well as remotely in “spaces” without a specific geographic location (Fleischmann, 2022; Knox, 2020). Researching climate change ethnographically in-person and remotely, I have been able to study and learn from expert activists who teach people the non-intuitive dynamics of global climate change and—moving beyond the deficit model—inspire them to take action in their own lives. Climate Interactive was founded on the idea that values and experiences, not information, are what really shape people’s perceptions and actions. The organization’s simple computer models, tools, and games create opportunities for people to learn for themselves about the climatic, economic, and geopolitical systems that shape our world. Climate Interactive creates interactive simulations, timely analysis, decision-support tools, and experience-based educational games and workshops that endeavor to empower people, from school children to the US President’s climate team, to reach their goals in addressing climate change. Their work combines innovations in climate modeling and education. More specifically, they use simple, interactive computer models that can run for free on a laptop, simulating changes in global temperature, carbon emissions, or energy policy in literally one second. They use these models in experience-based games and workshops that offer participants the opportunity to role-play national and international efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. With roots in systems dynamics modeling and openaccess, experience-based design, and education, Climate Interactive contributes a unique intervention on climate change that engages people socially, emotionally, and physically. In doing so, they provide insights into how a social scientist and climate action practitioners alike work to grasp global anthropogenic climate change as an emergent object of study and political action. Employing ethnographic methods like participant observation in my study of Climate Interactive, I was able to participate in and observe training for and renditions of the organization’s model-based educational role-playing games. Here, I provide a very brief ethnographic anecdote, in combination with insights on the global nature of climate change, in order to demonstrate an STS approach to studying climate change and climate activists. Box 10.1 The World Climate role-playing game is being held in an intimate room in a building off the main chapel at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. The group of us, about 20 people, range in age from late 20s to 60s or 70s are moved into groups of two to five, with each group representing a country or grouping of countries. We huddle together and prepare our negotiating approaches based on the provided printed position briefing. My group, the United States of America, is made up of the three youngest people in the room, myself, Brent, and Elena, plus a late-comer, a white-haired man named Abe. 90 Adam Fleischmann For each negotiating round, we move across the room, gather in groups. We make our demands and concessions then gleefully scuttle, whispering, back to our huddle of teammates. After each round, back in our groups, we record what we’ve negotiated: 1) our intended reductions in greenhouse gas emissions (peak year, reductions start year, and percentage of reduction per year), 2) our monetary contribution to the Green Climate Fund, and 3) how much we’ll reduce deforestation and increase afforestation (planting trees). After short speeches are made and proposals announced, our facilitator, a Reverend playing the UN Secretary General, quickly enters the numbers into the instant climate model, C-ROADS. Changes appear in global temperatures, CO2 levels, sea-level rise, and more. Our goal is under 2°C warming by 2100, and preferably 1.5°C. At first, the negotiations are engrossing, but polite, not too urgent, playing into the stereotypes I’d constructed in my head about soft-spoken older religious folks. Teams China and “Other Developing” advocate for their right to develop, India emphasizes needing help from richer countries. The European Union (EU) is playing polite hardball, though. A middle-aged woman with short, graying hair and sharp glasses, she’s uncompromising in her steely insistence that the US and “Other Developed” countries must match the EU’s leadership in the fight against climate change. We on Team US, for one, do not give in, maintaining the recalcitrant position of a Trump Administration-era US that has pulled out of the Paris Agreement. After several rounds of negotiations, the Secretary General sternly warns us of the consequences to come should we not negotiate stronger emissions-reduction commitments. He shows us Shanghai underwater, London submerged by the Thames. As temperatures increase, disaster looms. Participants soon realize how little their countries’ modest contributions are changing the results in the computer model. Negotiations get nastier, more urgent. As the timer runs out, delegates negotiate urgent positions “in character” with their country’s interests in mind, but aiming for the global temperature goal. The facilitator enters our final numbers into the C-ROADS and we’re north of 2°C, headed for a dangerously warming world. By the end of the game, we step out of our roles as delegates at the United Nations and everyone is appealing to the Reverend to have another round. “I wanna get that number down!” the former EU delegate shouts, complaining. Heads nod in agreement across the room, faces creased in consternation. Someone formerly from the Chinese delegation says they could see this lasting all day. Participants talk about how they felt empowered or caught up by the role they were playing. The Reverend shows us in the model what it takes to get below 2°C, then guides us through a debriefing exercise that invites participants to sit and reflect on future possibilities. “When we talk about future scenarios for our climate,” our facilitator dutifully says, “we spend most of the time focused on how bad the worst-case future looks or how difficult change will be. Instead, I’d like for us to spend just one minute silently considering the possibility that we could create this better future from our scenario.” After this moment of reflection, we’re encouraged to share what we would love about being part of this sort of future—and what we could do, with our skill sets and in our communities, to start enacting that vision. People mention the desire to start campaigning to electrify the vehicle fleet at their workplace and get involved with local environmental groups. Expert Activists and NGOs 91 Although we started slowly, the World Climate simulation at Grace Cathedral had us participants riled up. People were smiley, angry, stubborn, gleefully ornery, and downright upset. A sense of urgency pervaded the room once we realized just what it would take to turn the temperature down—serious emissions reductions from not just the US and EU but “developing” countries, too. It quickly became apparent that global climate system dynamics are not straightforward. It also became clear that climate negotiations are social and political affairs in which the power relations and inequities of the real world come to the fore; they are not simply technical exercises of deliberating rational action informed by science, as the deficit model might suggest. Ideally, Climate Interactive’s climate-policy simulations are meant to teach people some of this dynamic complexity of the climate-policy system, relating their own lives to broader systems and equity issues, while teaching them to connect delayed and distant climate causes and effects that are not intuitive. Climate Interactive’s simulations aim to ultimately build users’ capacities to do something about climate change in their own way, in their own communities— connecting knowledge to positive visions and ways to take action, creating new possibilities on climate change. They do this not through showing people research, but by allowing people to learn for themselves through interactive experiences. While I saw first-hand the transformative and energizing impact Climate Initiative can have on people, its approach does have limitations. Climate Interactive’s workshops and role-playing games have been run in 140 countries for more than 225,000 participants, but this number is paltry compared to North American or global populations. Theirs is an approach of quality more than quantity. But even this will not move everyone who participates in their learning experiences to act. However, for the people that it does, Climate Interactive’s engaging learning experiences enable them to form immediate relations between their lives, the global climate, and future ways of being in the world. And, importantly, this helps people to not only understand but also feel empowered to act on climate change. Conclusion To conclude, let’s turn back to the insight that opened this chapter: things have been different in the past, they are different in some places on Earth right now, and they can and will be different in the future. When it comes to climate change, STS and the related fields of anthropology and social movement studies teach us that global anthropogenic climate change is a combination of “natural” and “social” phenomena and scientific knowledge. Yet just as global anthropogenic climate change is, in part, constructed by humans, so are the social, political, and economic systems that have caused it—and through which we are responding to it. In other words, the problem of climate change is not simply a “natural” phenomenon caused by, yet beyond humans; it is constructed, and it can be constructed differently. There is possibility, wiggle room, the potential to do things differently. The current state of things is not inevitable, inescapable. Research agendas like the one introduced in this chapter can show how climate actors actively shape the space of climate science and politics to make climate change a vivid and concrete issue for people to understand and act upon. In doing so, they reveal the possibility of alternative futures. Further Reading Callison, C. (2014) How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts. Durham: Duke University Press. Fleischmann, A. (2023) “Fire, Ice, and Flood,” American Anthropologist, 125(1), pp. 199–201. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13813. Knox, H. (2020) Thinking Like a Climate: Governing a City in Times of Environmental Change. Durham: Duke University Press. 92 Adam Fleischmann References Beck, S., Forsyth, T., Kohler, P. M., Lahsen, M., and Mahony, M. (2016) “The Making of Global Environmental Science and Politics.” In U. Felt, R. Fouché, C. A. Miller, and L. Smith-Doerr (Eds.), The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 1059–1086. Callison, C. (2014) How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts. Durham: Duke University Press. Edwards, P. N. (2010) A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (1st ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fleischmann, A. (2022) Possibility in an Era of Climate Change: Anthropology, Knowledge, Politics. PhD Dissertation, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec. Fleischmann, A. and Yip, J. (2019) “‘Culture’ and Climate Change: Anthropology and the Greatest Challenge of Our Time.” [Conference Presentation] Changing Climates: American Anthropological Association, Vancouver. Knox, H. (2020) Thinking Like a Climate: Governing a City in Times of Environmental Change. Durham: Duke University Press. Introduction: Prepper Frames Prepping, derived from the verb “to prepare,” is a growing cultural movement of more than 20 million people around the world who anticipate and prepare for disaster (Saragosa, 2020). Some preppers focus on short-term disaster response through emergency preparedness. They stockpile extra supplies like food, emergency water, water filters, cookstoves, and other equipment that doesn’t rely on electricity or gas lines, and construct plans to either “bug out” (escape the area where disaster hits and head to a safe, pre-planned destination) or “bug-in” (hunker down in place and plan to wait out the disaster). Some preppers stop here. But for many preppers, the goal of prepping is to survive a much bigger disaster: “the end of the world as we know it,” or, as they call it, TEOTWAWKI. In anticipation of disaster, preppers stockpile food, gather emergency supplies, learn how to communicate over ham radios, and study first aid and emergency medical interventions. Many preppers also prepare to live as self-sufficient households when the world as we know it ends. The world as we know it refers to a modern, complex, industrialized society. This means life in a 21stcentury, globalized, wealthy, capitalist democracy. Life in such a society is marked by a deep division of specialized labor. This division of labor is in opposition to a self-sufficient lifestyle, in which a household meets almost all of its own needs without relying on external institutions and systems that many of us take for granted in the industrialized world, including roads and highways, running water, electricity, Wi-Fi, and sewage management. To live a self-sufficient lifestyle thus demands looking back in time to how people lived prior to the spread of these interconnected technologies. Prepping originated in the United States in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, about the same time that the concept of anthropogenic climate change entered American public discourse. It’s linked to but distinct from earlier waves of interest in self-sufficiency throughout American history, such as back-to-the-land movements. While back-to-the-land movements and prepping both orient around a critique of modernity and its human costs, prepping is unique in its fixation on disaster. Prepping is in many respects an environmental practice. In anticipating disaster, preppers must think about how to meet their bodily needs for survival, wellbeing, and comfort, outside of complex networks of material flows that are the default way most citizens of wealthy, industrialized economies get their needs met (Schlosberg and Coles, 2015). Planning where you will get water, how you will generate heat, and what you will eat once society has collapsed, while doing away with municipal water infrastructure and service, the electric grid, and grocery stores are exercises in environmental imagination. However, as I will show in this chapter, preppers rarely think or talk about the environment, unless prompted to do so. This chapter is based on my ethnographic observations of preppers, which I undertook between 2014 and 2018. It draws from semi-structured, in-depth interviews that I conducted with 11 Skirting the Frame Prepping and the Conservative Politics of Climate Change Allison Ford This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. DOI: 10.4324/9781003409748-15 94 Allison Ford 20 preppers and participant observation of social sites where preppers were visible, including public events, such as expositions, fairs, in-person meetings of online clubs, visits to private businesses, and private events that I was invited to attend through my connections to the prepping community. I also conducted a digital ethnography to understand the ways preppers use the internet as a social space for exchanging information, ideas, and imagining disaster scenarios amongst “like-minded people.” I argue that prepping is a conservative cultural movement that allows Americans who are skeptical or uncertain about climate change to skirt the frame of climate change entirely. To skirt something means to move around its border, side-stepping it completely, whereas framing is a concept that social scientists use to describe the perceptual “organization of experience” (Goffman, 1974). Social movement framing theory explores how political actors produce and maintain meaning in order to put forward their construction of reality (Snow et al., 1986). While scientists frame climate change as real, dangerous, and anthropogenic (human-caused), and thus situate it as a social problem, conservatives offer a contradictory framing of climate change as non-problematic (Freudenburg, 2000; McCright and Dunlap, 2003). The validity of government intervention in the market to manage environmental risk is at the heart of contested climate frames. The preppers who I researched focused directly on disasters, which they understand as real. But instead of framing such disasters in relation to climate change, they adopt a depoliticized response to environmental risk by focusing on what I call the constituent elements of climate change. The constituent elements of climate change refer to the effects of climate change that can be experienced, talked about, and understood without referring to climate change itself. For example, we can talk about the likelihood of experiencing a major storm without acknowledging that that likelihood increases because of a warming globe. The storm remains in the frame, while the cause of its increased frequency and severity stays outside of the frame, and thus outside of the conversation. I argue that preppers avoid engaging with the scientific discourse of climate change, which challenges their understanding of social reality. This includes both disaster scenarios and historical events that they draw on to construct an alternative framework that focuses on individual responsibility to respond to disaster and downplays government intervention as a solution to risk. How do Preppers Feel About Climate Change? Compared to people in other nations, Americans find it more difficult to talk about climate change, and Americans are much more likely to report climate skepticism (McCright et al., 2016). Yet it is impossible to ignore that we are living on a planet undergoing major atmospheric and ecological changes, many as a consequence of human industry. Preppers are all too aware of the prevalence of disaster. John, a prepper in Idaho, told me, Now, with the ability to communicate instantaneously anywhere in the world, people are seeing calamities occur within a thousand miles of their house. They’re seeing fires that are killing people and destroying property, and taking everything you [sic] own. They’re seeing floods, and they’re seeing … everything; earthquakes, hurricanes. It wasn’t just that people were exposed to more information about disaster, John continued, but that the networks of dependency built into modern life were also more visible. Then you have … this is quite real … because you can see this yourself. There are political and governmental problem that occur, like [in] Long Beach, down south California. Skirting the Frame 95 Longshoremen went on strike, just a few years ago. “Who cares? A bunch of union commies down in there, who cares?” Except for one thing, that these guys took care of all these ships, to bring in food and stuff that comes up here, in trucks. All of a sudden [the grocery stores], their shelves are starting to look bare, because all they have left [are] Tabasco sauce and salsa … Not only can it happen, it has twice, up here. You’ve seen it. The visibility of disasters around the world combined with personal experiences of the precarity of extended networks of goods and services leave preppers feeling vulnerable—a feeling that is uncomfortable for people whose political leanings include a deep commitment to personal responsibility and self-reliance. Despite being hyper-aware of disaster and concerned about risk, when I asked John if he was concerned about climate change he responded, I’ve done a lot of study on that. That’s like being concerned about sunlight because it’s a natural phenomenon. The perverted concept of climate change that’s been going around is a disgusting smoke screen to gain more control over the population. The climate’s always changing. We have not had two years in a row here of the same weather. John draws on familiar conservative talking points that reject climate science and attribute changes in the climate to nature. This builds on the conservative movement’s attempt to construct what sociologists Aaron McCright and Riley Dunlap (2003) call the “non-problematicity” of climate change. Although John attempts to claim authority over the topic (“I’ve done a lot of study on that”) and engages lay scientific language, his argument here is not really scientific, but social. We often think about climate denial as a disagreement about science. But climate denial is not rooted in rational scientific debates, but rather in politics (Jacques, 2006). If we take seriously the magnitude of dangerous, anthropogenic climate change, and face the fact that human combustion of fossil fuels is its root cause—something just about all qualified climate scientists agree on (Oreskes, 2004)—then the problem is not the science. It’s the political implications of what the science tells us. The predominant response that scientists have advocated for involves major governmental regulations, which conservatives and industry groups oppose on principle. The political significance of John’s rejection of climate change comes out not in his attempt to explain away the science, but in the affective salience of his reference to climate change as a “disgusting smoke screen to gain more control over the population.” In this powerful turn of phrase, he betrays his distrust of climate scientists, and the institutions that support their ability to disseminate climate science and political recommendations about how to respond. Here, John reveals fear that the discourse of climate change is a political tool that is being used by the scientific elite to exert control over the population. Hank, another conservative prepper, responded similarly to John when I asked about climate change, but he was more direct about his emotional response. The topic made him so angry that he practically shut down what had otherwise been a friendly and engaged conversation. This was especially noteworthy because the rest of the interview was markedly different in tone. By the time I brought up climate change, Hank and I had been talking for several hours already, and he had maintained a friendly and gregarious demeanor despite our common understanding of the deep political differences between us. We had successfully remained friendly and engaged throughout discussions about contentious, politicized topics such as race, immigration, religion, guns, and the Trump Administration 102 Tamar Law In Chapter 12, Ankit Bhardwaj draws from three discrete geographies from fieldwork across India to show the place-based nature of science, technology, and justice and highlights the scalar implications of addressing a global problem at a local level. Specifically, he points to how the just transition to the use of low-carbon energy technologies not only needs to be meaningful for emission reductions but, moreover, for the lived experiences of local workers and residents. Through his situated approach to climate justice, Bhardwaj argues that climate justice will come when the knowledge made by local people, and their actions to reduce emissions in the worlds where they live and work, are taken seriously by researchers and policymakers. Emphasizing a just energy transition, Kendra Kintzi (Chapter 13) focuses on Jordan’s national decarbonization program as it relates to renewable energy systems. Kintzi uses the concept of affordances to think through how different solar infrastructures can enable or disable different kinds of social practices, affecting who is included or excluded from this energy transition. In Jordan, many households benefit from personal rooftop solar thermal systems to diminish the effects of rising electricity costs. However, others including refugees and asylum seekers in formal camps and informal settlements are unable to access these benefits. Through this example, Kintzi reveals how seemingly highly beneficial solar sociotechnical infrastructures can nonetheless continue to shape the uneven distribution of the burdens of climate change. Attending to how researchers might address contemporary climate injustices in practice, Roopali Phadke (Chapter 14) focuses on the politics of public participation within the infrastructural re-design and removal of locks and dams along the Mississippi River. Drawing from Phadke’s undergraduate lab research with the U.S. Army Corps’ implementation of a placebased model in infrastructure design, the chapter offers a methodological lesson on how to engage local communities. Implementing “upstream engagement,” Phadke illustrates how government agencies can reconstruct notions of accountability and responsibility to engage the public in technology design. Finally, in Chapter 15, Shangrila Joshi reviews several key forms of climate justice: distributive, participatory, epistemic, and transformative justice. Through the example of Nepal’s Guthi, an Indigenous commons governance institution, she takes seriously the role of the commons for climate justice showing how reclaiming the commons may be transformative in enabling climate justice across various contexts and scales. Essential to reclaiming the commons is a respect for and empowerment of Indigenous knowledges and how that services the different elements of climate justice. References Sultana, F. (2022) “The Unbearable Heaviness of Climate Coloniality,” Political Geography, 99, p. 3. Introduction In this chapter, I present to you brief accounts from three vastly different towns across India. These stories are about the changes these places are undergoing due to the climate crisis. Without action, the towns will come apart at their seams. People who reside and work in them are facing dire consequences but are also forging creative responses. Their stories point to a pattern of how we all relate to climate science and technology. With these accounts, I hope to convince you 12 Postcards from Small Town India Situated Climate Justice, Science, and Technology Ankit Bhardwaj Figure 12.1 Approximate locations of the small towns in the Indian subcontinent. Joshimath sits in the majestic but climate-vulnerable Himalayas, Rajkot in the dry, shrubby Saurashtra region in the Gujarat peninsula, and Davanagere, southernmost, in semi-arid central Karnataka. Each town is more than two hundred kilometers by road away from the nearest major city, Dehradun, Ahmedabad, and Bengaluru respectively. DOI: 10.4324/9781003409748-17 This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. 104 Ankit Bhardwaj that building a world of lower greenhouse gas emissions and protections from climate impacts, which is also just and equitable, involves a situated understanding of the unique harms and priorities facing the workers and residents of each place. The map, below, is to help locate your imagination. Joshimath, Uttarakhand, January 2023 Cracks appeared in homes across the small ancient town of Joshimath which had stood for more than a thousand years. Many residents, feeling unsafe, soon evacuated their dwellings. There was much speculation about what caused the cracks. Environmental activists took to social media to lay blame on climate change. They pointed to a flood that had affected the region just two years earlier. A glacier had burst, overwhelming dammed rivers and saturating the soil with liquid, weakening the land the town sat on. Scientists agreed in part, stating that though the flood was triggered by a landslide, the glacier was more precarious due to the increasing average temperature caused by climate change. Critics of state infrastructure development argued that it was not climate change, but the rapid construction of roads, buildings, and hydropower dams in the Himalayas that led to the crisis. Local residents, alongside allied geologists and environmentalists, blamed tunneling for a nearby dam project which they posited ruptured an aquifer and destabilized the land under the town. Activists put up signs in the town’s main market, blaming the government agency in charge of the dam’s construction. They pointed to a report released by the national government’s space agency which used satellite data to show rapid subsidence of land in the last two weeks. However, the government quickly disputed that the land was sinking due to their hydropower projects. The Minister of Power defiantly argued that a committee of experts showed that dams led to fewer landslides and more greenery. Engineers testified that the construction was perfectly safe. Just a day after the space agency’s report that showed rapid subsidence was released, it was no longer accessible; the government had taken it down. Davanagere, Karnataka, March 2017 I had been walking about five minutes on a dusty road, off a local highway on the edge of Davanagere, when the air became noticeably smokier. I came up to a tight row of one-story huts, on the roof of each were slim, charred chimneys, emitting a sooty smoke. That must be black carbon, I thought to myself, one of the worst offenders of the greenhouse gas effect causing climate change. In front of the huts, men were carrying sacks filled to the brim; on the ground, rice was drying. I was in Mandakki Bhatti, an area known for making puffed rice. I asked a worker if I could go inside, curious about what caused the smoke. He gestured me in. The room was stiflingly hot, not only from the baking sun but also from a blazing earthen oven in the center of the room that was heating a bowl of what appeared to be black sand. In a matter of minutes, I was sweating profusely, and my throat began itching. I could not imagine how the two men crouched around the oven felt. One of them sprinkled what looked like sawdust into the oven, bolstering its heat. The other took a bowl full of husked, dried rice and dropped it into the heated sand. He pulled a string that dropped a large whisk that churned the rice and sand. In a matter of seconds the grains of rice puffed up, which one worker sieved out and tossed into a huge pile in the corner. He immediately dropped another batch of raw rice in, working in a practiced and quick rhythm. The manager peered in, curious about who I was. I pointed at the oven and asked him about the temperature, shocked at how quickly the rice puffed. “500, 500 degrees,” he muttered. Postcards from Small Town India 105 Mandakki Bhatti was the subject of grand designs by the municipal government to reduce emissions in Davanagere. Bureaucrats wanted to address air pollution from the traditional puffing process by outfitting roofs with solar panels and subsidizing electric ovens to replace the existing earthen ones. They commissioned engineers at a government university to design an electric oven. Yet, workers rejected prototypes as the ovens could not reach the high temperature necessary to puff rice quickly. Nor did the electric oven impart the characteristic smoky taste their puffed rice was known for. Bureaucrats did not hide their frustrations and confusion from me that workers rejected a technology that reduced emissions. Rajkot, Gujarat, October 2017 Engineers were busily shuffling back and forth in a large, fluorescent tube-lit room in Rajkot, looking over plans for a national government scheme to provide “Housing for All.” The town’s chief engineer proudly announced that they were on track to build 6000 subsidized homes that year. She introduced me to her right-hand man, who then sat me down next to his computer to show me the blueprints in more detail. I was familiar with the basic template of governmentbuilt housing in India: a rudimentary block of eight flats, two on each floor separated by an open stairwell, often built with shoddy concrete. Its paint would peel in a few years, and few would choose to live in them. Yet, I noticed some small differences in the drawings he was showing me. The windows were slightly more set back into the walls and the openings into the stairwell slightly larger than usual, both of which I remarked to the engineer. He smiled and asked: “Building dekhna hai?” (“Do you want to see the building yourself?”) The next thing I knew I was on the back of his motorbike speeding through Rajkot’s traffic on a hot and dusty day, wearing a spare, musty helmet he kindly lent me. After passing some fields, where cows were grazing, we arrived at a set of flats, about 40 in total, freshly painted in shades of white and earthy yellow. He proudly guided me through the flats, showing me the windows designed to keep the shade out, and the openings to ventilate the buildings. He also pointed out the system of pipes and tanks to harvest and store rainwater, a precious necessity in dry Rajkot where many households only received tap water for 20 minutes a day. He took me to the roof, painted a stark white to reflect heat. “Cool roof,” he said, proudly puffing out his chest, and proceeded to tell me that they were installing solar panels soon. Over the rest of the afternoon, he took me to another set of flats five minutes away, and then another, where people were already living, milling about the public area. There, a sign read “Grow Trees, Go Solar.” I returned later without the engineer in tow, to ask residents how they felt about their experience living in the flats. Many expressed happiness with their new homes, barring the distance from the city center. The government was going to build six thousand more of these this year, and perhaps more the year after, and yet more after that. Climate Change as Local, Controversial, and Uncertain The three accounts challenge an influential way to think about science, technology, and justice. Specifically, we consider science and technology to be universal, or constant across the world. There is good reason to believe so. The science that establishes the reality of climate change is based on the construction of models of geophysical phenomena of the whole Earth, building on climate data collected across many countries. A solar panel works the same in the hut in Davanagere where workers puff rice, state-built flats in Rajkot, or on the roof of your home. The scientific measurement of sinking land is based on common principles whether in the Himalayas or the Rockies. Believing climate change is about trusting this globally uniform science; those 106 Ankit Bhardwaj that reject these globally stable facts are labeled climate deniers. But some of those who study science and technology have come to understand them as not globally uniform and contextless but local or situated. Science and technology, they argue, are the product of many small decisions people make together in specific settings such as laboratories, field sites, homes, and workplaces. What comes to matter is not abstract principles or the technologies themselves, but how people adapt them to local settings and problems. This has profound consequences for how we understand climate change, a phenomenon we tend to think of as impacting the whole planet uniformly. Justice too can neatly map onto patterns of global inequality. Climate justice can be defined across several dimensions: who gains from or is harmed by climate change (distribution), who should bear the cost of the action (responsibility), who influences decision-making (procedural), whose interests are seen as legitimate (recognition), and who deserves compensation for past harms (reparation). It is undeniable that the rich have profited more from the consumption of fossil fuels, and therefore bear more responsibility for the crises, while the poorest will not have the resources to survive the harms of climate change, furthering their vulnerable suffering. At the global scale, colonialism and globalizing capitalism have structured a stark inequality. Many of the poorest are in the equatorial global South, heavily populated regions of postcolonial Africa, Asia, and Caribbean and Latin America. This is a cruel fact, as much of climate change’s most vicious impacts including heat, rains, droughts, and storms will be most pronounced in this region. The poor also have little representation in the halls of power and control over decision-making. Their interests are seen as less legitimate. As a result, if things do not change, they will systematically have less influence on actions to respond to climate change. Climate justice is debated on the global stage in a diplomatic rift between the richest countries in the global North and the poorest countries in the global South and is often characterized in terms of a conflict between the haves and have-nots. Yet, such a global understanding of climate justice, while a useful guide, provides little detail on how people’s lives will change in response to climate change. Those impacted by climate change will likely have their own definitions and pursuits of justice formed depending on their situation. The challenges they face due to climate change, the priorities they have in response and the capacity to achieve their goals, will likely vary locally. Climate justice is thus not only a global pursuit but also a local one. I term this situated climate justice, the locally uneven ways in which people experience the consequences of climate change, understand the crisis, get involved, prioritize demands, and devise projects for a just future. The three sketches I outline above indicate that climate science, technology, and justice will have different meanings in different situations. The first two examples show how political discussions on climate change tend to go. They are controversies, situations in which people disagree over the explanations of events or the solution to problems. Controversies are common in science, as they involve skepticism of explanations and solutions which are still uncertain (when the likelihood of correctness is unclear) and indeterminate (when relevant causes are unclear). Controversies protract debates, using up precious time necessary to avoid the most dangerous consequences of climate change. But they can also generate possibilities for the many affected to raise their concerns. In my first sketch regarding the land subsidence in Joshimath, we see controversy around the causes of a seemingly “natural” geophysical event that harmed people. Is climate change to blame? In the case of the plans to decarbonize traditional puffed rice production in Davanagere, we see controversy around reducing greenhouse gas emissions, known as either mitigation or decarbonization, a necessity if we are to avoid dangerous climate change. Are technologies to reduce emissions suitable? The third sketch about low-carbon, Postcards from Small Town India 107 public housing development in Rajkot points to a means for reducing emissions that while small, was not controversial. Does it provide a lesson on how climate action can be pursued without conflict? Contesting Scientific Frames Beyond the Popular The debate over what caused the cracking homes in Joshimath reveals that struggles over what we think is happening, or knowledge about the crisis, will set the grounds for justice in climate controversies. When events have multiple possible causes, groups will seek to establish knowledge so that it bolsters explanations suitable to their positions. Sociologists call this organization of knowledge a frame: what is considered important, how it is portrayed, what is explained, and what is ignored. Climate controversies often involve multiple, conflicting scientific frames. Power, in part, is the ability to impose one’s frame on others. At the global scale, vast amounts of planetary-scale models have underpinned a settled scientific frame that climate change is real and dangerous. The frame is settled through consensus – an agreement amongst a vast majority of scientists. But these planetary-scale data and models have yet to capture intricacies at the scale most familiar to us, such as the places we live and work, leaving local climate science unsettled. Even when pertinent, climate change might not be the first cause on people’s minds when they face a crisis. For example, the ire of Joshimath’s residents focused on the government agency for building a nearby hydropower dam and not necessarily those responsible for climate change, the position emphasized by environmental activists. It would be a mistake, though, to consider the residents’ cause as different from one for climate justice. They rightly note that government construction puts them in harm’s way, and this harm will only be further intensified due to climate change. Climate change acts as a threat multiplier, exacerbating harms people are already familiar with. But as such harms can have other relevant, and more locally familiar causes, calls for climate justice do not have to be framed in the name of climate change, but the threatful avatars it will unleash. In a crisis, no single cause may readily stand out to blame. Instead, different stakeholders wield science to defend their preferred cause. What is considered truth is established in a public debate between alternative explanations. In classical accounts of controversies of environmental knowledge, scholars have often counterposed the expert scientific knowledge used by states and firms with citizen science. Popular science is knowledge made by a local community, based on their cultural tradition, made credible by alignment with lived experience, and communicated through stories. In Joshimath, residents drew on their own experiences and local knowledge of their region to blame new hydropower construction for the harms they faced. But they also drew from expert scientific reports by geologists and satellite data from government agencies that bolstered their claims. The government also cited geologists and engineers who argued that the dam was safe. Climate activists leaned on global scientific data, and computational models, to point toward the role of climate change. The controversy was not over those who believed “The Science” versus those who did not. There was no single scientific position on the issue. It was instead a public contest between different scientific frames to explain the crisis. If climate justice is about forwarding community perspectives and welfare, then it seems that citizen science aligns with movements for justice. But in Joshimath, calls for justice did not just involve experience and tradition-based knowledge but also professional science that aligned with their claims. It involved government agencies disagreeing openly over causes, leading one to censor the other in an attempt at controlling the narrative. Alongside traditional wisdom, local communities can find professional scientific data such as from government satellites useful in 108 Ankit Bhardwaj bolstering their call for justice. But those opposed to climate justice too can marshal their own narratives and data. The climate crisis then poses a problem of how we come to know, and make decisions about, the causes of harms we face. The Unavoidable Weight of What Exists for Just Transitions The second sketch shows the influence of a community’s traditional knowledge on climate action. In Davanagere, workers committed to existing traditional practices for making puffed rice, even as it polluted the air they worked in and worsened their health. While open to the use of solar panels, their experience with the prototype electric ovens made them skeptical that it would provide the temperature necessary for production. They came to believe that the electric ovens would make their lives harder and therefore continued to raise concerns. STS scholars have studied how we change our use of technologies over time or technology transitions. To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, societies will have to undertake the mindboggling task of shifting from using fossil-fuel energy to sources that do not emit carbon. We have undertaken such vast energy transitions before. Early societies used biomass (wood or other organic matter such as peat) for energy, then increasingly added more fuels that were more efficient such as whale oil, coal, and eventually fossil oil and gas. As of today, according to the Statistical Review of World Energy, we meet around 80% of our energy needs with fossil fuels. The transition to avoid dangerous climate change will involve replacing fossil fuels with lowcarbon sources of energy. This will be a profound social change. At stake is how people make, work, move, and live in comfort, and the costs they bear to do so. Labor and social movements calling for a just transition argue that this shift to low-carbon energy should address the needs of workers and citizens such as gainful employment, social welfare, and clean environments. It should shift the costs of the transition not to the poorest but to those most responsible for the high consumption of fossil fuels. The case of Davanagere shows that a transition to low-carbon energy will have to change long-existing traditions and labor practices of using carbon-intensive fuels. Just transitions will involve an unavoidable reckoning with how reducing emissions will involve transforming livelihoods, or how people secure the necessities of their lives. Even when the government subsidized the economic cost of the ovens themselves, the workers argued that the electric ovens would reduce the productivity of their labor, likely extending hours in a stifling workplace to produce the same amount, while taking away a preferred taste. The government’s climate-friendly aim to decarbonize the traditional practice faltered, not because the workers did not believe in climate change but because they saw the proposed technology as insufficiently aligned with their existing lives. The uptake of low-carbon technology was not a technical but rather a social and cultural problem. What came to matter was whether the specific, cultural practices in Mandakki Bhatti could be decarbonized with existing technology without disrupting the priorities of laborers. This indicates hard but unavoidable local choices for achieving a just transition: how will we change the many culturally specific practices that have come to rely on fossil fuels? And if it cannot be done without costs to the most vulnerable, is it worth it to rapidly reduce emissions? Styles of Climate Justice In the second and third cases, government bureaucrats aimed to reduce emissions, but they adopted different approaches. In Davanagere, bureaucrats bargained with workers over the suitability of low-carbon technology but faced opposition when workers framed the transition as Postcards from Small Town India 109 disruptive to their work. In Rajkot, bureaucrats did not talk to the residents they were building for, often an indicator of climate injustice. But in their project, residents continued life uninterrupted and did not see any negative impacts of a project to reduce emissions on their lives. The city engineers had built low-carbon housing for the city’s poorer residents with only small changes to familiar housing. Due to the gravity and global scope of the crisis, responding to climate change will require vast, disruptive social changes. But the transition to using less energy and more from lower carbon sources can also involve small changes. They just need to be widespread. In Rajkot, building apartments that used less energy meant only tweaking the status quo: slightly changing the size and position of windows, choosing the right paint, and procuring increasingly affordable solar panels. Rajkot’s bureaucrats creatively added these climate-friendly features to their existing practices. It required no new money or major policy on the part of the government. It did not disrupt their lives or pose unbearable costs to lower-income residents. For better or worse, responding to climate change can look like continuing as-is. In contrast to Davanagere, emission reduction in Rajkot’s low-carbon homes aligned with social welfare. Residents benefited because their homes would be slightly cooler and their electric bills slightly lower than usual. Action to reduce emissions need not be disruptive. It can have social co-benefits. These benefits include more than better homes. Other low-carbon projects such as public transit, electrified and efficient appliances, new green public spaces, and easily accessible services can mean healthier, and more equitable cities. The focus on co-benefits turns our attention to how climate action addresses the other pressing social and environmental needs of people. Studying such a situated justice involves analyzing how climate actions are related to factors of situational importance such as housing, potable water, affordable electricity, livelihoods, and culture. The importance of each aspect of justice shifts in relevance, depending on the concerns of the actors involved. For example, the procedural justice of involving workers in discussions around low-carbon technologies in Davanagere rightly gave opportunities for workers to raise their concerns but stymied the distribution of low-carbon technologies. There was a lack of procedural justice in Rajkot but the distribution of solar panels and cool housing to the city’s low-income residents involved recognition of their climate vulnerability, and distribution to alleviate harms. Justice is not one-size-fits-all. It involves consideration of local cultures and situations. People create climate justice in their own style by coming together to define it in ways consistent with their needs. Conclusion Climate change will bring extraordinary changes to ordinary places. But its changes will not be uniform, and neither will climate science, technology, and justice. Climate change will multiply existing threats of floods, heat, and drought in cities. It will also mobilize groups with differing worldviews and complementary scientific findings. Culture will shape how people frame the crises they face and the solutions they support, as will professional scientific findings and innovative technologies. Disruptions to what people hold dear, such as how we traditionally make food, will invite opposition. But the changes that will better our lives will quietly find a place in our homes. Rather than focus on the big disagreements over abstracted facts and global principles, a situated approach helps us see that both knowledge about climate change, and actions to reduce emissions will be made by people in the local worlds where they live and work. Causes for climate justice that aim to reduce emissions and increase welfare will have to consider how people 110 Ankit Bhardwaj make a living, and what they treasure about the world around them. The situations in Joshimath, Davanagere, and Rajkot are unique, but they reveal a truth. The success of climate science, technology, and justice will not be won in a global debate, or descend by international fiat, but be built piece by piece, in every place, including around your corner. Further Reading Angelo, H. (2022) “Boomtown: A solar land rush in the West,” Harper’s Magazine, December 12. Araos, M. (2023) “Democracy underwater: Public participation, technical expertise, and climate infrastructure planning in New York City,” Theory and Society, 52(1), pp. 1–34. Bhardwaj, A. (2022) “Styles of decarbonization,” Environmental Politics, Taylor & Francis, pp. 1–23. Boyer, D. and Howe, C. (2019) Wind and Power in the Anthropocene, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Castro, B., & Sen, R. (2022). Everyday Adaptation: Theorizing climate change adaptation in daily life. Global Environmental Change, 75. Dubash, N.K. (ed.) (2020) India in a Warming World: Integrating Climate Change and Development, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Elliott, R. (2021) Underwater: Loss, Flood Insurance, and the Moral Economy of Climate Change in the United States, New York: Columbia University Press. Rice, J.L., Cohen, D.A., Long, J., et al. (2020) “Contradictions of the climate-friendly city: New perspectives on eco-gentrification and housing justice,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 44(1), pp. 145–165. Schlosberg, D. and Collins, L.B. (2014) “From environmental to climate justice: Climate change and the discourse of environmental justice,” WIREs Climate Change, 5(3), pp. 359–374. Táíwò, O.O. (2022) Reconsidering Reparations, New York: Oxford University Press. Introduction: A Rooftop View of Solar Thermal Systems in Jordan Summer days are hot in the northeastern corner of Jordan, near the border with Syria. The sun beats down across the golden hillsides, penetrating the thin walls of many of the houses that populate the towns and villages along the border. On a bright spring day in 2022, I drove out to a Jordanian village near the city of Irbid to meet with Maryam, a woman who had installed a solar thermal water heater on her rooftop to help conserve energy and reduce her monthly electricity bill. Maryam’s family migrated to this village from Damascus over a century ago, and generations of her family have built homes and gardens that made use of the rich ecological diversity of this region. As I walked up to her house, the sun glinted off the golden stalks of barley and flowering fruit trees that interlaced the old stone buildings. Sitting on the veranda of Maryam’s house, we drank mint lemonade and ate fresh loquat, a small orange fruit, that Maryam had just harvested from her garden. We talked about the challenges and opportunities for household renewable energy systems in the village. She explained how electricity prices had become increasingly unaffordable amidst nation-wide energy sector reforms, with monthly electricity bills becoming an unbearable burden for many households in the village. In addition, she had been noticing shifts in the local climate in recent years, as climate change brought bitterly cold winds and ice in the winter and extended periods of drought in the summer. Maryam took me up to the roof to show me the small solar thermal system that she installed. It uses the thermal rays of the sun to heat tubes filled with water, which is then piped directly into the house. As we explored the form and function of the system, Maryam shared how this simple array had reduced her electricity bills and her reliance on the local electricity distribution company. This renewable energy system gave her more economic independence and direct control over the comfort of her home. Around the world today, many individuals, communities, and governments recognize the urgent need for rapid decarbonization. Decarbonization, or the reduction of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, can take many different forms. Renewable energy transition is a key piece of decarbonization and can include simple renewable energy technologies like Maryam’s rooftop solar thermal system, as well as more complex renewable technologies like large-scale wind farms with battery storage systems. Decarbonization also includes making changes to the built environment, which can take the shape of small interventions like installing better household insulation and switching to more efficient light bulbs, as well as large-scale interventions like transforming urban and rural transportation and agricultural systems to reduce the use of hydrocarbon-based inputs like gasoline and petrochemical fertilizers. The government of Jordan, among others around the globe, has set ambitious decarbonization targets and developed national programs to reach these goals. Jordan is a middle-income country that faces multiple, pressing development challenges, including high unemployment 13 Solar Affordances and the Struggle for Climate Justice in Southwest Asia Kendra Kintzi DOI: 10.4324/9781003409748-18 This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. Introduction On a frigid night in February 2021, thousands huddled on the railings of Upper St. Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the first major lock and dam on the Mississippi River, to peer down at Indigenous artist Moira Villiard’s light and sound show, Madweyaashkaa: Waves Can Be Heard. Our attention was focused deep inside the 400 by 50-foot lock chamber at floating images of Grandmother moon, fire, earth, water, and the jingle dress dance entwined in swirling colors. Challenging the histories of violence and racism that have defined our relationship with the river, this piece asked us to imagine how physical and social infrastructures can promote healing amidst pandemic and racial uprisings. The performance was surprisingly sanctioned by the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that has forcefully held the Mississippi River in place for more than a century. Like many water agencies across the US and the world, the Corps’ mandate is rapidly shifting away from its 19th-century mission to harness rivers for commercial exploitation toward a 21st-century need to repair rivers facing climate change impacts such as biodiversity loss. For example, Corps projects have been impacted by invasive species, unpredictable flooding, and federal mandates to restore destroyed fish habitats. In 2018, the agency was directed by the US Congress to complete a multiyear, multimillion-dollar study to determine what “value” the American public derives from the operation of infrastructure on the Mississippi, particularly in the upper basin where commercial navigation is no longer economical. It is likely that the Corps 14 Upstream Engagement in the Era of Climate Change Roopali Phadke Figure 14.1 Mockup of Madweyaashkaa. Source: With permission from Northern lights.mn. DOI: 10.4324/9781003409748-19 This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. Upstream Engagement in the Era of Climate Change 119 will recommend divestment, as they have done elsewhere, and perhaps even pursue dam removal and massive river restoration. There is no precedent for undamming a river system the scale of the Mississippi, encompassing the fourth-largest watershed in the world. The mere act of imagining this future will have major consequences for how the Corps operates around the nation and ripple effects for millions who live downriver. With massive injections of public money coming for infrastructure revitalization in an era of climate change and green energy development, this is an extraordinary time to consider how 21st-century river management can become a force for climate justice. Herein, achieving climate justice requires us to acknowledge and repair the damage done to ecosystems and communities. I begin the chapter with a historical look at why the Mississippi was dammed and dredged, and the long-term social and environmental implications of these efforts. I then describe how STS-informed approaches to participatory research and critical infrastructure studies can be applied to thinking about the future of the Mississippi River. The third section describes the community-based research conducted by my research lab over the last several years and how the lessons we’ve learned can apply to future Corps’ actions. I end with reflections on the implications of this case study for thinking about the role of water infrastructure in an era of climate changes and climate justice. The Mississippi’s Transformation The Mississippi, the second longest river in North America, travels from its origins in Lake Itasca in northwestern Minnesota 2,350 miles south to the Gulf of Mexico. The river is hydrologically and administratively divided into three sections: the Upper Mississippi, from its headwaters to the confluence with the Missouri River near St. Louis; the Middle Mississippi, which is downriver from the Missouri to the Ohio River; and the Lower Mississippi, which flows from the Ohio to the Gulf of Mexico. The Corps built and operated the Mississippi’s infrastructure with a battle general’s intent for over 150 years (Frankel, 2018). Founded in 1755, the Corps is a branch of the US Department of Defense. It is one of the world’s largest public engineering, design, and construction agencies. Congress first authorized the Corps to construct six dams in the headwaters area between 1880 and 1907 to support a vocal and powerful flour milling and timber industry. Figure 14.2 shows the state of the river in the early 1900s when the Meeker Dam was constructed. This was the first and northernmost lock and dam on the Mississippi River. In 1910, the Corps built America’s first national dam with a hydroelectric plant at Lock and Dam 1 in St. Paul. Today, the Corps operates a “stairway of water” that consists of nearly 30 locks and dams on the Upper Mississippi River between Minneapolis and St. Louis to permit barge traffic and protect farms and cities from flooding. The Corps also maintains a nine-foot-deep channel to enable navigation through this stretch. Between the first and last lock, the Mississippi drops 420 feet over the course of 670 miles. Before channel construction, the depth of the Upper Mississippi averaged approximately three feet and was as low as one foot deep near St. Paul in dry seasons. The Upper Mississippi’s industrial past and imagined futures cannot be separated from histories of native dispossession. The locks and dams on the Upper Mississippi effectively drowned the waterfalls, sand bars, islands, and gorges that once covered this territory. The Dakota people, who occupied the region for nearly 10,000 years before the onset of settler colonialism in 1680, were disregarded and abused when the river was claimed as a commercial resource. The confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers, sacred grounds known to the Dakota as Bdote, was made into a military base where the Dakota were imprisoned during the War of 1862. The 120 Roopali Phadke Dakota still claim this territory and are deeply connected to the politics of infrastructure development in the region. Moreover, the river’s industrial past is also inseparable from the violence of slavery, antiBlackness, and the ongoing dispossession of Black communities. Historians have described how the Mississippi served as both refuge and oppressor for those enslaved peoples who toiled the crops and labored on the boats of the antebellum economy (Zeisler-Vralsted, 2019). Zoning and redlining policies in the 20th century further segregated Black populations, simultaneously barring them from the river while exposing them to the impacts of toxic industries that took up residence on the banks (Miller, 2020). In 2015, the Corps was forced to close the uppermost lock to block the spread of invasive carp further upstream. This was the first time a navigable waterway in the US was closed to stem the tide of an invasive species. Soon after, the US Congress passed the Water Resources Development Act of 2018 (PL 115–270), which authorized the Corps to conduct a disposition study that covers the three uppermost locks and dams in Minneapolis and St. Paul. This includes Upper St. Anthony Lock and Dam, Lower St. Anthony Lock and Dam, and Lock and Dam 1. The goal was to determine whether it was still in the public’s interest for the Corps to continue owning and maintaining them (at a cost of $1.6 million per year) now that they no longer meet a navigation purpose. The Corps completed their report on the first structure, Upper St. Anthony Falls, and have moved on to examine the two other structures in a second study scheduled to be completed by Figure 14.2 Meeker Dam Construction. Source: Army Corps of Engineers St Paul District. Upstream Engagement in the Era of Climate Change 121 2024–25. The disposition study process examines three options: 1) no action, 2) partial disposal (deauthorize and retain some flood mitigation features), and 3) full disposal (deauthorize and completely dispose). After disposal, the facility is up for sale or transference to another public or private entity. It is also possible that the structures can be removed. Congress also directed the Corps to consider other measures to “preserve and enhance recreational opportunities and the health of the ecosystem” and “maintain the benefits to the natural ecosystem and human environment” (US Congress, 2018). The Corps is already involved in restoration projects in the upper basin, including dredging pools along the floodplain and using the sediment to construct islands and restore wetland fish and waterfowl habitat. Interest in restoring the Mississippi River is representative of dam removal and river restoration movements cropping up across the US and Europe. Over 1,340 dams have been removed across the US, with 930 removed since 1999 (American Rivers, 2017). On the Upper Mississippi, river restoration will be a highly complex act of engineering through which new islands and channels would be created to restore whitewater conditions. Removing the dams would mean that in the dry season (July–August) it would be possible to wade across a two-foot river in the city, which today the Corps holds at a minimum nine-foot depth. Those who live, work, and play in and along the river have many ideas about what the river is and what it should be. The Corps’ consideration of dam removal and river restoration has drawn impassioned and conflicting responses. Some advocate to keep the dams while many want to free the river and give land back to Native peoples. Scholarly Inspirations from STS I have engaged with STS scholarship on participatory technology design and critical infrastructure to research this case. STS scholars have described, analyzed, and experimented with citizen-led technology assessment and community-based research. In the realms of environment and climate, STS participatory experiments have included consensus conferences, citizen juries, and deliberative polls on topics that range from assessing biotechnology to geoengineering the planet. My environmental scholarship models a form of STS action-research, which I’ve referred to as “place-based technology assessment,” that connects local policy actors with social movement demands through multisite, multiscale research collaborations (Phadke, 2014). I evoke place-making to underscore the importance of designing technology, such as lock and dam infrastructures, in relationship with those who live, work, and play in the very environments we seek to change. Social scientists and humanists have come to define infrastructure as a complex and changing set of objects, laws, and knowledge practices that manage, maintain and repair places (Anand, Gupta, and Appel, 2018; Jackson, 2014; Edwards, 2003; Mitchell, 2002). Neglected and abandoned infrastructures, like lead water mains and oil pipelines, are sites for intense political conflict in the era of climate change because they may fail to safely deliver resources. Infrastructural failures tend to affect people unequally. Thus, their management and repair allow us to consider how issues of gender, race, colonialism, and classism relate to place-making. Focusing on “upstream” engagement allows me to connect critical infrastructure studies with place-making design. Upstream refers to public engagement with potential problems and solutions at an early stage of the research and development process, rather than downstream when problems and social controversy are experienced (Rogers-Hayden and Pidgeon, 2007). Upstream engagement has been used across a wide set of technology contexts from nanotechnology to genetically modified organisms. While “upstream” here refers to process, the concept is particularly useful for thinking about governing rivers that move across complex cultural and physical 122 Roopali Phadke terrains. In the context of the Corps’ disposition studies on the Mississippi, the above wisdom helps us consider the limitations of conventional public engagement practice and how we might intervene toward greater inclusive, reflexive, and creative engagement. Working in collaboration with several local and national river organizations, my undergraduate student research team has documented, interpreted, and experimented with public engagement processes. By examining which modes of engagement enable or shut down imaginings of a future river, we’ve aimed to create upstream opportunities for reflection among publics who have been excluded and harmed by past approaches. Our work has included archival document analysis, public surveying of hundreds of people, expert interviews, and focus group river tours. The next section describes our approach and findings. Modeling Upstream Collaborative Research This project began in 2018–19 when the Corps’ launched its first public hearings about the future of the Upper St. Anthony Lock and Dam. Between 2000–23, our research group reviewed all the public comments received by the Corps and monitored news accounts and social media. We also interviewed local and national experts and conducted surveys and focus groups. The work culminated with a research report delivered to the Corps with a set of recommendations about how to improve their engagement efforts. I describe below our findings and reflections from the Corps about them. Public comments received by the Corps offered insights into how residents perceived the importance of the locks and dams to their sense of place. Of the 114 submissions, 84 comments opposed full disposition and 17 comments favored partial disposition of the Upper St. Anthony Lock and Dam. Most respondents asked the Corps to stay, citing trust in their ability alone to maintain the river infrastructure that matters most to quality of life. For example, one resident wrote: “We are extremely skeptical that there is any other organization with the financial or organizational capacity to manage this critically important facility.” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, along with city council members, wrote that the Corps “are the only entity that can continue to manage these structures with the expertise and oversight that considers its effect on the system of locks, dams, cutoff wall, bridges, flood mitigation, municipal water, industrial uses, transportation, and recreation that impacts millions of Americans.” While the public comments overwhelmingly told the Corps to stay, the agency’s disposition report on Upper St. Anthony Falls concluded that “there is no federal interest in continuing to own and operate the project, and recommends full disposal, combined with offering a monetary incentive to expedite the disposal”. Community groups stepped in to find a way forward given the Corps’ desire to abandon the facility. This process, now part of “The Falls Initiative,” created a process to transform the deactivated, concrete lock into “an iconic destination” honoring the site’s Indigenous history. As an act of place making, the Falls plan emphasizes how infrastructure can be renegotiated to address settler-colonial injustices related to land and water dispossession. The Native Leadership Council of Friends of the Falls, the nonprofit steering the efforts, writes on their website that “We have an opportunity to create a place of healing at Owámniyomni (meaning ‘turbulent waters’ in the Dakota language), or St. Anthony Falls, that acknowledges the past and advances a more equitable and inclusive future.” Early conceptual drawings include native landscape, walking paths, and places to gather and connect to the river. The Corps are currently in negotiation with the City of Minneapolis to convey the land over to the city, and then back to the Dakota people. Our analysis of public comments in the first part of the study indicated that while the public trusts the Corps’ technical expertise, there is great unease with the framing of the public process. Upstream Engagement in the Era of Climate Change 123 The Corps first study was narrowly focused on the locks and dams, and not the future of a river that is the lifeblood of the region. The Corps routinely responds to questions asked by members of the public by saying “that’s not in the scope of the project”. Members of the public often respond by asking how the scope of the study can be expanded so infrastructure goes beyond concrete and steel. The low levels of public engagement with the Corps’ first study begged asking how upstream forms of public participation might aid the policy process. We wondered how the Corps could better understand public concerns before they began the second part of their disposition process aimed at the next two locks and dams: Lower St. Anthony and Lock and Dam 1. This was particularly important because there are already strong calls from across the nation to unlock this seven-mile stretch of the Mississippi to restore Big Rapids habitat. To increase more inclusive and intentional upstream public engagement, we helped create a partnership called the Future Mississippi Collaborative, made up of local and national river guardian organizations with expertise in engaging diverse communities.1 We began by collecting and analyzing 270 hand-written surveys at different sites along the river near the locks and dams in question. The surveys found that only 3% of respondents had participated in the Corps public input process. Only .7% (two people out of 270) reported they had attended a public meeting and only 2.6% said that they participated through public comments. The majority of respondents did not know the primary purpose for the locks and dams. This general lack of knowledge and engagement indicated a need for expanded outreach and education. Acknowledging this lack of public awareness was a problem, the Corps partnered with us to increase public engagement. In summer 2022, we designed and hosted 13 interactive tours, which also served as focus groups. Our tour guides described the history of the locks and dams and the questions the Corps was considering. Corps staff joined us on these tours and provided access to the lock and dam facilities so participants could get up close to the river infrastructure. Figure 14.5 includes images from our walking, biking, kayaking, and boating tours that included three community council tours, two BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) tours, and one youth-centered tour. Over 400 people applied for these groups, and 250 people of all ages and abilities ultimately gathered at the water. We collected 233 more surveys from tour participants to gather their opinions on the future of the river. Among our findings, we learned what types of information survey participants thought would be useful to know prior to participating in a Corps disposition study. Many participants requested information about ecological impacts (26.4%) and social and community impacts (21.3%). Tour participants also wanted to learn more about sediment toxicity, current and future costs of lock and dam maintenance, and the cost of dam removal. Our focus group tours also asked participants: “What do you wish for the Mississippi River?” Among other sentiments, many respondents emphasized giving land back to Native peoples. Comments included: “I want Indigenous folks to have the most say—they care for better standards of the land, and water, have ancestral ties and are owed some sort of reparations for their forcible exile/expulsion from the place,” “To decolonize this river, the infrastructure, the narratives, allow humans to connect with a more natural river corridor, to heal and love the river so that we may heal and love ourselves,” and “To be returned to the communities they impact most and historically have been their caretakers.” We provided the Corps with a summary set of recommendations based on our findings. We advised them to offer educational resources and public tours, present community members with visual representations of how a future Mississippi River might look, and collect basic demographic information about who submits comments and attends public events. We also urged the Corps to build partnerships with youth and youth-led organizations. We found that youth are [Document text truncated for crawler view.]