Social Science Perspectives On Climate Change

Although it is generally accepted that the climate is changing for the worse and that human activities are a major contributing factor in that change, there is still only marginal response to the challenge posed by climate change. The reasons behind this limited response are becoming clearer through the recognition that climate change is not just a set of physical science facts, but it is also part of a series of complex social processes. Consequently, this book is important in providing social science perspectives on a range of attempts to adjust human activity to reduce its environmental impact. These attempts vary from the changing of the dress code in Japanese offices to the creation of zero-carbon, gated communities in Bangalore, India. Taken together, the contributions to this book provide timely insights into the complexities of saving the planet through human endeavour. This book was originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Social Science.

Climate change is one of today's most important issues, presenting an intellectual challenge to the natural and social sciences. While there has been progress in natural science understanding of climate change, social science research has not been as fully developed. This collection of essays breaks new theoretical and empirical ground by presenting climate change as a thoroughly social phenomenon, embedded in our institutions and cultural practices.

This volume presents the findings of a small group of both social and natural scientists who tackled the 'so what' question. Led by Dartmouth sociologist, Elise Boulding, and Boulder climatologist, Stephen Schneider, the group examined how a changing climate might affect people and institutions and how these might respond. The outcome of their interdisciplinary appraisal is a blend of careful reviews of relevant social-science work, group interaction and discussion, and concrete suggestions for further research and analysis.

This book explores the significance of human behaviour to understanding the causes and impacts of changing climates and to assessing varied ways of responding to such changes. So far the discipline that has represented and modelled such human behaviour is economics. By contrast Climate Change and Society tries to place the ‘social’ at the heart of both the analysis of climates and of the assessment of alternative futures. It demonstrates the importance of social practices organised into systems. In the fateful twentieth century various interlocking high carbon systems were established. This sedimented high carbon social practices, engendering huge population growth, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and the potentially declining availability of oil that made this world go round. Especially important in stabilising this pattern was the ‘carbon military-industrial complex’ around the world. The book goes on to examine how in this new century it is systems that have to change, to move from growing high carbon systems to those that are low carbon. Many suggestions are made as to how to innovate such low carbon systems. It is shown that such a transition has to happen fast so as to create positive feedbacks of each low carbon system upon each other. Various scenarios are elaborated of differing futures for the middle of this century, futures that all contain significant costs for the scale, extent and richness of social life. Climate Change and Society thus attempts to replace economics with sociology as the dominant discipline in climate change analysis. Sociology has spent much time examining the nature of modern societies, of modernity, but mostly failed to analyse the carbon resource base of such societies. This book seeks to remedy that failing. It should appeal to teachers and students in sociology, economics, environmental studies, geography, planning, politics and science studies, as well as to the public concerned with the long term future of carbon and society.

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our times, yet global solutions have proved elusive. This book draws together cutting-edge anthropological research to uncover new ways of approaching the critical questions that surround climate change. Leading anthropologists engage in three major areas of inquiry: how climate change issues have been framed in previous times compared to present-day discourse, how knowledge about climate change and its impacts is produced and interpreted by different groups, and how imagination plays a role in shaping conceptions of climate change.

The Social Aspects of Environmental and Climate Change critically examines the prominence of natural science framing in mainstream climate change research and demonstrates why climate change really is a social issue. The book highlights how assumptions regarding social and cultural systems that are common in sustainability science have impeded progress in understanding environmental and climate change. The author explains how social sciences theory and perspectives provide an understanding of institutional dynamics including issues of scale, possibilities for learning, and stakeholder interaction, using specific case studies to illustrate this impact. The book highlights the foundational role research into social, political, cultural, behavioural, and economic processes must play if we are to design successful strategies, instruments, and management actions to act on climate change. With pedagogical features such as suggestions for further reading, text boxes, and study questions in each chapter, this book will be an essential resource for students and scholars in sustainability, environmental studies, climate change, and related fields.

Explores the interplay between science, economics, politics, and ethics in relation to climate change and the international community.

This intriguing volume provides a thorough examination of the historical roots of global climate change as a field of inquiry, from the Enlightenment to the late twentieth century. Based on primary and archival sources, the book is filled with interesting perspectives on what people have understood, experienced, and feared about the climate and its changes in the past. Chapters explore climate and culture in Enlightenment thought; climate debates in early America; the development of international networks of observation; the scientific transformation of climate discourse; and early contributions to understanding terrestrial temperature changes, infrared radiation, and the carbon dioxide theory of climate. But perhaps most important, this book shows what a study of the past has to offer the interdisciplinary investigation of current environmental problems.