On Deliberation, Intervention and Forecasts of the Past (Part II)
On Urgency and Thought in Times of Crises
In her book “Thinking in an Emergency”, Elaine Scarry demonstrates the role that urgency, deliberation and thought play when anticipating and acting in crisis. Three of the points she makes are particularly relevant to understand the impact the social sciences could have on ‘urgent action’ and climate change interventions. To begin with, Scarry points to the urgency – the requirement for rapid action in the face of emergency – that levers all thinking (2011: 14). Secondly, she researches and establishes the link between governance and deliberation; both capacities which are meant to help people prepare for and navigate through crisis [moments when thought is impossible], and to urgently act, in fact. Scarry refers to key Western philosophers here and states that, deliberation, ideas we deliberate and make political decisions with, are what govern us in effect (Scarry, 2011: 89-90). She highlights a third point, namely that habit is a key feature of governance, and created through the deliberation and anticipation of emergency before its occurrence (Scarry, 2011: 94): habit, in other words, is the law that governs our behaviour as citizens (Aristotle in Scarry, 2011, 90). It is what gives force and form to our actions in response to the emergency as it occurs (Dewey in Scarry, 2011: 89).
‘NYC – MoMA: Dan Perjovschi’s What Happened to Us?’
Image by wallyg via creativecommons.org
With respect to the current climate crisis, we find ourselves in an emergency not because all of the thinking was done away with. Rather, we are in crisis, because there is urgency in the ‘realness’ of scientific thought-predictions, regardless of their not-being-here-yet. If anything, climate change is a crisis that was recognised because plenty of thinking was done for it to become critical in the first place.
More importantly, the largely predictive nature of climate change does not only paint a picture of what our futures may look like. Rather, the predictive nature of science and interventionist action leads to the transformation of the present. Think of Knox’s fieldwork in the carbon literacy programmes in the city of Manchester, for example (2014: 406). The numbers based on which we envision a carbon-polluted future are enough to lead to educational programmes that urge citizens to change their behaviour now. Climate sciences, and more specifically the statistics of CO2 emissions in this example, are thus the guiding principles by which we are inducted into new ways of interacting with each other and our environment. The if-we-change-now, as realised in policy and intervention programmes constitute both urgent action and habit. As the former responds to the ‘realness’ of crisis before occurrence, the latter is routine to prevent and prepare for emergencies.
On Social Life, Interventions and the Need for a More Holistic Approach
But what do the actions and interventions based on scientifically validated predictions mean for our social life specifically? The trouble is that we may not be able to return to the before-we-knew-climate-change-was-a-reality. In other words, the changes we are introducing now will likely become our new way of life. In the context of climate change, I believe that this realisation is the measure of all magnitude. If there is urgency to act, we need to make sure that the actions we take are deliberate. Even more so, we need to make sure that the deliberations by which we understand climate change, draft policy and implement interventions consider all interacting variables. In fact, this is precisely where the methods of the social sciences come in: fieldwork, participant observation, and critical attention to detail are very deliberate ways of researching social, political and scientific life as such. They are the knowledge-making practices that current climate change interventions fall short of.
‘Fridays for Future 25.01.2018 Berlin’
Image by fridaysforfuture via creativecommons.org
Consider the following examples: Scientists such as Wally Broecker, Richard Alley and others, for instance, have asserted the sometimes rather unpredictably shifting nature and “nonlinear dynamics” of the climate (Allan, 2017: 153). In other words, there are fluctuations in the reliable development of the climate as a statistic, and hence, to what extent we can predict and forecast its impact on the environment and our future. More so, there is an error rate to numbers that we often forget to consider, especially when drawing conclusions from exclusively numeric models of climate change (Hulme, 2011: 256). Anthropologists such Jessica O’Reilly address these statistical inaccuracies in their fieldwork by collaborating with “participating scientists to analyse how their micro practices inform the state of climate science knowledge” (2015: 123). Deliberation through the observation of micro practices may thus prevent a protective intervention from turning into a socially intrusive and harmful one.
Beyond that, the impact of climate change as such is variable: while greenhouse gas emissions constitute an emergency in some places, they are not as grave in others (Allan quoting Hulme, 2020: 7). Especially because much is modelled exclusively on the basis of climate statistics and CO2 emissions, local, cultural and socio-economic variables are often not considered at all (Norgaard, 2017: 74). In fact, if representations of social life are considered, they are often static, generally lacking concepts of social dynamism and change (Edwards in Hulme, 2011: 259). Kari Norgaard’s work on the relevance of sociological imagination is illustrative here (2017: 72). She has observed people’s cultural inertia in the face of climate change (Norgaard, 2017:74), and outlines how the social sciences can help highlight “the relationships between individuals, culture and […] systems” as well as people’s beliefs and values (idem). These insights may, in turn, help formulate responses and initiate more holistic interventions and urgent action to climate change (idem).
On Forecasting Interventions For An Alternative Future
In this essay, I tried to chronicle the contributing factors that lead to the popular institutional perception of climate change as a crisis. The aim was to understand this kind of political response often marked by a predominant call to act urgently, without however specifying what these actions may look like. As I have also tried to show, the one-sidedness of preventative assessments that often disregards social and environmental variables as part of the scientific playing field, lead to either dominant, static or inaccurate adjustments to lives lived whilst anticipating climate change.
‘Famous Science Fiction, 1967’
Image by jovike via creativecommons.org
Due to the predominant impact of science in the understanding, prediction and hence sustenance of climate change as a crisis, I suggest that more deliberation and consideration of circumstance is brought to the table employing methods of the social sciences in the analysis and writing of policy interventions. If we miss out on being socially and culturally attentive to human life in climate change, we might end up creating more of what Jameson has called the “forecasts of the past” (in Guyer, 2007: 416). That is to say, if we continue diminishing climate change to a naturally numeric entity, we may promote a politics of pressure and irreverence that imposes interventions on peoples without actually considering them.The industrial history of climate change itself is a product of such politics. While idealistic political intention is hardly ever a panacea for the ills of our present and future, consideration of social, cultural and economic variables are critical to truly forecast interventions for an alternative if not better future.
Bibliography for Parts 1 & 2
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Castree, N., 2020. The Discourse and Reality of Carbon Dioxide Removal: Toward the Responsible Use of Metaphors in Post-normal Times. Frontiers in Climate, 2.
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Norgaard, K., 2017. The sociological imagination in a time of climate change. Global and Planetary Change, 163, pp.171-176.
O’Reilly, J., 2021. Glacial Dramas: Typos, Projections, and Peer Review in the Fourth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In: J. Barnes and M. Dove, ed., Climate Cultures. Anthropological Perspectives on Climate Change. New Haven: Yale University Press.
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Anthropology, Climate Change and Sustainability 