Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Protocol to the Senate for a vote. In the boom of the late 1990s, Ameri-
cans were unready and unwilling to sign an agreement ultimately aimed
at changing the lifestyle they had worked for and defended for so long.
a neW ruBric?
At first glance, the stories of the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol seem
to depart from the stories of science politics that dominate the history of
global warming. The failure of the Kyoto Protocol in the United States was
certainly not a failure of the scientific community. American resistance
to a binding agreement turned on a resurgence of domestic fiscal conser-
vatism, changes in the geopolitical landscape at the end of the Cold War,
and a long-standing tradition of prioritizing economic interests above all
else in American foreign policy decision making. In fact, for the scientists
who had used the “forcing function of knowledge” to influence policy by
speaking truth to power since the 1970s, the treaty-protocol process ini-
tially seemed to validate their science-first, top-down approach. With the
UNFCCC and later Kyoto, it seemed, power had begun to listen.
But the politics of international governance that sunk the Kyoto Pro-
tocol grew directly out of the science politics that had earlier weakened
the IPCC and undercut the nascent UNFCCC. In the 1980s and early
1990s, opponents of serious national and international efforts to curb emis-
sions realized that the first, best way to influence the political discussion
about global warming was to challenge the science behind it. By weakening
scientific consensus and challenging scientific certainty, representatives
from business and industry sought to insulate themselves from blame—
and regulation— in future political debates that might unfold in legal
and moral terms. If the IPCC represented the front end of this effort— a
forum for science as a form of preemptive politics— the UNFCCC and
Kyoto Protocol saw this strategy bear fruit. The no-regrets policy, based
on economic precaution and questioning scientific certainty, was tenable
only as long as the IPCC assessments continued to reflect a conservative
view of the science behind global warming. Scientific uncertainty justified
greater economic precaution. Advocates of greater economic precaution
consequently highlighted scientific uncertainty. This was the structure of
science-first opposition shaped by science-first global warming advocacy.
Moreover, the turn toward economics as an arbiter of climate change
