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us, work together to assure ourselves that 'politics' occurs
outside
science as
much as is possible. This is part of our collective commitment to policing
the dualisms listed in
Figure 1.5
.
Throughout this topic, I've insisted that
all
forms of representation
(including science) are political and performative. Representatives of vari-
ous kinds both 'stand for' (depict) and 'stand in for' (speak on behalf of )
others. Using different genres, they seek to affect us with a range of ends
in mind. I stand by these claims, but now want to argue that 'politics' is
undertaken in different registers that ought not to be confused. In the case
of climate change science, we've allowed a number of sceptics to
wilfully use
science as a means of hiding contestable value judgements about whether and how
to respond to global environmental change
. These sceptics aren't committed to
open deliberation about possible alternative courses of action in response
to future ecological transformations; instead, they prefer to conceal their
political convictions by highlighting continued gaps and contradictions in
climate science. They thus seek cynically to use (1) our epistemic depen-
dence on science and (2) the rhetoric of scientific 'rigour' against those in
society who disagree with their unwillingness to 'decarbonise' capitalism.
Relatedly, they make use of 'is-ought' reasoning that the philosopher David
Hume showed to be faulty some 250 years ago. For them, because 'the facts'
are not clear-cut, it follows that we shouldn't aggressively reduce GHG emis-
sions. But this is to accord the facts too much normative power. The strategy
has worked (especially in the United States) because of a collective refusal
by politicians and citizens to make important societal decisions in the face
of continued, indeed chronic, scientific doubt. As long as we continue to
expect science to always trade in certainty, we'll offload our responsibility
to decide how to act on important, if necessarily fallible, scientific findings.
In his excellent book
The honest broker
, science commentator Roger Pielke
(2007) argues that the findings of scientists only 'compel' non-scientists
to act under very special (arguably rare) circumstances. These are situa-
tions where epistemic certainty is high and a political consensus over what
the implications of science are is very strong. Pielke uses the metaphor of
'tornado politics' here, where
participants in the decision-making process share a common objective - in
this case the goal of preserving one's life - and the scope of choice is highly
restricted - stay or go.
(Pielke, 2007: 41)
He contrasts such 'is-ought' reasoning with that used in what he calls
'abortion politics' situations. Here there are fundamental disagreements
about how to act because there are fundamental underlying value disagree-
ments. For instance, if I value women's freedom, I might support their right
to terminate an unwanted foetus; however, if I value life I might seek to
make abortions illegal. In these situations, science cannot tell us what to
