Climate change as a wicked social problem (original) (raw)

Nature Geoscience volume 9, pages 562–563 (2016) Cite this article

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To the Editor –

Thirty years ago, atmospheric scientists alerted the world to large-scale ozone loss over Antarctica1. The phenomenon, later dubbed the 'ozone hole', galvanized the international policy process into adopting binding controls of ozone-depleting substances in the following year. Now, the process seems to show its effectiveness[2](/articles/ngeo2780#ref-CR2 "Solomon, S. et al. Science http://doi.org/bkn5

             (2016)."),[3](/articles/ngeo2780#ref-CR3 "Grundmann, R. Transnational Environmental Policy: Reconstructing Ozone (Routledge, 2001)."). At the time, the unfolding events over Antarctica rattled scientists' confidence in their understanding of the atmosphere. Scientists and politicians alike emphasized the need for scientific consensus. All emitters of pollutants agreed to a binding treaty that successfully established global targets and timetables. But when this same concept of an agreed binding treaty based on a scientific consensus was subsequently applied to climate change, the results were underwhelming. I argue that the reason for this failure is that unlike the ozone problem, climate change is not a scientific but a social problem. It is also a wicked problem, one that cannot be solved, but must instead be re-solved and renegotiated, over and over again.

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  1. University of Nottingham, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK
    Reiner Grundmann

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Correspondence toReiner Grundmann.

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Grundmann, R. Climate change as a wicked social problem.Nature Geosci 9, 562–563 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2780

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