Review of Bristow and Ford's 'A cultural history of climate change' (original) (raw)

Poul Holm, Verena Winiwarter, Climate change studies and the human sciences, In Global and Planetary Change, Volume 156, 2017, Pages 115-122, ISSN 0921-8181, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.05.006\. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092181811630306X)

Climate change studies and the human sciences

Policy makers have made repeated calls for integration of human and natural sciences in the field of climate change. Serious multidisciplinary attempts began already in the 1950s. Progress has certainly been made in understanding the role of humans in the planetary system. New perspectives have clarified policy advice, and three insights are singled out in the paper: the critique of historicism, the distinction between benign and wicked problems, and the cultural critique of the ‘myths of nature’. Nevertheless, analysis of the IPCC Assessment Reports indicates that integration is skewed towards a particular dimension of human sciences (economics) and major insights from cultural theory and historical analysis have not made it into climate science. A number of relevant disciplines are almost absent in the composition of authorship. Nevertheless, selective assumptions and arguments are made about e.g. historical findings in key documents. In conclusion, we suggest to seek remedies for the lack of historical scholarship in the IPCC reports. More effort at science-policy exchange is needed, and an Integrated Platform to channel humanities and social science expertise for climate change research might be one promising way.

Course Outline: Climate change has garnered extraordinary attention in sciences and humanities alike. It has defied traditional disciplinary analyses and challenged conventional problem solving by highlighting socio-environmental conditions characterized by unprecedented levels of risks for which world governments do not have ready or convenient solutions. Using historical and contemporary sources, this course aims to understand recent developments in the context of a larger historical and cultural background in which 'climate' and 'climate change' have played a foundational role in shaping traditional and moderns societies. The course aims to explore climate change as a phenomenon inextricably linked to what societies want, think and do and how such wants, ideas and practices inform the contemporary climatological citizenship. Students will explore the cultural and socio-political histories of climate and climate change during the last two centuries. They will learn how to contextualize past representations of climate and examine human dimensions of climate risks in relation to anthropogenic drivers and policy responses to global warming as it gets hold in the politics of contemporary carbon democracies. The course will examine how climate has been perceived, known and understood by contemporary and past societies; how it became socially and culturally constituted as a hazard (or a resource); what weather and climate have mean to different individuals, groups and institutions, and how these meanings influenced the ways in which people individually and collectively respond to the climate change problem today. Using a multidisciplinary approach, we comprehensively explore the uses of 'climate' from colonialism to racism, from mercantilism to globalism and from climatic determinism to climate engineering. This 8-week lesson plan is intended toward upper-level undergraduates or graduate students. The content and learning outcomes will be relevant to students in human, geographical, political and environmental sciences keen to develop a contextual understanding of climate issues and apply it to their field of academic interest and professional career. Assigned readings and discussion questions are included to provide an understanding of the ideas to be discussed in class.