Climate change studies and the human sciences (original) (raw)

Review of 'Making Climate Change History: Documents from Global Warming's Past

Reviews in History, 2018

With Making Climate Change History Joshua P. Howe chooses a very clever title. Not only does it convey that he intends to write a history of climate change but it also alludes to making climate change a thing of the past, admittedly against high odds. Howe argues, '[…] when we look at problems related to climate change, thinking historically matters' (p. 3). The book's main aim is to introduce the reader to different types of primary sources, and to look at them as a historian would. For this purpose, Howe asks questions that a historian would pose. He introduces the reader to the concept that he coins, the 'presentist paradox' (p. 9), which puts forward the idea that we look at primary sources from our present day perspective with a sense of urgency in trying to answer questions about the current, pressing challenge, which is a warming world. It suggests that we should try to view primary documents as what they are, children of their own time. Making Climate Change History. Primary Sources from Global Warming's Past is a scientific book published by the University of Washington Press in 2017. The book appeared in the Weyerhaeuser Environmental Classics series, which reprints studies that explore the relationships between humans with their natural environments. The series is edited by Paul S. Sutter, who also contributes a thought-provoking foreword to this book. Joshua P. Howe is an associate professor of history and environmental studies at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and has previously published another book, Behind the Curve: Science and Politics of Global Warming (1), which is referenced here.

Review of Making Climate Change History: Documents from Global Warming's Past (review no. 2220)

With Making Climate Change History Joshua P. Howe chooses a very clever title. Not only does it convey that he intends to write a history of climate change but it also alludes to making climate change a thing of the past, admittedly against high odds. Howe argues, '[…] when we look at problems related to climate change, thinking historically matters' (p. 3). The book's main aim is to introduce the reader to different types of primary sources, and to look at them as a historian would. For this purpose, Howe asks questions that a historian would pose. He introduces the reader to the concept that he coins, the 'presentist paradox' (p. 9), which puts forward the idea that we look at primary sources from our present day perspective with a sense of urgency in trying to answer questions about the current, pressing challenge, which is a warming world. It suggests that we should try to view primary documents as what they are, children of their own time.

The New Human Condition and Climate Change: Humanities and Social Science Perceptions of Threat

The “New Human Condition” is our translation of the philosopher Hannah Arendt’s (1906-1975) concept of the Polis, to consider the turbulent social and environmental climates that have emerged in the first decades of the twenty-first century. While it has been recognized that the role of human agency in global climate change is slowly destroying the conditions for life on earth, our agency also holds the potential to transform social and environmental perception and action to maintain and sustain the essential planetary conditions for the survival of its species. What gave Arendt’s conception of the “human condition” such convincing force in the twentieth century was the recognition that our modern agency had made unimaginable loss possible. The birth of the Anthropocene during the Steam and Industrial Revolutions and its nihilistic manifestation in the detonation of the Atomic Bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, stand as tragic testaments. In the face of these inconceivable acts, Arendt states that humankind can “no longer go back to traditional concepts and values . . . to understand the monstrous by means of the familiar” (1958). The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) comprises over a thousand scientists, but only a small percentage of humanities and social science scholars contribute to its reports. This fact alone illustrates the huge opportunity cost to the world’s societies by not engaging such scholars in these disciplines to address what is essentially a “human problem.” The natural and physical sciences have done mag- nificent, groundbreaking work in alerting us to the threats of global warming, but it is the humanities and social sciences that may hold the keys to addressing the core of human agency that is driving global warming.

Global Warming Controversy: a Trojan Horse of Modernity?

This paper sets out to untangle the complex issue of global warming controversy. In fact a number of overlapping issues are intertwined: ethical, ideological, political, philosophical and epistemic amongst others. What does this perception of climate controversy reveal about our own understanding of the relationship between science and society, nature and culture, and more generally about our relationship to modernity? Have we achieved Bacon or Descartes' grand design of mastering and possessing nature? To answer this question several points need to be clarified: firstly, the debate in sociology relating to scientific controversy; secondly the treatment of uncertainty in discourses and the ideological, ethical and political aspects of that controversy. Finally, the paper seeks to demonstrate how the IPCC is built on a strong modern genetic code, and how it in fact reflects complex interrelationships between the West and modern democracies. The paper proposes to use the metaphor of the Trojan Horse as the most effective tool to understand these questions.