Mike Hulme - Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity

This book is a must read for anyone interested in the relationship between science and society. As we know from the controversies over GM crops and MMR, by the time science hits the headlines, and therefore the public consciousness, its always about much more than the science. This fascinating book shines a light on this process by revealing how climate change has been transformed from a physical phenomenon, measurable and observable by scientists, into a social, cultural and political one.

Everyone must surely recognise Hulmes description of the way that climate change has become a kind of Christmas tree onto which we all hang our favourite baubles, and Hulme highlights the way in which the issue has been appropriated by so many different groups to promote their own causes. Believers in turning the clock forward and using more advanced technology, and those who argue that we should turn the clock back and live more simply, can equally claim that climate change supports their case.

Over the past few years Hulme has bravely spoken out against what some have described as climate porn: the tendency of some sections of the scientific community and the media to present climate change in ever more catastrophic and apocalyptic terms. This book elaborates on Hulmes hostility to the language of imminent peril and calls for a different discourse.

This book is so important because Mike Hulme cannot be dismissed as a sceptic, yet he is calling for a complete change in the way we discuss climate change. Whether or not people agree with his conclusions this book is a challenging, thought-provoking and radical way to kick-start that discussion.

With empirical experience that includes seven years leading the influential Tyndall Centre, Professor Hulme here argues that science alone is insufficient to face climate change. We also need to reveal the creative psychological, spiritual and ethical work that climate change can do and is doing for us. It is the very intractability of climate change, its sociological status as a wicked problematique, that requires us to reappraise the myths or foundational belief systems in which the science unfolds. That returns Hulme to the bottom-line question: What is the human project ultimately about? and herein resides this books distinctive importance.

McIntosh Alastair, author of Hell and High Water: Climate change, hope and the human condition, and Visiting Professor of Human Ecology at the Department of Geography and Sociology, University of Strathclyde

A much needed re-examination of the idea of climate change from a vantage point that takes its cultural co-ordinates as seriously as its physical properties. Through the twin lenses of scientific scrutiny and rhetoricalanalysis, Mike Hulme helps us to see just why we disagree about climate change and what we can do about it. With wisdom, wit and winsome writing, he shows us that debates about climate change turn out to be disputes about ourselves our hopes, our fears, our aspirations, our identity. Hindsight, insight and foresight combine to make this book a rare treat.

In the crowded and noisy world of climate change publications, this will stand tall. Mike Hulme speaks with the calm yet authoritative voice of the integrationist. He sees climate change as both a scientific and a moral issue, challenging our presumed right to be human to our offspring and to the pulsating web of life that sustains habitability for all living beings. As a unique species, we have the power to create intolerable conditions for the majority of our descendents. Yet we also have the scientific knowledge, the economic strength, and the political capacity to change direction and put a stop to avoidable calamity. This readable book provides us with the necessary argument and strategy to follow the latter course.

Why We Disagree About Climate Change

Understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity

Mike Hulme

School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia