Science and politics of Carbon

I found David Victor's three myths around climate change namely science myth, environmental myth and technological myth interesting to understand climate change gridlock. However, Giddens' three major positions to climate change (page 27) such as skepticist, mainstream and catastrophist, have used all these myths in varying degree. Which position would be in the public discourse depends on larger political economy. Authors like McKibben has used some number facts to paint a scary picture of climate change. But question is, why such fact-based framing has not been able to influence the decision making process? This clearly stresses that, and Victor also suggests so, climate change is more than a science or environmental or technological issue. We have a gap between facts and values. Consensus in facts and science does not necessarily lead to the consensus in the values and in policy making. Here science seems only a part of policy making which rather incorporates broader contentious politics based on values and preferences. Therefore our efforts of developing some sorts of political instrument to govern climate change should go beyond the climate change science. We need more value and ethical framing of climate change than science-framing of climate change.

Victor offers three points to explain why it is so hard to control carbon dioxide emission: burning fossil fuel is intrinsic to the economy; there is time inconsistency that is costs of cutting emission are immediate where as the benefits, if any, are only due for the future; and carbon dioxide has longer life-time so that it can spread all over the globe and lead to the typical tragedy of global common. Beyond these reasons, some authors like Mitchell (2011) have argued that carbon is attached to our current dominant mode of political life what we call democracy. For him, current democracy is developed and survived because of industrial revolution and growth of capitalism that depended on carbon. Therefore, going beyond carbon based life-style would require alternative political-economic imagination. Are current environmental movements ushering us to that direction?

Reference

Timothy Mitchell. 2011. Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. Verso.