Mainstreaming climate change sociology

IF 2.4 Q3 ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES Environmental Sociology Pub Date : 2022-01-02 DOI:10.1080/23251042.2022.2043529
S. Lockie
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引用次数: 8

Abstract

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment report on physical understanding of the climate system, released August 2021, concluded that human influence has unequivocally warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land (IPCC 2021). This came as no great surprise given the Fifth and Fourth Assessment reports released in 2014 and 2007 concluded exactly the same thing. Keep going back and the only discernable difference in headline conclusions from IPCC assessments is the degree of confidence with which they are put. In 1995, the balance of evidence pointed toward human influence on the climate. By 2001, the evidence that humans were responsible for most observed change was getting stronger. Increasing confidence in our understanding of climate change and its likely trajectory is to be expected. Behind subtle changes in the language used to express headline assessment findings is both a considerable global research effort and vastly improved understanding of climate changes and drivers at finer spatial and temporal scales. Of course, IPCC assessments still have their limitations. While it is known, for example, that tipping elements in the climate system increase the risk of abrupt and irreversible change at higher levels of global warming, these processes remain difficult to model (IPCC 2021). Climate agreements and policies informed by IPCC assessments proceed, for the most part, as if tipping points are unlikely when, in reality, they are poorly understood (Lenton et al. 2019). My main concern in this essay though is the continuing sociological naivety of IPCC assessments and many of the policies they subsequently inform. It is not that IPCC assessments ignore the social dimensions of climate change altogether. In fact, they report on risks to human health, livelihoods, food systems, cities and natural resource availability alongside vulnerability and adaptive capacity in relation to these risks. What renders the assessments sociologically naïve is not ignorance of the anthropogenic drivers and consequences of climate change but simplistic assumptions about the relationships between science, policy and politics and about the dynamics of social change more generally (see Grundmann and Rödder 2019). Placing greater store on the insights of sociologists (and other social scientists) would go some way to addressing this concern and so, to this end, this essay will summarize major trends in climate change sociology before turning to a small number of key, but largely outstanding questions, that demand sociological and transdisciplinary attention. First though, it will address the charge often levelled at sociology that the discipline does not take climate change seriously.
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将气候变化社会学纳入主流
2021年8月发布的政府间气候变化专门委员会(IPCC)关于气候系统物理理解的第六次评估报告得出结论,人类的影响无疑使大气、海洋和陆地变暖(IPCC 2021)。鉴于2014年和2007年发布的第五次和第四次评估报告得出了完全相同的结论,这并不令人感到意外。继续回顾,IPCC评估的头条结论唯一明显的区别是它们的可信度。1995年,证据的平衡表明人类对气候的影响。到2001年,人类对大多数观测到的变化负有责任的证据越来越有力。人们对我们对气候变化及其可能的发展轨迹的理解越来越有信心。在用于表达标题评估结果的语言发生微妙变化的背后,既有相当大的全球研究努力,也有在更精细的空间和时间尺度上大大提高对气候变化和驱动因素的理解。当然,气专委的评估仍有局限性。例如,尽管众所周知,在全球变暖程度较高的情况下,气候系统中的临界因素会增加突然和不可逆转变化的风险,但这些过程仍然难以建模(IPCC 2021)。根据IPCC评估制定的气候协议和政策在很大程度上似乎不太可能达到临界点,而事实上,人们对这些协议和政策了解甚少(Lenton等人,2019)。然而,我在这篇文章中主要关注的是IPCC评估的持续的社会学天真,以及他们随后提出的许多政策。IPCC的评估并不是完全忽视了气候变化的社会层面。事实上,他们报告了人类健康、生计、粮食系统、城市和自然资源可用性面临的风险,以及与这些风险相关的脆弱性和适应能力。使这些评估在社会学上变得幼稚的不是对气候变化的人为驱动因素和后果的无知,而是对科学、政策和政治之间的关系以及更广泛的社会变化动态的简单假设(见Grundmann和Rödder 2019)。更多地关注社会学家(和其他社会科学家)的见解将在一定程度上解决这一问题,因此,为此,本文将总结气候变化社会学的主要趋势,然后转向少数需要社会学和跨学科关注的关键但主要是悬而未决的问题。不过,首先,它将解决社会学经常受到的指责,即该学科没有认真对待气候变化。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Environmental Sociology
Environmental Sociology ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES-
CiteScore
4.60
自引率
12.00%
发文量
34
期刊介绍: Environmental Sociology is dedicated to applying and advancing the sociological imagination in relation to a wide variety of environmental challenges, controversies and issues, at every level from the global to local, from ‘world culture’ to diverse local perspectives. As an international, peer-reviewed scholarly journal, Environmental Sociology aims to stretch the conceptual and theoretical boundaries of both environmental and mainstream sociology, to highlight the relevance of sociological research for environmental policy and management, to disseminate the results of sociological research, and to engage in productive dialogue and debate with other disciplines in the social, natural and ecological sciences. Contributions may utilize a variety of theoretical orientations including, but not restricted to: critical theory, cultural sociology, ecofeminism, ecological modernization, environmental justice, organizational sociology, political ecology, political economy, post-colonial studies, risk theory, social psychology, science and technology studies, globalization, world-systems analysis, and so on. Cross- and transdisciplinary contributions are welcome where they demonstrate a novel attempt to understand social-ecological relationships in a manner that engages with the core concerns of sociology in social relationships, institutions, practices and processes. All methodological approaches in the environmental social sciences – qualitative, quantitative, integrative, spatial, policy analysis, etc. – are welcomed. Environmental Sociology welcomes high-quality submissions from scholars around the world.
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