Climate change: enough science, now for the politics

Better politics, not better science

As we enter another round of negotiations in Copenhagen it is vital that we understand the many valid reasons for disagreeing about climate change. We must recognise that they are rooted in different political, national, organisational, religious and intellectual cultures - in different ways of “seeing the world”.

For example, different religious traditions have varying approaches to preserving, conserving or manipulating “nature” - including climate. And different political cultures view the relationship between state, community and citizen in quite different ways.

We must not hide behind the dangerously-false premise that consensus science leads to consensus politics. The outcome of the Copenhagen meeting will be a messy, incomplete and often ambiguous compromise between competing interests, values and worldviews, not a deal driven by the science that will “save humanity”.

R. K. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, recently urged the media to focus on the "scientific rationale for action" rather than the political aspects of climate change (see “How the media is creating a climate for change”). I disagree. Science does not and cannot provide us with our values, our sense of ethical responsibility, or our vision of the future.

In the end, politics will always trump science. As we approach Copenhagen, making constructive use of the idea of climate change means that we need better politics, not better science.