What do we know: What does Sociology bring to the table for studying the human dimensions of global climate change?
Sociological knowledge about the human dimensions of climate change breaks into three broad areas concerning: human causes, human impacts, and human responses. Sociology, with its endemic focus on social institutions and culture, addresses each area with attention to the complex interactions between individual behavior and macro forces that are often overlooked by the rationalistic and positivist assumptions about social behavior made by economic and policy analysts.
While all three areas need attention, there is arguably greater sociological understanding of and consensus around the first: human causes of climate change. Here we know for example, which sectors of society generate most climate gasses, how this relates to economic activity and trends in the production of climate gases across time and space. Concerning sociological knowledge of human impacts of climate change we also know a fair amount. Scientific predictions concerning sea level rise, storm surge and intensity, and shifting weather patterns have to some extent been translated into descriptions of impacts to agriculture, disease patterns, and transportation systems. We know that those with less social capital experience the consequences of climate change most directly and forcefully. Social inequality also buffers the experience of climate change for those with greater social and economic resources, leading to the lived perception among the better off that the problem is less urgent than it actually is.
What do we need to know: What are the major sociological research questions?
It is the third area, the state of sociological knowledge as it applies to human responses to climate change, that is the most understudied, and I propose, in need of significant attention. What sociologists have identified is a widespread lack of public reaction to scientific information regarding climate change. By “reaction” sociologists include the widest possible range of reactions from planning by federal and state officials, to social movement activity, to individual behavioral change, or even acknowledging the information by letting it cross our minds or talking about it with friends and family. Climate scientists may have identified this as the most important environmental issue of our time, but it has taken over 20 years for the problem to penetrate the public discourse in even the most superficial manner. Yet the IPCC calls for reductions of 50 to 80% in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Although public concern is beginning to arise, climate change has been neither a policy issue, nor publicly salient in the broadest sense. Following Habermas, we can understand this failure of information to move through the public awareness and into policy outcomes as a failure of communicative action. But to understand both why it is happening, and what to do next, we must look to the sociology of denial. Most research to date has examined denial on the level of individual psychology. Yet what individuals choose to pay attention to, or ignore, must be understood within the context of both social norms shaping interpersonal interaction and the broader political economic context.
How we respond to information that is highly disturbing, information for example about a lack of certainty of our future survival, information that challenges the basics of our social organization, is a complex process. My work in Norway, supported by preliminary research in the U.S. indicates that people want to protect ourselves from disturbing information in order to 1) avoid emotions of fear, guilt and helplessness, 2) follow cultural norms and 3) maintain positive conceptions of individual and national identity.
The people I interviewed described fears about the severity of climate change, of not knowing what to do, fears that their way of life was in question, and concern that the government would not adequately handle the problem. They described feelings of guilt for their own actions, and the difficulty of discussing the issue of climate change with their children. In some sense, not wanting to know was connected to not knowing how to know. Talking about global warming went against cultural norms of conversation. It wasn’t a topic that people were able to speak about with ease — rather, overall it was an area of confusion and uncertainty. Yet feeling this confusion and uncertainty went against emotional norms of toughness and maintaining control. Furthermore, thinking about climate change threatens our sense of individual identity and our trust in our government’s ability to respond. At the deepest level, large scale environmental problems such as global warming threaten people’s sense of the continuity of life — what sociologist Anthony Giddens calls ontological security.
Ignoring the obvious can however be a lot of work. Both the reasons for and process of denial are socially organized. Denial is socially organized because societies develop and reinforce a whole repertoire of techniques or “tools” for ignoring disturbing problems. In the community where I did my research, collectively holding information about global warming at arm’s length took place by participating in cultural norms of attention, emotion, and
conversation, and by using a series of cultural narratives to deflect disturbing information and normalize a particular version of reality in which “everything is fine.” For example, emotions of fear and helplessness can be managed through the use of selective attention; controlling one’s exposure to information, not thinking too far into the future and focusing on something that could be done.
As a result of this kind of denial, people I have interviewed described a sense of knowing and not knowing, of having information but not thinking about it in their everyday lives. Overall this situation can be described as a “double life.” Information from climate science is known in the abstract, but disconnected from, and invisible within political, social or private life.
Given what we know about both the severity of climate change and the need for immediate action, I propose that we as sociologists focus our attention on 1) understanding the complexity of human social response to disturbing information, especially the conditions under which this denial breaks down, and 2) the identification of leverage points for engendering response to climate science on the individual, community, statewide and national levels.
1) Attention to the Sociology of Denial We ought to devote resources to better understanding the public reaction to climate science, including especially the role of culture, talk, and emotion in the avoidance of information. Although there may be both social incentives and social resources for distancing oneself from and collectively ignoring disturbing information, denial does break down. 1) Under what circumstances does this occur? 2) To what extent are there cultural variations of denial of climate change (what is different between California and Texas, India and China), why is there less denial in Europe than in the U.S., 3) Are some aspects of climate change / ecosystem change not denied? 4) To what extent has new information affected how climate change is received and not? Methodologies that may be particularly useful here include extensive in-depth interviews together with content analyses and survey questionnaires.
2) Identification of Leverage Points Given existing knowledge of response barriers and new knowledge to be
developed about the circumstances under which denial and reaction are most likely to occur, sociologists can focus our attention on the identification of leverage points for social response. For example:
Response Barrier: Gap between Information and Daily Life.
Possible Leverage Point: Impact Assessments, Disaster Preparedness, and Mitigation Encourage planning at community, state and federal levels.
The development of impact assessments, disaster preparedness, and mitigation planning may serve to make climate information “real,” bringing it close to home. These actions are predicted to reduce the gap between such information and daily life, decrease the sense of a double reality, and bring home the impacts in economic, infrastructure, and physical terms.