32 Environmental Science and Politics

For most environmental problems today, science plays a key role in both the perceived causes and proposed solutions. Toxic pollution, species extinction, climate change, and many other environmental risks are widely seen not merely as “side effects” of modern science, but as integral to the social meaning of science itself (Beck 1992). On the one hand, environmentalists have been among the most powerful critics of the technocratic arrogance often associated with modern science. Some environmentalists have even embraced a romantic rejection of scientific knowledge and scientific modes of thought. On the other hand, environmentalists have long relied on science both to understand environmental problems and to legitimate political responses to them. The most common legitimation strategies tend to assume a rationalist image of value-free science as preceding and compelling political decisions. This chapter sketches some of the ways that environmental thinkers have understood the relation between science and politics, arguing for a constructivist–democratic approach that avoids the pitfalls of both rationalist and romantic conceptions of science.

Scientific expertise provides indispensable substantive information for environmental politics and policy, potentially leading to more reasonable and effective decisions. Lay people may be able to observe certain changes in local weather patterns, for example, but we cannot see them as potential aspects of global climate change without the long-term statistical assessments provided by climate science. Similarly, the unaided human senses cannot detect the subtle ecological effects of industrial chemicals, nuclear radiation, and many other environmental risks (Beck 1992: 23–7, 71–6). Additionally, whether or not scientific expertise actually has a substantive impact on environmental policies, it provides a key resource for legitimating such policies. Despite repeated conflicts over the politicization of expertise, science as an institution retains high public trust in wealthy democracies, and political actors of all kinds rely on scientific expertise to promote public support for their claims (National Science Board 2012; Weingart 1999). Parties to environmental disputes may also use scientific expertise strategically to delay decisions by calling for more research or to avoid responsibility by blaming the experts. Finally, at a more general level, science shapes how people conceive environmental issues in the first place. Global scientific advisory bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for example, have framed climate change primarily as a global physical phenomenon, rather than as a matter of justice and democracy at the regional or local level (Demerit 2001; Miller 2004). And scientific knowledge is a key element in the diffusion of environmental practices like recycling and household energy conservation, arguably infusing daily life with a managerial ethos of collective surveillance and self-discipline (Luke 2011).

The role of science in environmental politics, of course, depends on how people conceive the diverse practices, institutions, and bodies of knowledge associated with the term “science.” Throughout much of the twentieth century, efforts to address environmental problems often drew on a “positivist” view of science as a formal, logical, socially insulated method for producing value-free knowledge. From this perspective, which remains widespread in environmental politics, any “politicization” of science—which we might define simply as the deliberate attempt to shape science through politics—threatens to undermine environmental politics and policy-making. For example, when critics rightly objected to the manipulation of science advisory bodies during the administration of US President George W. Bush, they often failed to acknowledge the liberal values that shaped their critiques and instead presented themselves as apolitical defenders of value-free science (Mooney 2005). In this respect, they adopted a conception of science discredited by decades of research in the social studies of science and technology, which has shown how social values and political decisions influence science in all kinds of ways (Jasanoff et al. 1995). Environmental toxicology, for example, relies on value-laden decisions about the burden of proof required to qualify a substance as hazardous to human health and the environment (Douglas 2009). Such analyses generally do not claim that science inevitably reflects dominant interests, as caricatures of “social constructivism” assert. Just because science is constructed in part by society does not mean it cannot produce reliable accounts of non-human realities (Dryzek 2013: 12–13, 78–9). A constructivist conception of science is thus fully compatible with the realist conviction that the world has an independent existence that precedes human efforts to understand and shape it. Nonetheless, constructivism does challenge ongoing efforts to justify environmental policies with reference to an incontestable foundation of scientific truth. In this respect, constructivist views of science dovetail with a broader intellectual shift away from the longstanding conviction that environmentalism requires preserving and protecting pristine non-human nature, unsullied by human intervention (Cronon 1996; Latour 2004; Shellenberger and Nordhaus 2007).

Acknowledging that science and politics, humans and non-humans, inevitably shape each other does not entail an entirely artificial world of human mastery, devoid of the sense of otherness and wonder often associated with non-human nature. “Just because the world has become humanized—with a human signature everywhere—does not mean that there is nothing except humans” (Wapner 2010: 209). The otherness of non-human nature appears in many forms, and if you want to describe the sublime otherness of a fierce winter storm, the sciences may offer limited assistance. Art, poetry, storytelling, and many other non-scientific modes of engagement with non-human nature provide valuable resources for environmental politics. But for purposes of reliable prediction and control—assessing and reducing greenhouse gases, designing habitat restoration projects, building wind turbines, and so on—the sciences offer a key resource for political efforts to shape relations between humans and non-humans.

Seen in this light, environmental politics arguably becomes most democratic when it invokes diverse kinds of knowledge and experience, mediated through different kinds of practices and institutions. Legislatures, courts, and NGOs, for example, offer different representations of citizen interests, just as thermometer records, computer models, and Antarctic ice cores provide different representations of the global climate. Different political institutions represent citizens in different ways, and the various environmental sciences construct representations of nature that serve different but potentially compatible purposes (Brown 2009). In both science and democracy, modern societies have little hope of agreeing on a single authoritative spokesperson, and so we need to find ways of mediating diverse representative claims. A constructivist conception of environmental science thus potentially reinforces a constructivist approach to democratic politics.

A long tradition of environmental political thought relies on a view of science as value-neutral expertise, supporting a discourse of “administrative rationalism” (Proctor 1991; Dryzek 2013: 75–98). From the late nineteenth century onward, early conservationists in Europe and the United States, and in colonies throughout the world, advocated scientific approaches to the management of natural resources in the public interest. Professional expertise seemed to offer a welcome antidote to political corruption and partisan competition. Natural resource management was defined as a technical problem to be solved by foresters, agronomists, hydraulic engineers, and other experts (Hays 1959). This approach assumed a direct and essential link between professional expertise and publicly interested environmental policy, and it became especially prominent in the United States after the Second World War. According to an idealized “social contract for science,” science provided technological innovation and expert advice in exchange for generous public funding and minimal political oversight (Guston 2000). From this perspective, science inevitably produces social benefits, but only if insulated from politics. This conception of science continues to underlie much environmental politics and policy-making.

Another tradition in environmental thought portrays science not as a neutral tool of effective policy, but as an ideological force that rationalizes everything it touches. Romantic thinkers in the tradition of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henry David Thoreau, and the Frankfurt School have offered powerful indictments of the rationalism, individualism, and incessant hunger for technological progress prevalent in modern societies. Green theorists working in this tradition often begin by attacking the mechanistic conception of nature associated with Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and other founders of modern science (Bocking 2006: 49–51). According to Carolyn Merchant (1980), for example, modern science conceives nature as inert matter to be mastered and exploited for instrumental human purposes. While such arguments are often overblown, it is clear that in both rich and poor countries around the world, science-driven planning has replaced meandering rivers with engineered water management systems, indigenous farming with industrial agriculture, and local control with centralized administration (Scott 1998). Moreover, as shown by feminist critics like Vandana Shiva (1991), techniques for dominating nature often serve to promote elite interests and perpetuate social inequalities. As a result, Peter Hay notes, “for many environmentalists the scientific project has been sullied beyond redemption” (Hay 2002: 122).

Other environmental theorists, in contrast, have sought to develop a new conception of science that avoids the domination of nature. Drawing on thinkers like Herbert Marcuse (1964: 166–7), they have sought a non-mechanistic, non-reductive form of science that would heal the ancient split between mind and body, humanity and nature, art and science. Some point to the indeterminism associated with quantum mechanics or chaos theory, for example, to argue for a conception of science amenable to a green worldview. For commentators like Fritjof Capra, post-Newtonian physics embraces a “non-reductionist paradigm” that echoes the environmental movement’s emphasis on uncertainty, holism, and ecological processes (Hay 2002: 131). Others have pinned their hopes for a new science on ecology itself, arguing that “ecology contains the possibility of a different science around which environmentally benign technology and environmentally benign social relations can be constructed” (Hay 2002: 133).

Such arguments often appeal to one of the first and most effective uses of ecological science to promote environmental awareness: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962). Written for a broad audience, the book was as striking for its literary as its scientific qualities. Carson intertwined beautiful accounts of plants and animals with startling information on the impact of synthetic pesticides on birds, insects, rodents, humans, and other elements of the “web of life” (64). Carson did not call for banning all pesticides, but she insisted that citizens had a right to not be poisoned without their knowledge or consent. “The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts” (13). Chemical companies tried for years to discredit the book and its author, accusing Carson of scientific incompetence and communist sympathies, among other things. Indeed, Carson was in many ways an early “counter-expert” who criticized mainstream chemical expertise for its narrow focus, its dismissal of ecological concerns, and its close ties to industrial interests (Beck 1992: 30; Bocking 2006: 26).

Carson is widely credited with sparking the US environmental movement and the boom in environmental legislation of the early 1970s. But environmentalism has a much longer international history, and it emerged as much from economic and political changes as from scientific evidence of pollution (Bocking 2006: 70–1; Nordhaus and Shellenberger 2007). Indeed, the tendency of many American environmentalists to tell an origin story that begins with Carson’s Silent Spring says less about the historical causes of environmentalism than about the cultural authority of science. Advocates of deep ecology, social ecology, and bioregionalism, for example, often appeal to ecological science as a source of both moral inspiration and intellectual authority. But such arguments are problematic in several ways. They tend to draw on abstract ideas of natural harmony and stability that have little in common with ecology as practiced by ecological scientists. Ecological scientists themselves have tended to resist close links between ecology and environmental values (Bocking 2006: 61). Moreover, attempts to protect nature on the basis of ecological science—in the Amazon, for example, and other parts of the developing world—have often displaced marginalized communities who rely on those natural resources for their livelihood. Most importantly, efforts to base environmental values on ecological science often suggest a technocratic desire to control public opinion and shut down political debate.

To be sure, ecological critiques of modern science have revealed the environmental destruction and human domination associated with modernist ambitions to control nature. But modern science has fostered not only domination but also greater appreciation of nature’s moral value and its role in human communities. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, for example, has been used not only to justify policies based on the “survival of the fittest,” but also to foster a sense of kinship between and among humans and other species (Bocking 2006: 53; Desmond and Moore 2009). More generally, by documenting the human dependence on nature, scientific knowledge can be used to challenge anthropocentric hubris and pride (Barry 1999: 30). The social meanings of science are as diverse as the contexts within which science has developed, and we cannot effectively address most environmental problems without the aid of science, including many sciences not usually considered part of ecology. Critiques of modern science have highlighted important limits of administrative rationalism, but they do not eliminate the need for various forms of technical expertise in environmental politics.

Both rationalist conceptions of science and their romantic critics tend to assume a fixed and predetermined relation between science and politics. They merely disagree on whether science will help or hinder environmental goals. In this respect they fail to consider alternative roles for science in politics. While rationalists generally adopt either a technocratic or decisionist view of expertise, a constructivist approach promises more effective and legitimate environmental politics (Habermas 1970: 62–80).

According to a technocratic conception, scientists should determine both the ends and means of environmental policies (Fischer 1990). Technocracy appears whenever government agencies rubber-stamp expert recommendations without independent consideration of other relevant input. Similarly, survivalists like William Ophuls and Garrett Hardin have argued that the urgency of environmental problems requires a technocratic approach (Dryzek 2013: 27–50). A more common conception of the political role of science appears in the decisionist approach associated with Max Weber. According to this view, experts are “on tap, not on top” (Barry 1999: 200). Politicians determine the ends of policy, while scientists determine the means. Climate change, for example, is often framed in terms of a division of labor between scientists who discern an acceptable threshold for atmospheric carbon-dioxide, such as 350 parts per million, and politicians who develop policies intended to reduce carbon-dioxide to that level (Hulme 2009a: 103).

Both the technocratic and decisionist approaches usually assume an outdated conception of value-free science. They tend to see attempts by non-scientists to shape scientific research as an unacceptable “politicization” of science. These approaches also tend to assume a linear model of the relation between science and politics, according to which technical expertise should both precede and compel political decisions. A linear conception of science advice may be appropriate in contexts characterized by consensus on both scientific knowledge and political values. But most environmental problems today involve irresolvable technical uncertainties and entrenched political conflicts. Such problems lack a single best solution that is best according to all relevant criteria. Policy scholars call these “ill-structured problems” or “wicked problems” (Fischer 2000: 127–9; Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993; Turner 2003: 52–4, 66–9).

In such contexts, when scientists or politicians adopt the linear model of science advice, they create an incentive for their opponents to criticize the relevant science. Science then becomes a proxy battleground for politics. Debate shifts from political, economic, or moral issues to questions of scientific credibility, which are generally less accessible to lay assessment and less amenable to compromise among competing views (Sarewitz 2004; Bocking 2006: 24; Pielke 2007). The reliance on climate science as the most prominent justification for policies to implement major social and economic changes, for example, creates an incentive for critics to challenge climate science (Demeritt 2001). And rather than simply acknowledging the uncertainties of climate science and offering moral reasons for precautionary, no-regrets policies, environmentalists have often allowed themselves to be drawn into debating the science. Ironically, the competing parties in such debates share the linear assumption that science drives policy, differing only in their views on whether the science is credible.

In such contexts, it seems more promising to pursue a constructivist approach that involves consultation among diverse experts and lay stakeholders (Jasanoff 1990). As the preceding discussion suggests, a constructivist approach to expert advice involves both an empirical conception of how science works (scientific knowledge is shaped but not entirely determined by society and politics) and a normative view of how scientific experts should relate to politics (experts should inform but not determine political decisions). Funtowicz and Ravetz (1993), for example, argue that in situations that combine high decision stakes with disagreement over both science and values, science advisory processes should involve an “extended peer community” that includes not only a wide range of disciplinary experts, but also lay people potentially affected by the issue.

Building on such considerations, Pielke (2007) identifies four acceptable roles for expert advisors. When the issue is characterized by consensus on both science and values, a linear conception of expertise is appropriate. Experts can adopt the role of a pure scientist, restricting themselves to summarizing the state of knowledge in their particular field. Or they can become science arbiters who respond to lay inquiries about specific technical matters. In situations where both science and values are in dispute, however, a constructivist approach is likely to be more effective. Experts might act as issue advocates who openly promote a political agenda, while being careful to specify that their political arguments do not follow directly from their scientific expertise. Or they might become honest brokers of policy alternatives who combine technical and political considerations to clarify existing policy options and identify new options. Given the hybrid nature of their task, honest brokers are usually interdisciplinary advisory committees rather than individual experts (Pielke 2007: 151, 154–6). Depending on the issue context and the personal preferences of the expert, Pielke argues, any of these four roles may be appropriate. Never acceptable, however, are stealth issue advocates who pretend that their political recommendations follow directly and necessarily from their scientific claims.

In addition to formal processes of expert advice, science also shapes environmental politics through its impact on public opinion. Surveys of public knowledge of science periodically lead commentators to fret over the appalling state of “science literacy” in wealthy democracies (Mooney and Kirschenbaum 2009; National Science Board 2012). Even more disturbing is that public knowledge of science often varies according to political affiliation. In the United States, surveys conducted since 2001 have found that 35–52 percent of Republicans agree that global warming is due mainly to human activities, while that view is held by 64–79 percent of Democrats (Saad 2014). Many commentators see the rejection of climate science among US conservatives as one manifestation of a much larger phenomenon of “denialism,” loosely defined as the rejection of mainstream science for ideological purposes (Specter 2009; Brown 2014). Such rejection has often been justified with bogus studies funded by industry to “manufacture doubt” about mainstream science (Oreskes and Conway 2010; Jacques 2012). Environmentalists have tended to respond to such doubt with ever more insistent media campaigns, often resorting to sensational images. Such efforts apparently assume that the key problem is the public’s failure to appreciate the reliability and importance of established scientific knowledge. As the eminent climate scientist Stephen Schneider put it, “If the public understood the basics of the real risks to nature and to themselves, their posterity, and their world, they would be much more likely to send strong signals to their representatives to act in a precautionary way” (Schneider 2009: 260). Similarly, political theorist John Barry expresses the hope that “agreement on the scientific nature of ecological problems can be useful in forging a politically workable normative agreement on social–environmental issues (Barry 1999: 30, but see 202–6).

Despite the best intentions, this approach mistakenly assumes a linear relation between scientific knowledge and public support for environmental policy. Several studies suggest that without clear and accessible possibilities for effective action, increased scientific knowledge induces political resignation rather than commitment, and sensational media campaigns actually lead people to become more skeptical toward science and less likely to support action on the relevant issues (Moser and Dilling 2011: 164–5). Studies also suggest that as people have come to better understand climate change, their expressed concern about it has actually decreased (Kellstedt et al. 2008). Moreover, in some respects, environmentalist disdain for conservatives who reject climate science amounts to the pot calling the kettle black, given that many environmentalists reject mainstream scientific assessments in other areas, such as genetically modified foods, homeopathy, and vaccines (Yearly 2010).

Most importantly, public rejection of environmental science is probably a less important cause of failures in environmental policy than industry lobbying and the dominance of economic elites in the policy process. Large majorities in the United States have long expressed support for energy research, carbon taxes, elimination of fossil fuel subsidies, and other climate-relevant policies, despite periodic fluctuations in public trust in climate science (Pielke 2010: 43–4; Leiserowitz et al. 2013). And while European countries enjoy broad societal acceptance of mainstream climate science, their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have not been much more successful than those in the United States. Moreover, the US government has frequently implemented major policies without scientific consensus on relevant matters, including ozone depletion, and more recently, health care and financial reform (Pielke 2007: 128; Sarewitz 2011).

This does not mean that public views on environmental science are unimportant. But efforts to inform public opinion need to go beyond a linear approach. Environmental issues like climate change need to be understood in light of the psychological dynamics of anxiety, resentment, and sense of powerlessness they often evoke (Lertzman 2008; Norgaard 2011). Research on “cultural cognition” suggests that those who reject climate science do so in part because they perceive a conflict between climate science and their cultural values. According to one study, those with hierarchical and individualist values tend to dismiss expert claims about environmental risks, because they assume that accepting such risks would lead to government regulation, which they reject. Those with egalitarian and communitarian values have the opposite response (Kahan 2010). One promising strategy for responding to this phenomenon is to reframe expert advice in a way that avoids direct links between expert claims and specific policies. For example, whereas the common “catastrophe” framing of climate change tends to suggest a need for a technocratic government response, thus inviting attacks on climate science, framing the issue in terms of “public accountability,” “environmental stewardship,” or “public health” may appeal across ideological lines (Nisbet 2009). To be sure, efforts to provide a less gloomy framing of environmental issues have been combined with both radical and reformist policy proposals, and the latter may not offer an adequate response to profound environmental challenges (Hall 2013). But radical policy proposals will have little chance of attracting public support unless they avoid creating incentives to debate environmental science rather than the policies themselves.

Several surveys have found that scientists generally think most ordinary citizens do not know very much about science and are uninterested in learning more. Scientists tend to view the public as non-rational and emotional, overly concerned about minor risks, and prone to rely on anecdotes rather than evidence. Scientists also tend to think that public presentations of science should be simple, visual, and entertaining. And one study found that less than a third of scientists thought that scientists themselves were responsible for shortcomings in the public understanding of science (Besley and Nisbet 2013: 647–8). These findings point toward a “deficit model” of science communication, which casts lay citizens as passive and ignorant recipients of expertise. This view has been widely debunked in sociological studies of science communication, which find that, when faced with a particular socio-technical controversy, lay citizens usually acquire the expertise they need to clarify and articulate their interests (Sturgis and Allum 2004; Bauer 2008).

An illustrative example of these issues appears in the “climategate” email scandal. In the fall of 2009, a few weeks before a major United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen, somebody leaked over 1,000 e-mails written over 15 years by climate scientists at the University of East Anglia and their colleagues. Among other things, the emails showed leading climate scientists evading Freedom of Information Act requests and discussing ways to prevent their critics from being published in leading journals (Tierney 2009; Muir Russell 2010; Pearce 2010; Randerson 2010; Grundmann 2013: 68–71). Conservatives seized on the emails to discredit the entire idea of global warming. Environmentalists replied, correctly, that the emails did not cast doubt on the basic conclusions of climate science. In accord with the environmentalist view, many scholars dismiss climategate as little more than a “manufactured” scandal (Dunlap and McCright 2011: 144). But even though the emails raised no serious questions about the scientific consensus on climate change, they did suggest a paternalistic view of the public and a linear conception of science advice (Hulme 2009b; Sarewitz 2010; Beck 2012; Grundmann 2013). In light of “pressure to present a nice tidy story” (Pearce 2010: 48), the scientists apparently concluded that maintaining public support for climate policy required downplaying uncertainties and disagreements in certain public presentations of climate science. For example, a key diagram was simplified to remove the poorly understood post-1960 “divergence” between tree-ring data and thermometer data. This diagram appeared on the cover of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report on the state of the global climate in 1999, and also in the IPCC Third Assessment Report of 2001 (Figure 2.21). Although the issue had long been openly discussed elsewhere, and was also mentioned within the reports themselves, the most prominent diagrams concealed it. An independent review established by the University of East Anglia found these diagrams “misleading” (Muir Russell 2010: 16, 60, 62). Ironically, there was arguably little need to downplay scientific uncertainties or establish a unified front against climate skeptics, given the previously mentioned public support for climate policy.

Multiple official inquiries into the climategate emails found no evidence of scientific fraud or misconduct, but they identified a bunker mentality and lack of public transparency among the scientists involved (Grundmann 2013). A review by the Inter-Academy Council (2010) recommended a series of reforms to the IPCC, including term limits for top officials, improved conflict-of-interest policies, and better procedures for responding to outside critics. Such reforms might be understood as contributing to the “democratization” of climate science.

The relation of science to democracy is no less ambiguous than its relation to environmentalism. Democracy takes different forms in different contexts and cultures, as do efforts to democratize environmental science. But there is clearly growing interest in applying democratic norms to environmental science (Bocking 2006: 207). Efforts to promote “public engagement” in science and technology have become a central feature of environmental politics around the world. Environmental justice activists, for example, while often relying on their own experiential knowledge of environmental risks, have long collaborated with sympathetic experts to produce scientific studies relevant to their concerns (Brown and Mikkelson 1990; Ottinger and Cohen 2011). The democratization of science also has the potential to ensure that government research priorities reflect public values. Surveys show strong public support for energy research, for example, but it remains one of the least funded areas in the US government’s research portfolio. At the most basic level, public involvement potentially shapes problem definition and agenda setting, and thus the respective political roles of experts and non-experts.

Critics of democratization efforts often remark that it makes little sense to subject scientific methods or results to majority vote. But that objection reduces democracy to elections, and it reduces political legitimacy to empirical public acceptance. If we instead conceive democracy in terms of an ecology of institutions, some of which aim to improve the reasonableness or normative legitimacy of political decisions, then science becomes not only a threat to democracy but also a key part of it (Brown 2009). Established avenues for integrating expertise into democratic politics include expert advisory committees, science journalism, and expert testimony in public hearings, citizen juries, and other political processes. Scientific expertise is a potential source of normative political legitimacy, even if expertise only acquires empirical political legitimacy to the extent it becomes publicly accepted. According to a constructivist view of science and democracy, expertise is shaped (but not entirely determined) by politics, so it makes little sense to view expertise as an external force capable of either rescuing or destroying democracy, as do the rationalist and romantic approaches discussed previously. Instead, expertise can be seen as playing a key role in the tension between empirical and normative legitimacy, between public acceptance and public justification, that is central to democratic politics. From this perspective, rather than seeking to prevent the politicization of environmental science, it seems more promising to find ways to institutionalize and legitimize it.