Y Feature
Ignoring climate change
Lorraine Whitmarsh blames the political climate
Attempts to inform the public about climate change and
to encourage energy conservation have had little impact
on individuals’ understanding or behaviour.
The 2002 British Social Attitudes Survey
shows that most people are not aware of the
relationship between home energy use and
climate change, and one in ten people believe
mobile phones cause global warming. Overall,
energy consumption has changed little in
recent years; car use has actually increased.1
Yet Sir David King, the UK government’s chief
scientific advisor, recently claimed that ‘climate
change is the most severe problem we are
facing today’. The risk of flooding alone is
expected to more than double in the next 75
years, costing the UK tens of billions of pounds
every year. In responding to such projections, the
UK government has set the ambitious goal of
reducing the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions
by 20 per cent from 1990 levels by 2010.
The failure to engage the public over climate
change is in part because its relevance to
people’s lives is not made apparent, a point
made recently in S&PA (J. Lewis,‘Don’t mention
the science’, December 2003, p.22-23 and C.
Adams,‘Science, relevance and recall’, March
2004, p.27).
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Nobody else is – why should I?
Making climate change appear relevant to
individuals is, however, not the only challenge
facing communicators. The lessons to be
learnt from the climate change issue are
uncomfortable. Our modern lives are
high-consumption and polluting – responding
to climate change demands that we make
sacrifices. Where people highly value the
freedom, independence, comfort and status
afforded to them by their car, for example, they
will be unconvinced by arguments to give up
such a central part of their identity and lifestyle.
And at present, this sacrifice is demanded on a
largely voluntary basis.
Research I am currently conducting suggests
that, when people see others doing nothing to
change their ways, they think there is no point
in changing their own, and feel under no
obligation to ‘do their bit’. This relates to what
Hardin called ‘the Tragedy of the Commons’ –
an absence of a sense of community or shared
set of environmental values and denial of
responsibility in relation to a shared resource.2
US undermines UK
The US position of not introducing mitigation
policies undermines exhortations for
individuals in this country to reduce their
energy consumption voluntarily. The credibility
of government information is eroded because
it conflicts with widely reported scientific
uncertainty and political disagreement over
climate change.3 While the government refers
to scientific ‘consensus’ and the ‘facts’ of climate
change,4 it is clear from my research that the
public is well aware of the uncertainty
surrounding climate change.
Scientific uncertainty should not be used to
justify inaction, but it should not be swept under
the carpet.The controversy over BSE highlights
the importance of honesty and transparency in
communicating risks to the public.
The public need to be informed about
the risks of climate change and given the
arguments for acting despite the inevitable
uncertainties. We need to know, for example,
that we will reap social, financial and health
benefits from using our cars less. However,
the social and political context fundamentally
influences how people understand and respond
to information, and the fact that people see
others doing nothing means that they will be
slower to change their own behaviour.
References
1. Park, A., Curtice, J., Thomson, K., Jarvis, L. & Bromley, C.
(Eds.) (2002). British Social Attitudes, the 19th Report.
London: Sage; Department for the Environment,
Farming and Rural Affairs (2002). The Environment
in your Pocket, HMSO.
2. Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons.
Science, 162, 1243-1248.
3. For example Lomborg, B. The Skeptical Environmentalist;
Baliunas, S. & Soon, W. (2003) Not so hot. Panic attack –
interrogating our obsession with risk. Conference hosted
by the Royal Institution, London, 9 May 2003.
4. For example the government’s Energy Saving Trust’s
guide, Is your home behaving badly?, states:
‘The world’s scientific community is now agreed
that climate change represents a calamitous
threat to our environment.’
Lorraine Whitmarsh
is a final-year PhD student in the Science
Studies Centre at the University of Bath
psplew@bath.ac.uk
When scientists fight
The British and the Swedes do it differently, declares Lena Eriksson
Science reporting in Britain has over the last few years featured high-profile controversies, in which scientists who
have made contentious claims have been ousted from their former research communities.
Arpad Pusztai: perceived as maverick
Most notable have been the so-called Pusztai
affair (which is often said to have sparked the
GM controversy in Britain) and the MMR
controversy. The treatment of the scientists at
the centre of these storms can easily give rise
to conspiracy theories. The issue, it seems, is
partly one of tolerance for, and management
of, dissent in science.
The most recent high-profile controversy in
Sweden was over ‘cancer in crisps’. It broke out
over the detection of high levels of the chemical
acrylamide in certain starch-based foods, such
as potato crisps and french fries, when they had
been cooked at high temperatures.1
Previous research indicates that tolerance
for dissent might differ in Britain and Sweden.2
I set out to establish whether this was the
case, and to study how this might influence
the public face of science in the respective
countries. I conducted a one-year qualitative
study, interviewing some thirty scientists in
Britain and Sweden, all working with issues
of genetic modification in three different
institutional settings.3
The results of the study can be summarised
as follows.
Perceptions of dissent
British and Swedish scientists perceived dissent,
and dissenting scientists, in different ways.
British interviewees viewed controversies as
events, caused by pre-existing dissenters within
the community. The Swedish scientists tended
to think of controversies as a process, and of
fully-fledged ‘mavericks’ as the dangerous
result of a gradual positioning of disenchanted
scientists who ended up attacking the collective
they were no longer part of.
Treatment of dissent
British and Swedish scientists differed on how
controversial scientists should be treated.
British scientists felt it was crucial to avoid
giving scientific legitimacy to scientists that
they described as ‘mavericks’. They operated
with firm boundaries between ‘inside’ and
‘outside’ and felt it was necessary to distance
mavericks from the scientific community.
Swedish scientists thought that ousting
dissenting scientists only made the problems
worse. Operating with a notion of a scientist
who began trying to get the attention of his or
her peers, but who was gradually driven out of
the community and thus became an outsider,
Swedish interviewees favoured an inclusive
strategy to avoid the situation spiralling out of
control. Outright and detrimental controversy
could be prevented by organisations having
room for ‘peculiar’ views, they said. The crucial
factor would be for the scientist to feel that he
or she could be heard within the collective.
Publishing science
All the institutions had rules for monitoring
outgoing material, whether press releases,
conference papers or journal articles. With the
exception of university research, these rules
tended to be more elaborate, and taken more
seriously, in Britain than in Sweden. British
scientists also felt that a breach of the rules
would have graver consequences, than did
their Swedish peers.
Interestingly, British scientists viewed the
rules about vetting outgoing material as safety
mechanisms in place for their own protection,
whereas Swedish interviewees perceived such
procedures as a sign of increasing bureaucracy
that risked impinging on their favoured way of
working, in which all members should be able
to have their say.
These different attitudes appeared to be linked
to the respective groups’perception of how the
larger scientific community would view prospective
contentious research results. British scientists
wanted data to be absolutely watertight before
they published anything, feeling they would
otherwise risk the scientific community – as one
scientist said – ‘coming down like a ton of bricks’.
June 2004 | SCIENCE & PUBLIC AFFAIRS | page 25
Y Feature
Conclusions
The research found that the scientists
interviewed in Britain and Sweden constructed
and managed dissent in different ways. Their
differing perceptions of both dissenting scientists
and the larger scientific community fed through
to the way they organised and presented
themselves and their own communities.
Scientists’ boundaries of acceptable behaviour,
‘the right to be wrong’, thus appeared to be
drawn differently amongst scientists from
different national research cultures.
The fact that British scientists confine
themselves within narrow boundaries may
increase the likelihood of scientific controversies
moving into the public domain, as the ousted
scientists are forced to seek new audiences
for their claims. A Swedish ‘big tent’ strategy,
which makes room for marginal views, could
potentially serve to diminish the risk of all-out
battles between scientists in the full glare of
mass media.
References
1. Atterstam, Inger. 2003. “Akrylamid Ger Inte Cancer”.
Svenska Dagbladet 28 - 01- 2003, Inrikes.
2. Eriksson, Lena. 2004. From Persona to Person:
The Unfolding of an (Un)Scientific Controversy
(forthcoming). PhD Thesis. Cardiff University.
3. The study was sponsored by the Economic and
Social Research Council, as part of the Science in
Society Programme The interviewees included molecular
biologists and biochemists in university, research
institute and industry employment. The British scientists
worked at Bristol University, Cardiff University, Oxford
University, IACR Rothamsted, John Innes Institute and
Syngenta UK; the Swedish scientists at Gothenburg
University, Chalmers University of Technology, The
Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology (SIK), Plant
Science Sweden, Svalov-Weibull and Syngenta Sweden.
Lena Eriksson
is a Research Associate at Cardiff University.
Her PhD research focuses on understandings
and definitions of expertise in safety
evaluations of genetically modified foods
ErikssonL@Cardiff.ac.uk