The Politics Of Climate Change Part 4

When science is perceived to be able to create new forms of political, economic, social and cultural power particularly by those who don't have it or are seeking it, there is an exploitative response. The exploitative response is both public-political, but primarily private and economic. It could be said that the entire human economic industrial and technological advancement is an exploitative response to the progress of scientific discovery.This dynamic of suppressive and exploitative responses are not mutually exclusives processes as it can be said that all scientific-technological advancement has faced some suppression when in its infancy, but it is when science directly interacts with the existential foundations of a human society is where the suppressive response is at its strongest.  Nuclear weapons could be one example, but I think Climate science has become the most recent example.

Climate change and climate science (as an extension of environmental science) seems to me be following the same dynamics I have been describing through this piece: 1).Environmental science has always faced a suppressive response in capitalist societies because it is perceived to be a threat to capitalism's basic tenants. Capitalism seeks to exploit science and natural resources to maximise economic gain, while environmental science leads to environmental public policies that seek to limit and control access to resources and thereby economic activity. 2). The political battle for control over climate science and climate change policy may also be reflected in the public and private science duality. As climate science is associated with public science and therefore in the realm of public and government, the exploiters in the private science and economy spheres have not yet built the economic and political capital to overcome the suppressive response and change perceptions in the financial and political worlds that the environmental sciences have direct private economic benefits. 3). Climate science and its discoveries has now taken this political dynamic to whole new level because it interacts with another crucial aspect of the impact of science which are its existential elements.

CD