Source: The Royal Society
URL: http://royalsociety.org/events/2013/climatescience-next-steps/
Date: 02/10/2013
Event: Royal Society: Next steps in climate science: John Ashton
Credit: The Royal Society, also many thanks to Geoff Chambers for transcribing this
People:
John Ashton: There are really only two ways in which societies can makes choices, if you think about it. One way is to use the powers of reason that we're endowed with, and science, to understand the problems that we face and to try to devise solutions to those problems...
I wonder, am I allowed to come in the front? I feel like I'm in a sort of cage there, but I thought I might - can you - is that better? Yuh, yuh, thank you.
We can use science to understand the problems that we face and devise solutions, and you could call that if you like the reality-based approach. Or we can do something else. We can say that for us reality is not what matters most. What matters more is ideological principles, or prejudice, or a desire not to have to fight too hard with entrenched interests or just a kind of general sense that it's all too difficult to summon the will to make hard choices. That kind of approach isn't reality based. It always, always in human history ends in tears, but it can do a great deal of damage before it collapses under its own inconsistencies, and we in Europe in the twentieth century learned a lot of lessons about that.
In a reality-based society, science is valued. Scientists are listened to and trusted and the interface if you like between the world of knowledge and the world of choice, between science and politics, is effective and healthy and in good order. Communication takes place in both directions. In a non-reality-based society science can't really be valued, because if you valued it you'd have to listen to it and then you'd have to be more reality-based than you would like to be. Science in that situation tends to be on the back foot. There are forces that try to undermine it, and the interface there between knowledge and choice is hotly contested, and communication across the interface is not affected - is not effective.
Of course, in reality, there’s always an interplay between those two aspects of society. But actually as one looks at things in many countries at the moment it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the forces of - if you like - unreality are fairly strong, and the forces of reality are not quite as strong as one would, certainly this audience, this community, might want them to be. Only a couple of days ago, a senior member of the British Cabinet was urging his party colleagues to look on the bright side of climate change, to celebrate the advantages of climate change.
We have to be really clear. This struggle about climate change isn't just a struggle about climate change. It's a struggle about whether we want to live in a reality-based society or some other kind of society. Within that struggle there are lots of battles that are taking place all the time on lots of fronts with lots of different armies in the field. But the battle on the front between where science meets politics is the critical battle, and the critical flank in that critical battle is the battle over climate change and climate science. And we can win all of the other battles, but we will still lose the struggle unless we prevail in the battle over climate science. And I don't think - I've been musing through the day - I don’t think there’s ever been a time in human history where such a heavy responsibility has rested on the shoulders of such a comparatively small community as the one that you represent. The challenge facing you may seem daunting, even helpless [sic]. It's certainly a very difficult challenge, but at the same time, at least in my view, it's a challenge that can be won.
To win it, four things need to happen:
First, as a community, it's important to understand what's really going on in the climate struggle, what the struggle is actually about, so that you can see the context that you're in.
Secondly, it's important to understand what your adversaries in the struggle are trying to do.
Thirdly, it's essential to understand your own weaknesses in that struggle and your vulnerabilities, but also your strengths, and not to underestimate your strengths.
And fourthly, finally, what matters most is that, emboldened by the other three things, you manage to move from a position of being essentially reactive, essentially on the back foot responding to other people’s agendas and taking the initiative right at the centre of the public discourse. If all of those things happen, then climate science will prevail in its part of the struggle.
So first, what's really going on? What's this really about?
Success, I mean, you know, we could spend hours on it, but actually it's not rocket science to describe what constitutes the best available response to climate change. It includes lots of things, but at the core of them is decarbonising the energy system within a generation or so. If you can't do that, you can't say that you're succeeding in climate change. And the thing about that is that many people talk about it as a technology problem. But actually, most of the technologies that we need, certainly in the next stage of that enterprise, are available, and we know what we need to do to deploy them. Some people say it's too expensive, but actually, the world has, the large economies have the capital, in a kind of macro sense to invest in the rapid deployment of those technologies. There isn't a problem at that level. It's interesting that the estimates of the additional capital investment that would be required to deploy low carbon technologies at a rate consistent with, say, giving ourselves a fighting chance of keeping within two degrees - those estimates are quite similar to the estimates of the subsidies which are given directly or indirectly to fossil fuels in one way or another around the world, of the order of half a trillion dollars a year, order of magnitude.
But there is a problem, there is a really deep problem, and the problem is that actually, the energy system ever since the industrial revolution, the energy system is actually right at the heart of what economists would call the growth model, the deep structure of the economy. If you want to reconfigure the energy system, you're reconfiguring in its foundations you’re reconfiguring the economy. So if you go off and ask Karl Marx about that, he will tell you that actually you therefore have to reconfigure the pattern of power relations which underpins the economy.
Now on the whole, patterns of power relations, entrenched patterns of power relations do not take kindly to attempts to reconfigure them. They fight back, and that's at the centre of this particular political struggle. They fight back because there are plenty of people with an interest in the status quo - actually we all have an interest in the status quo through our pension funds and the tax base and various other entanglement mechanisms if you like - they also fight back because the status quo tends to be protected by a kind of intellectual incumbency, in this case the idea that actually it's a bad thing for the public sphere to interfere with the operations of the market. And in a way, certainly from my experience in government, that's a bigger problem than the vested interests.
Anyway, the nature of the struggle: Secondly: What’s the enemy, the adversary - maybe I shouldn't use militaristic language - but what's the adversary trying to do? I mean, many of you have been on the receiving end and have a lot more experience than I do of some of the techniques, but they include the following:
There has been a systematic attempt over many years to undermine your standing, both as a profession or a set of disciplines, and as individuals, to present science and scientists as driven by ambition, by a desire for celebrity and money, er, um and, er, to, um, misunderstand deliberately that one of the core features of the scientific endeavour, one of the core values - I started my life as a theoretical physicist in the distant past before defecting to diplomacy - er, that nobody is more sceptical about the findings that you are getting than yourself. You're not being a good scientist if anybody outside can be more sceptical than you are. So the very word "scepticism" in a sense has been hijacked and used as a weapon against you - unreasonable, but hey, that's politics.
Another technique which is really important to understand is the deliberate systematic attempt all the time to create an appearance of dispute, because if there’s an appearance of dispute, then for onlookers, that means uncertainty, it's not settled. And if it's not settled, why do we need to really do anything, er, do anything difficult? And actually, because the discourse and the disputes where they happen take place in the media, if you can control the media, if you can have an influence over media agendas, the language of discourse in the media, then you can also have a big influence on how the wider discourse works, so a lot of effort goes into that as well.
It's important to understand, most of the people who are trying to oppose you are not so concerned with what you're saying, what you want to say. They’re much more concerned with how it's heard. And I think as a community you could usefully invest more of your effort and imagination in understanding how what you want to say is going to be heard in relation to what you actually want to say.
A word about weaknesses and strengths. I mean, the main weakness is actually just in the structure of the battleground if you like. It's the fact that you - there's no way round it - you have to fight uphill. Let's say you're on "Newsnight" and you say "the sky is blue". And there’s somebody in the opposite chair who says, "Look, I know you’re an honourable person, you've put a lot of effort into understanding what colour the sky is, but take it from me, I'm a person of the world, the sky is actually green." So you say (you’re a child of the Enlightenment) you say, "Well, look here are all these arguments which support my proposition why the sky is blue". And the other person just refuses to accept the arguments.
You're in a dispute, and because there's an appearance of dispute, it's not settled, and you lose. You may find that exasperating, so you may be tempted to exaggerate your case or to oversimplify your case. But if you do either of those things, then your adversary will say, "Ah, you’re betraying scientific values, you're going beyond the evidence". Again, you lose. Or, because you've had enough of all of that, you may say, "Actually, this isn't really what I do, it’s not what I'm about", and you may retreat, you may leave it to somebody else to argue with the adversary, in which case, as a community you lose again. Because then eventually the field is empty. The adversary has the field to themselves.
And furthermore, it doesn't matter for the adversary - and you've all seen this - whether their propositions are in any way truthful or not. I mean, you can be a effective adversary and actually pay some attention to evidence, but there are plenty of people out there who don't even bother with that. So, you know, that's quite an uphill battlefield to be fighting on.
That's a weakness of position, but there are also some internal vulnerabilities, which I just thought it might be worth drawing attention to. I'm going to run out of time fairly quickly. No, I'll leave the internal vulnerabilities in order to, and also the strengths [laughter] and I’ll come on to - because you, I don’t need to tell you your strengths. You've been celebrating your strengths for the last two days and there is nobody in this country more full of admiration of them than I am, but we can discuss them in discussion.
Taking the initiative, really important, because actually this community hasn't really had the initiative, certainly not since Copenhagen. Just two thoughts about that:
One is: Start, not from the answer that you want to put on the table, but from the question that is in - if you like - that is in the mind of society. What do I mean by that? Well, for example, a question which is taking shape, it's actually taking shape quite rapidly, is: "What might it actually feel like to experience four degrees of climate change?" Some of you, the Tyndall Centre for example, have already been putting pieces of that jigsaw in there. But I think a concerted effort over a cycle of two or three years to tell a story about four degrees which would have to be a very intense interdisciplinary effort, it would have to bring in also people from outside science. But that would be a very good way of taking the initiative and putting the focus on what is actually the core question which is risk. What is the degree of climate risk which it's in the national interest of any nation to be exposed to? That's the conversation that we should be having with the public.
Second example, very quickly, again and again and again one sees a debate where somebody criticises something one of you is saying on the grounds that if we act on it then we will wreck the economy. What rarely happens is that the proposition that the economy is going to be wrecked gets seriously challenged. So your science gets challenged, but the challenge doesn't come back about: "On what basis can you say that we're going to wreck the economy?" There needs to be much more of a two-way discourse about that.
And people outside the natural sciences are much more comfortable opining about the - what's the word? -the reliability of what you're doing, than collectively you are at building up the skills and the knowledge to opine about - actually the central issue is if you like growth economics. Growth economics is in tatters. The British economy at the moment is about 18% smaller than standard growth economics would have told you it was going to be by now in the first half of 2008. And they use modelling disciplines which are much more rudimentary much less sophisticated than the modelling disciplines that you use, and actually just in terms of intellectual advance it would be enormously productive for there to be a proper dialogue between your community and economic modellers and growth economists which really got into a kind of deep epistemological exchange, and that would be very healthy for the climate debate, and again another way of taking the initiative.
Final thing, and I'll stop. But one of the key questions in politics is: "Who gets to decide the limits of the possible?" Because if you can win the argument over the limits of the possible you can rule out anything that lies on the wrong side of them. And there’s a very salient issue which is under debate at the moment and which has been for some years, and it's the question of two degrees. And looking at where we are now, where we've come from, the momentum that we have in the response to climate change, it's obvious that we need to do a lot more than we're doing to give ourselves a chance of keeping climate change within two degrees. And that leads a lot of people to think: "Gosh, we've been trying so hard over all this time, and we haven't got anywhere, so we’re bound to fail."
The two degree question remains an open question, and it’s very important to understand the difference between, if you like, the limits of the possible, in the sense of thermodynamics and technology and engineering, and the limits of the possible in terms of politics. All of the analysis that’s been done is continuing to say that in terms of thermodynamics and technology and engineering, and capital availability too, two degrees is still potentially within reach - we've still a chance of staying on the right side of that threshold. So if you say it's impossible you're making a political judgement. But lots of people say it's impossible without distinguishing those two kinds of judgement. You as a community have enormous authority in your fields of expertise - the science, and in some cases the technology and the economics behind all of that. You actually have no more authority than anybody else in making political judgements. But quite often, if you say that you think that two degrees is impossible, other people will exploit that and use it to try and make that a self-fulfilling prophesy. This whole piece of politics is "How do we summon the will? How do we get a step-change in the political will available so that we do start doing things with the intensity necessary to give ourselves a chance of keeping climate change within two degrees?"
I've got rather more to say, but I think I'll leave it at that so that there's room for discussion and we can cover other things.
[Applause.]