Why Climate Change Cannot Be Depoliticized

This article explores the distinctions between depoliticized and politicized approaches to tackle climate change and their wider implications, and argues that climate change is an issue that cannot be depoliticized.

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The politicization or depoliticization of climate change is a hotly debated topic. On the one hand, those who advocate for depoliticizing climate change argue that we should embrace science-based solutions and technological fixes, while on the other hand, social movements and political leaders utterly politicize climate change by relating it to issues of justice, colonialism, human rights and political order. 

Politicization of Climate Change: Rethinking Our Economic, Social and Political Orders

Politicization refers to acknowledging the “clashing visions, values and interests between different social groups.” In such a setting, an issue is moved to the realm of the political sphere where deliberations are taking place, interests are formed, polarization is generated and collectively binding decisions are made. The concept of politicization can be used in a normatively favorable way by allowing a vibrant clash of democratic political positions and indicating an open public sphere. In an unfavorable sense, it reflects a high degree of polarization and conflicts and posits that those who push for politicization are not keen on reaching a solution.

The politicization of climate change occurs when expert knowledge and scientific claims are placed in the public sphere and exposed to public deliberation and political contestation, forging linkages to the broader political, social and economic conditions. 

Such politicization of climate change does not exclusively focus on physical and scientific proven facts of the climate crisis. Rather, it highlights the wider political, economic and social context in which carbon emissions are released and disproportionately affect less developed countries and vulnerable communities in a way that perpetuates climate injustices. The politicization of climate change rejects the dualist notion of nature as an objective, pre- or extra-societal state. Instead, it posits nature as an integrated part of our social relations and can therefore not be depoliticized. 

Gardi Sugdub, a small island of the Guna Yala people in Panama, faces a heartbreaking migration as 300 families are forced to leave due to climate change. Rising sea levels and intensified storms erode their homes and threaten their way of life. As they move to the mainland, what will become of their vibrant community and rich culture? Photo: Michael Adams via Flickr.

Under this premise, addressing climate change requires questioning and rethinking the prevailing economic system and consumptive lifestyles, including imperial trade relations, fossil-fuel based economies, neoliberal market mechanisms and value systems that allow the extraction and manufacturing of natural resources in order to accumulate profits while keep emitting carbon and aggravate the climate crisis.  

Depoliticization of Climate Change: Technical and Managerial Tools Can Save the Planet

In contrast, depoliticization refers to a situation where political agents close down arguments and avoid controversies, pushing towards a consensual model of decision making. It can be understood as a situation where political agents no longer fight over underlying issues, and therefore conflict is foreclosed, antagonisms are avoided and concerned parties in the conflict delegate decision-making power to scientific bodies and technical agencies.

Post-politics reduces the political terrain to the sphere of consensual governing and policy-making, centered on the technical, managerial and consensual administration of environmental, social, economic or other domains. Under a post-political condition, crises such as climate change need to be addressed through managerial and technical arrangement in a way that eliminates divide and conflicts and facilitates compromise and consensus. With respect to climate change, the foreclosure of politics has been equated to conceptualizing climate change first and foremost as a physical phenomenon that can be assessed and quantified by scientific tools such as integrated assessments and modeling scenarios. 

This strict focus on the scientific understanding and framing of climate change is derived from the dualist perception of nature as something external to society and disconnected from social relations and could be administered by scientific tools to achieve preferred policy goals. 

Based on this scientific representation of climate change, the solutions are seen to be directed at the inherent physical properties of climate change, hence greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (notably carbon dioxide). Within this frame, GHG emissions are seen as the root “cause” of the climate crisis and the “thing” around which environmental contestation, aspirations, solutions and policies are pronounced and crystallized.  

Emissions are therefore seen as negative externalities that can be reduced using techno-economic mechanisms such as pricing the emissions correctly, and any proposed techno-managerial and economic mechanisms to retrofit the climate are introduced and organized  within  the  context  of  a  liberal-capitalist order  that  is  beyond  dispute.

Why Climate Change Cannot Be Depoliticized

In the last few decades, climate change has undergone a profound process of de-politicization that needs to be scrutinized for a number of reasons.

The causes of and responses to the climate crisis raise issues of justice

This is particularly relevant regarding the exposure to climate risks and distribution of burdens and benefits. The historical responsibilities for carbon emissions is a great example of climate injustice. Rich countries that have benefited from fossil fuel-based industrialization have contributed the most to the climate crisis. Yet, poor and underprivileged communities in developing countries are bearing the brunt of climate disasters.

Further, the climate injustice is evident not only across counties but also within counties. For example, due to the legacy of redlining and other methods of racial segregation, African Americans are particularly vulnerable to climate impacts. Studies show that African Americans are 75% more likely than White people to live in “fence-line” communities – areas near gas facilities and oil refineries that produce emissions that cause detrimental health impacts such as cancer.

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In addition, climate mitigation and decarbonization measures, from carbon taxes and cap-and-trade to the deployment of renewable energy, impose costs on specific sectors and communities, often pushing them to mobilize against decarbonization, as seen in France’s “yellow vest” protests and the backlash from coal miners and oil and gas workers in the US and Canada. Similarly, climate adaptation and politics are deeply intertwined as government responses to climate disasters such as floods, droughts, or hurricanes are often implemented through top-down approaches, reinforcing power imbalances and serving elite interests. 

Climate change has become an area for contestation among different stakeholders 

Governments, national and transnational civil society organizations and businesses have different approaches to climate change policies in a way that serve their interests. Despite rising calls for multi-stakeholders’ participatory approach to address climate change, the application on the ground is burdensome. These challenges primarily emanate from the tensions among different stakeholders with disparate discourses, variant power positions and conflicting development agendas. 

For example, the countries most responsible for global warming often twaddle over meeting their climate pledges that align with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Further, we have seen how rich countries struggled to fulfill the $100 billion per year promise, which was agreed upon at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit to fund climate action in developing countries. 

Other key stakeholders are businesses such as oil companies, often accused of greenwashing and hiding the true size of their carbon emissions. According to Global Witness and Oil Change International, at a time where the world should decarbonize the economy and accelerate the deployment of renewable energy, the 20 largest oil companies are planning to spend $1.5 trillion developing fossil fuel sources by 2041.

Democratic contestation should be possible

In order to allow for a well-functioning democracy, it is necessary to provide a public sphere that allows for contestation among different democratic political positions within a pluralistic democratic system. Saying so, climate change cannot be excluded from the political sphere as its contestation has become an indication to the consolidation or resistance to democratic values and political reforms. Along these lines, we have seen how Trump in the US has managed to challenge institutional setups and introduce a wholesale reversal of policies and regulations relating to climate change. Similarly, the far-right populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany has managed to slow down the energy transition efforts by undermining parliamentary routines and problematize the implementation of agreed-upon climate policies. They succeeded in this, for example, with regards to the Forest Act, which related to the construction of wind turbines in the forests of the German state of Thuringia.

Fridays for Future climate protest in Berlin on January 25, 2018. Photo: Jörg Farys/Fridays for Future Deutschland/Flickr.

In contrast, Fridays for Future and other environmental justice movements’ calls for climate justice to hold the promise of expanding democracy beyond the nation-state, and represent a counter trend against renationalization, populism, and post-political forces that are trying to promote managerial and technocratic approaches to solving the climate crisis. Therefore, disagreement over climate change is not only a policy problem but it provokes a variety of democratic challenges and represents a test ground for our modern liberal democracies that often struggles to effectively tackle global collective actions problems such as climate change.

In Search for Climate Politics: Envisioning of an Alternative Socio-Ecological Future

The politicization of climate change is usually met with criticism and believed to impede reaching agreement and united action to tackle the climate crisis. In the last decades, global climate change has transformed into a managerial and technical problem that needs to be addressed by consensual arrangement, silencing divergent opinions and eliminating political space for contestation. As Eric Swyngedouw, professor of geography at the University of Manchester’s School of Environment, puts it: as long as nature is perceived as something “external” to society and social relations and that environmental problems remain an object for technological innovation, climate change is never solved but only moved around. What needs to happen is a shift from viewing climate change as a mere scientific issue to a meta-narrative that highlights its broader socio-ecological, economic and political underpinnings, such as climate injustices, neocolonialism, and ecological modernization. Sharing these different perspectives on climate change will allow us to contest a wide spectrum of political choices, values, and interests underlying varying responses to this multifaceted crisis. Only then can we embark on envisioning a different socio-ecological future beyond the confines of the neoliberal market economy, where the root causes of climate change can be addressed and eliminated.