Room for Climate Debate Perspectives on the Interaction Between Climate Politics, Science and the Media
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Room for climate debate Perspectives on the interaction between climate politics, science and the media Jeroen P. van der Sluijs, Rinie van Est and Monique Riphagen (editors) Room for climate debate Perspectives on the interaction between climate politics, science and the media Jeroen P. van der Sluijs, Rinie van Est and Monique Riphagen (editors) Rathenau Instituut – Technology Assessment Board of the Rathenau Instituut Drs. W.G. van Velzen (chairman) Prof. dr. C.D. Dijkstra Dr. A. Esmeijer Prof. dr. H.W. Lintsen Prof. dr. H. Maassen van den Brink Prof. mr. J.E.J. Prins Prof. dr. A. Zuurmond Mr. drs. J. Staman (secretary) Room for climate debate: perspectives on the interaction between climate politics, science and the media Jeroen P. van der Sluijs, Rinie van Est and Monique Riphagen (editors) Rathenau Instituut – Technology Assessment Rathenau Instituut Anna van Saksenlaan 51 P.O. Box 95366 2509 CJ The Hague The Netherlands Telephone: +31 70 342 15 42 Telefax: +31 70 363 34 88 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.rathenau.nl Publisher: Rathenau Instituut Quote preferably as: Jeroen P. van der Sluijs, Rinie van Est and Monique Riphagen (eds.) (2010), Room for climate debate: perspectives on the interaction between climate politics, science and the media. The Hague, Rathenau Instituut. Editors Jeroen P. van der Sluijs, Rinie van Est and Monique Riphagen Final editing Gaston Dorren and Hans van Scharen Translation Ruth Rose Cover photo Dreamstime, Eric Gevaert Cover design MaryAnn Smit, BOVEN DE BANK for graphic design & dtp, Amsterdam Print: SIL’S drukwerk, Amsterdam © Jeroen P.van der Sluijs, Rinie van Est and Monique Riphagen 2010 Permission to make digital or hard copies of portions of this work for creative, personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full preferred citation mentioned above. In all other situations, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm or any other means without prior written permission of the holder of the copyright. Rathenau Instituut – Technology Assessment 5 Foreword Within the climate discussion, in 2009 all eyes were focused on the UN Climate Summit that was held last year in Copenhagen. A new climate convention was supposed to be signed at that summit, because the Kyoto protocol runs out in 2012. Scientific knowledge and uncertainties play an important role in the climate discussion. Policymaking around the climate has a complex national, European and worldwide character. In 2009 the Rathenau Instituut collaborated with the project World Wide Views on Global Warming (WWViews). The central goal of this project was to give citizens worldwide a voice in the climate discussion. To accomplish this, a worldwide citizens’ forum was organised on 26 September 2009. In 38 countries and 44 forums, one hundred informed citizens per country discussed climate change. They also answered questions about the experienced need and urgency for a climate agreement. The voice of these nearly 4000 citizens worldwide was presented at the COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. World Wide Views on Global Warming was the first citizen participation project on a worldwide scale. The need for it can be found in the fact that climate change is a problem on a global scale; policymaking in this terrain takes place on a global scale too. The Rathenau Instituut has experience with citizens’ panels on a national scale and knows how things are run in the Dutch Parliament. But how do you set up a worldwide citizens’ panel, how do you offer balanced information to citizens, and how do you ensure that the results of the worldwide citizens’ forum also get attention at a UN Climate Summit? To gain insight into the answer to such questions, we had to delve into the way in which the complex international negotiations about climate change work and what role Dutch politics plays in this process. Is the standpoint of the European Union preceding the negotiations now a fully leading one, or does the Netherlands still have an independent position in it? To inform citizens well, we wanted to get a better picture of the scientific climate debate. What is actually the consensus about global warming among climate scientists? What is the status of dissent and sceptic voices, and how can they be properly processed into information material for citizens? We also asked ourselves what citizens know about the climate problem and how they become informed via the media. Do the various newspapers and newsmagazines report in different ways about the climate problem, and do they deal differently with dissent and sceptic voices? To gain insight into all these questions we started a research project together with the Copernicus Institute of Utrecht University. Before the Copenhagen climate conference there was a political discussion about the objectivity of climate science. Hacked e-mails of climate scientists appeared on the internet; these emails suggested that these climate scientists wanted to keep inconvenient information from official IPCC publications. After news about errors in the IPCC report itself, the political discussion intensified. Politicians asked for faultless climate science on which to base their political judgements. At the same time, climate science indicated that the political expectations were not realistic, given that faultless science does not exist. In addition, according to the scientists the conclusions from the last IPCC report about the existence and severity of the climate problems were completely upright. The Rathenau Instituut signalled that climate science itself had become a part of the political debate. We decided that, on the basis of the information we already had gathered in the context of World Wide Views, we were capable of making a positive contribution to the debate that had arisen. To that end it was necessary to shift the focus of our research to the interaction between climate science, politics and the media. The present document is the result of these efforts. With ‘Room for climate debate’ we hope 6 Room for climate debate: perspectives on the interaction between climate politics,science and the media to offer you more insight into the relationship between politics and climate science and their representation in the media. We wish to thank Gerbrand Komen and Wim Turkenburg for their valuable comments and suggestions in previous versions of the text of this report. Frans W.A. Brom Head of the Department of Technology Assessment, Rathenau Instituut Rathenau Instituut – Technology Assessment 7 Abstract Room for climate debate: perspectives on the interaction between climate politics, science and the media The present study offers a picture of the complex interaction between climate politics, science and the media. During the 1970s and 1980s, politics and the sciences focused increasingly on the climate problem, at the time known as the greenhouse effect. Due to a lack of sufficient scientific evidence and absence of international policies, the Netherlands pursued a ‘no regrets’ climate policy. Measures such as energy savings, which were already justified in other policy domains, were sharpened. This all changed in the period between 1987 and 1994. Since then, the precautionary principle and the scientific consensus approach of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have determined how the political arena deals with scientific uncertainties in the field of climate change. The precautionary principle entails that in order to intervene to limit an environmental risk no full scientific knowledge of that risk is needed – clear scientific indications suffice. To create a clear scientific knowledge base for the development and legitimation of an international climate policy, the UN established the IPCC in 1988. This made political actions at an international level dependent on the scientific consensus within the IPCC. The first IPCC report from 1990 indicated that it is likely that continued emissions of anthropogenic greenhouse gases would lead to global warming. On the basis of this knowledge the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The second (1995), third (2001) and fourth (2007) IPCC reports showed a growing scientific evidence: instead of ‘likely’, the IPCC now considers ‘very likely’ that not intervening will cause ‘threats of serious or irreversible damage’. The interaction model between politics and science that was set up in domestic and international political arenas to deal with scientific uncertainties is also known as the linear or technocratic model. Its underlying assumption is that more scientific research will lead to more reliable knowledge and less uncertainty, and that that knowledge will then form a basis for political consensus and decision-making. One could say that, for the Netherlands, the linear model has worked for a long time, in the sense that it has provided a long-term and broad political consensus about climate policy. This approach has hindered a full-blown political climate debate and has politicised climate science. Analysis of parliamentary debates over the last twenty years show that IPCC reports are continuously used to keep the political debate within bounds. Questions are repeatedly asked in the Dutch Parliament about scientific information and scientific uncertainties surrounding the climate issue. These questions come from the entire political spectrum. The government consistently answers that scientific uncertainties do exist, but that policies are based on the IPCC reports and the precautionary principle. Because the political arena has given the IPCC reports such a central role, the political conflict about climate change and the underlying ideological contradictions have penetrated deep into the field of climate science. In other words, political influence nowadays can be achieved most effectively via climate science. With the IPCC reports in hand, proponents of the climate debate claim a preferential position in the debate.