SCIENTIFIC AUTHORITY: an Epistemic Proceduralist Framework for the Legitimate Authority of Science in Environmental Policy

SCIENTIFIC AUTHORITY: An Epistemic Proceduralist Framework For The Legitimate Authority Of Science In Environmental Policy by MATTHEW EVAN HELLER B.S., Warren Wilson College 2004 M.A., Lehigh University 2007 M.A., University of Colorado 2010 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Political Science 2015 This thesis entitled: Scientific Authority: An epistemic proceduralist framework for the legitimate authority of science in environmental policy written by Matthew Evan Heller has been approved for the Department of Political Science Steve Vanderheiden Michaele Ferguson Horst Mewes Roger Pielke, Jr. David Mapel Date The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. iii Heller, Matthew Evan (Ph.D., Political Science) SCIENTIFIC AUTHORITY: An Epistemic Proceduralist Framework For The Legitimate Authority Of Science In Environmental Policy Dissertation directed by Associate Professor Steve Vanderheiden The formation and implementation of effective environmental policies by Western liberal democracies are frequently hindered by disagreement over the appropriate role of scientific knowledge. In my dissertation, I argue this obstruction is resolved by recognizing the legitimate authority of science in environmental policy-making. Drawing on David Estlund’s epistemic proceduralist theory of democracy, I demonstrate the compatibility of the authority of scientific knowledge claims about the cause and effect relationships of the biophysical world in environmental policy-making with our normative expectations for the justifications of democratic governance. After defending this approach to understanding the science-policy interface, I demonstrate the feasibility of my theory and its expected impacts through detailed application to the case of climate policy. Specifically, I argue that the authority of science that I defend will increase the effectiveness of policies at achieving desired ends, while avoiding the difficulties presented by the politicization of scientific explanations. iv CONTENTS CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1 Why Scientific Authority Matters for Achieving Sustainability 4 An Outline of My Argument 10 I. THE DISCURSIVE POWER OF SCIENCE AS A SOURCE OF BIOPHYSICAL EXPLANATION 15 Why Co-Production Confuses the Problem and Fails to Offer a Solution 17 A Clearer Understanding of the Influence of Scientific Knowledge on Individuals 25 Science’s Discursive Role in Democratic Policy-making 31 Conclusion 36 II. NORMATIVE CONSENT AND SCIENTIFIC AUTHORITY 38 Why Deference to Scientific Expertise Will Not Prevent the Politicization of Science 43 Normative Consent and a Duty to Contribute to Sustainability 56 Grounds for Scientific Authority: Normative Consent and Pragmatic Liberalism 69 Scientific Authority within Environmental Policy-making 82 Conclusion 91 III. THE LEGITMACY OF SCIENTIFIC CONSTRAINT ON ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES 94 Science, Environmental Policy, and the Avoidance of Ecological Collapse 96 Scientific Constraint of Environmental Policy Choices and the Avoidance of Ecological Collapse 101 The Inferential Extrapolation of Science’s Correct Influence to Other Cases 106 v Conclusion 111 IV. THE REPRESENTATION OF SCIENTIFIC AUTHORITY BY INDIVIDUALS 113 Who Represent Scientific Explanations in Environmental Policy-making? 119 The Requirements for Individuals to Act as Political Representation of Scientific Authority within Policy-making 125 The Institutional Requirements for the Representation of the Authority of Science 132 Representation, Resemblance, and Respect 137 Conclusion 147 V. JUDGING CLAIMS TO REPRESENT THE AUTHORITY OF SCIENCE 149 The Importance of the Aim of Representative Claims and How They Are Judged 152 Judging the Rhetoric of Claims 156 Epistemological Grounds for Judgment 162 Ethical Grounds for Judgment 165 Provisional Judgments of Representative Claims—the Case of Climate Policy 168 The Third National Climate Assessment 169 G77+China Walkout at COP-19 174 A Protester in Manila 177 Conclusion 182 VI. CONCLUSION: THE AVOIDANCE OF THE POLITICIZATION OF SCIENCE 184 The Grounds and Scope of Scientific Authority in Environmental Policy-making 185 Scientific Authority as Remedy for the Politicization of Science 187 vi BIBLIOGRAPHY 192 vii FIGURES Figure 1. Causal relationships in Producing Scientific Knowledge and Policy Outcomes 20 2. Protester at U.S. Embassy in Manila 178 1 Introduction A number of biophysical phenomena currently threaten the continuation of existing human societies. For instance, current natural resource and energy use and waste production exceed levels that can be sustained by the biosphere (Boyden and Dovers 1992). Additionally, anthropogenic changes to the biophysical environment such as climate change, changes to land- use patterns and the deterioration of ecosystem services have caused an increased threat to public health through five mechanisms—exposure to infectious disease, water scarcity, food scarcity, natural disasters, and population displacement (Myers and Patz 2009). More specifically, the emergence of infectious disease has resulted from changes to human interactions with wildlife, such as the increase in overall interaction caused by human population expansion, (Daszak, Cunningham, and Hyatt 2000). Additionally, global agricultural output is threatened by the desertification of global drylands—primarily caused by the salinization of soil (Dregne and Chou 1992) and the decline in managed and wild pollinators (Meffe 1998). To understand the role of science in policy-making, we must consider how the relationship between human societies and the biophysical world should change in order to respond to these threats and produce societies whose biophysical relationships can be sustained by Earth systems. How to produce a sustainable society is a complex problem in two ways. First, many interrelated specific problems—such as climate change, water scarcity, net energy decline, etc.— need to be addressed in order to achieve sustainability and they must be resolved in a way that is compatible with sustainable resolutions to the others. Second, these problems are biophysical as well as sociopolitical, which further complicates attempts to address them. For instance, climate 2 change is both a biophysical phenomenon caused by increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and a sociopolitical problem requiring determination of a just distribution of energy resources, among other considerations1. Noting the existence of the biophysical and sociopolitical dimensions of sustainability means drawing attention to one of the most difficult and important tasks for designing a sustainable society—balancing the needs for a biophysically sustainable and a socio-politically desirable solution. Though leaving the resolution of these problems solely to scientific experts is likely to produce biophysically sustainable outcomes, such a solution would hinder the democratic self-rule of the people and the value of directing our collective lives by granting decision-making power to the scientific elite. However, leaving the resolution of these problems solely to the direction of the people is unlikely to lead to biophysical success because the people lack the knowledge of biophysical relationships of cause and effect necessary to identify biophysical problems and possible solutions. Thus, to design a sustainable society, we need to identify a way in which the people retain authority over the direction of their common lives, while also relying upon scientific expertise for explanations of biophysical relationships of cause and effect. In other words, in order to successfully design a sustainable society we must balance the normative desirability of democratic decision-making with the greater empirical success provided by the biophysical understanding of scientific expertise. The aim of my argument is to defend a balance between these normative and epistemic demands of environmental policies by arguing for a particular understanding of the authority scientific explanations should have within environmental policy-making. By clarifying the authority that science warrants as a particular type of explanation of biophysical relationships of 1 For a more detailed discussion of climate change and the importance of considering both the biophysical and sociopolitical dimensions of the problem, see Hulme (2009). 3 cause and effect, I contribute to our understanding of the role of scientific explanations within environmental policy-making in three ways. First, my account of the authority of scientific explanations, insofar as it is a theory of the authority warranted by scientific explanations, provides reasons for the exclusion of other sources of biophysical explanations within policy- making. Previous discussions of the political role of biophysical explanations begin by limiting the scope of their inquiries to scientific explanations without offering reasons for why other sources of biophysical explanation are not included (Brown 2009; Pielke Jr 2007). While the exclusion of other biophysical explanations is premised on exactly the authority of science I am arguing for, the act of assuming such authority opens up past theories to serious criticism for failing to justify their starting position—that science is the

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