ABSTRACT
In a real sense, global climate change is the exemplary environmental problem of the ecological crisis. It is emblematic of the ecological crisis and is perhaps a defining issue for our times. Indeed, the significance of global climate change for the current era has been substantiated by geologists who have designated the present epoch as the Era of the Anthropocene to highlight the fact that human activities have had a significant impact on the current state of our planet’s geology and ecosystems (Crutzen, 2002). Climate change is therefore a particularly apt topic to illustrate how critical science may be employed to shed light on why certain conventional environmental management approaches are adopted to combat climate change, and why they tend to be largely ineffective. As we shall see, certain favored environ - mental management responses to climate change, such as the creation of a market for carbon pollution permits or the imposition of carbon taxes, tend to take precedence over the consideration of non-market approaches, many of which are based on suggestions for restructuring the institutional base of the economy and society. Although perhaps politically the most expedient in terms of the neoliberal times in which we live, environmental management responses to climate change based on market models may not be the most effective or even logical approach to addressing the climate change problematic. In this chapter, we begin with a very brief overview of what is meant by global climate change. We then begin our discussion of what critical social science and sociology may offer to the understanding of climate change as a socio-ecological phenomenon by examining the unique social and psychological aspects of the climate change phenomenon, and the implications these may have for the responses to climate change we have witnessed thus far. Next, we consider the social process through which the climate change problem becomes a public issue. As discussed in the subsequent section, systems thinking features prominently in thinking about climate change not only as a natural phenomenon, but somewhat surprisingly as a social phenomenon as
well. One consequence of this is that the logic of economics and the markets dominates how analysts and policy-makers conceive of the social and behavioral aspects implicated in climate change mitigation and adaptation. Such a development we argue works against the adoption of more critical climate change responses – a theme we will take up towards the end of this chapter.
