ABSTRACT
The point of departure is the claim that the contemporary discourse on climate change is dominated by CO2-reductionism. This is the form of reductionism where complex phenomena interconnecting both nature and society are reduced to one singular issue: emissions of CO2. Implications are that mitigation efforts are delimited to a matter of reductions in just these emissions, entailing also a focus only on technological and simple economical solutions to achieve such reductions. Many examples can be given. For one, the Norwegian Low Emission Committee in recommending mitigation measures only focused on CO2, and only came up with technological solutions to attain a low emission society (Randers et al., 2006). The Committee chairman (Randers, 2006) claimed that about a 70 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions could be achieved quite easily without any major societal changes, a claim that can only be substantiated within a rather narrow reductionist position.
