Climate change, growth and sustainability: the ideological context

It is widely accepted within the climate change research community that climate change should be addressed through a combination of mitigation and adaptation. However, within government and society at large the costs of mitigation and adaptation, and consequently the extent to which these strategies should be pursued, are hotly contested. The uncertainty surrounding both the science of climate change and the costs of planned responses to it is often used as a justification for inaction. It might appear that uncertainty and the costs and benefits of various responses to represent the entirety of the climate change debate. However, we should also recognise the role of ideology and the various philosophical contexts, which are often ignored, but which are often crucial determining people’s attitude towards environmental issues. This paper argues that real progress in addressing climate change will be greatly assisted if more attention is paid to the role of different world views in framing the debate. Policymakers and the public will be in a better position to formulate their own opinions and make decisions if they are able to distinguish the scientific elements of the debate from the ideological elements, and recognise when “scientific” data are being manipulated for ideological purposes. An appreciation of the ideological and philosophical backgrounds of the various protagonists in the debate is helpful, if not essential, in interpreting the various arguments. This is equally true of arguments over “sustainability”, a much more slippery concept than climate change, dealing as it does not only with scientific measurement and future development scenarios, but also with the valuation of natural resources in both financial and non-financial terms.