סמינר בחוג לגיאופיזיקה: Climate Change and the Fifth Environmental Paradigm

Abstract:

Environmental thought traditionally imports knowledge from other disciplines, both ‘hard’ sciences and ‘soft’, to solve problems on a variety of scales. This talk begins with reminders of how such procedures played out as part of four existing environmental paradigms. It then examines recent contributions from social sciences and the humanities to the debate on climate change, arguing that climate change is ushering in a fifth environmental paradigm, one characterized by a reversal of traditional procedural sequence. Rather than merely awaiting input from other disciplines, climate change – a systemic, complex and highly potent process – seems to generate intellectual and scientific energy of its own, pushing established disciplines to question their foundational beliefs and axioms. The case in point is the social sciences, which emerged in the 19th century within an optimistic zeitgeist characterized by unrelenting faith in perpetual growth and affluence. Can views about society and human nature shaped in such circumstances remain valid when  confidence in universal affluence is dwindling and hope for everlasting  growth has been eclipsed with uncertainty and trepidation? If not, can we accept that these axioms were ever truly valid?  

This raises two related questions. One, of crucial practical importance, is the capacity of existing social and political institutions, which owe much to theories and doctrines developed in the social sciences in the 19th century, to offer real guidance through the climate  crisis? The second, of greater theoretical importance, questions the very assumptions, often based on social theory, which shaped these institutions. 

מארגן הסמינר: פרופ' איל חפץ