Energy Climate and Sustainability

2b: Post-Truth

Misha Velthuis

work@mishavelthuis.nl

Thu 20 Feb 2025

Today

Part 1:

Exposing politics in science?

Part 2:

Playing with fire?

Some recurring themes

Highlight politics where
it is not apparent or actively denied

Universal vs particular

When things are believed to apply universally while they are actually more particular

Inevitable vs avoidable

When things are claimed to be inevitable, but they are (partly) the product of choices

Performativity

When the way we think of the world, (partly) shapes the world.

Sources of inspiration

Feminist
Science and Technology Studies

Donna Haraway

Sandra Harding

Helen Longino

Postcolonial
Development Studies

Arturo Escobar

Edward Saïd

Dipesh Chakrabarty

Marxist
Political Economy/Ecology

Ben Fine

David Harvey

Paul Robbins

In this course

Part 1: Environment in crisis

Part 2: Energy economics

Part 3: Individual vs systemic change

Part 4: Degrowth

Today

Part 1:

Exposing politics in science?

Part 2:

Playing with fire?

Part 1: exposing politics in science?

The view from nowhere

Reality

Empirical observation

Logic

Scientific knowledge

Challenges to the view from nowhere

Choosing a focus

Neglected Tropical Diseases

Choosing a focus

Does it serve capital?

Does it make labour cheaper?

Does it open up opportunities of new forms of lock-in?

State/ corporate surveillance (control)?

No conspiracy

Not necessarily an evil conspiracy,

but a tendency.

A bias.

How to stop climate change?

If the environmental crisis correlates so strongly with the scale of production and consumption, and the scale of production and consumption correlates so badly with wellbeing, why don't we spend more resources on studying/experimenting/innovating with social technologies that take away the systemic imperatives that force us to keep producing and consuming more and more.

See for example Hickel (2020) on degrowth

If our current political system fails to translate our common interests into policy, why don't we spend more resources on studying/experimenting/innovating with social technologies that try to bring politics back to "the people".

See for example van Reybrouck (2016) for the case for citizen assemblies (as a new form of relating politically).

Hickel, J. (2020). Less is more: How degrowth will save the world. Random House.

Van Reybrouck, D. (2016). Against elections: The case for democracy. The Bobley Head: London

The view from nowhere?

Reality

Empirical observation

Logic

Spatial distribution of economic means

Expected profits

Scientific knowledge

Gathering evidence

"Percentages indicate the extent to which stations report into globally available datasets, while the parenthetical numbers indicate the number of stations reporting at this level."

Example 1

"As Figure 3 illustrates, many of the ground-based weather stations in Africa and Latin America do not report fully into the globally available climate datasets. Data deficiencies are most pronounced in areas of the world where the need is greatest, especially in Africa, where the functioning observation network is less than an eighth of that recommended by WMO [38]. This obviously has implications for the value of using globally available data to try to meet regional or national climate information needs." (Connor et al. 2010).

Example 2

"A second problem with the temperature data is that the coverage in time and space is much better in some parts of the world than in others. Populated areas of Europe and North America have been monitored most closely and for the longest time, so the coverage is best in these regions. most land areas in the Southern Hemisphere have shorter and less-consistent temperature records." (Kump et al. 2010).

Example 3

"Researchers, when choosing areas to collect fossils from and what types of fossils to sample, introduce significant biases. It is clear from the available data that there are geological time intervals and regions of the world that are favoured more than others. For example, continents such as North America and Europe are particularly well sampled as they are generally more accessible, and there is no denying the popularity of dinosaurs and their relatives ever since the Bone Wars of the late 1800s" (Dunne, 2018).

Sources

Connor, S. J., Omumbo, J., Green, C., DaSilva, J., Mantilla, G., Delacollette, C., … & Thomson, M. (2010). Health and climate–needs. Procedia Environmental Sciences, 1, 27-36.

Dunne, E. (2018). Patterns in Palaeontology: How do we measure biodiversity in the past. Palaeontology Online, 8, 1-9.

Kump, L. R., Kastine, J. F., Crane, R. G. (2010). The Earth System (3rd ed.) Pearson Education, New Jersey

Gathering evidence

Universal vs particular

When things are believed to apply universally while they are actually more particular

The view from nowhere?

Reality

Empirical observation

Logic

Spatial distribution of economic means (x 2)

Expected profits

Gender inequalities

Scientific knowledge

Accepting hypotheses

Evidence underdetermines theory

Sismondo (2010)

Underlying assumptions

From Ted Talk by Naomi Oreskes: link

Assumptions (auxiliary hypotheses):

Predication: if the earth does revolve around the sun, the "cosmic background" of a relatively proximate star should be different in the winter and the summer.
Result: it is not.
Underlying assumption: the measuring instruments are sensitive enough to measure the difference.
Turned out to be wrong: the distances are so huge, the seasonal difference make a tiny difference, instruments were not sensitive enough to measure it.

Experimenter's regress

"Collins, a prominent sociologist of science, claims that in order to know whether an experimental result is correct,one first needs to know whether the apparatus producing the result is reliable. But one doesn’t know whether the apparatus is reliable unless one knows that it produces correct results in the first place and so on and so on ad infinitum. Collins’ main case concerns attempts to detect gravitational waves, which were very controversially discussed among physicists in the 1970s.

Collins argues that the circle is eventually broken not by the “facts” themselves but rather by factors having to do with the scientist’s career, the social and cognitive interests of his community, and the expected fruitfulness for future work. It is important to note that in Collins’s view these factors do not necessarily make scientific results arbitrary. But what he does argue is that the experimental results do not represent the world according to the absolute conception" (Reiss & Sprenger, 2020).

Reiss, J., & Sprenger, J. (2020). Scientific objectivity. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retreived 11 Feb 2024

Thomas Kuhn: Paradigms

“Science always exists within a certain paradigm (set of methods, concepts, ways of thinking/knowing)”

These paradigms are incommensurable.

Bruno Latour: Constructivism

Facts are made up of all kinds of things.

A fact is not just a social construction, but partly a social construction.

The view from nowhere?

Reality

Empirical observation

Logic

Spatial distribution of economic means (x 2)

Expected profits

Gender inequalities

Dominant paradigm

Social environment

Scientific knowledge

Proliferation of ideas

What is the selection environment for ideas?

Flashback…

The view from nowhere?

Reality

Empirical observation

Logic

Spatial distribution of economic means (2 x)

Expected profits (2 x)

Gender inequalities

Dominant paradigm

Social environment

Scientific knowledge

Part 2: playing with fire

Critics of the critics: what have you done?

"What have you done?"

“Science has been an ally to emancipation, not an enemy.”

Your arguments are paving
the way for fascists #1

Your arguments are paving
the way for fascists #2

”There is no such thing as truth. Science is a social phenomenon and like every other social phenomenon is limited by the benefit or injury it confers on the community”

(Hitler, cited in Sayer, 2000, p. 47).

Some of the original
critics recognize the tension #1

Do you see why I am worried? I myself have spent some time in the past trying to show “‘the lack of scientific certainty’” inherent in the construction of facts. I too made it a “‘primary issue.’” But I did not exactly aim at fooling the public by obscuring the certainty of a closed argument—or did I? After all, I have been accused of just that sin. Still, I’d like to believe that, on the contrary, I intended to emancipate the public from prematurely naturalized objectified facts. Was I foolishly mistaken? Have things changed so fast? (Latour, 2004)

Some of the original
critics recognize the tension #2

"… it often seems that my own Shock Doctrine research has gone through the looking glass and is now gazing back at me as a network of fantastical plots that cast the very real crises we face—from Covid to climate change to Russian military aggression …" (Klein, 2023)

Push back

highlighting crucial differences

So to summarize:

We have seen some arguments, put forward by scholars (some of them from feminist, postcolonial and marxists traditions), of how science is more political than many assume or claim.
We have seen how these scholars have been criticized (partly by themselves), for paving the way for alt-right/ fascist denialism. The argument is that "the tools/weapons" that were developed to criticize science have fallen in the far right/ fascist hands, and are now undermining democracy.

The next few slides describe how scholars (like Naomi Klein) are pushing back against this second line of argument, by emphasizing that there is a big difference between:

… the way the feminist, postcolonial and marxist scholars (from now on "critical scholars") have been criticizing science
… and the way the far right/ fascism is criticizing (if that is still the right word) science.

Warning vs embracing

Critical scholars are warning:

"We should be careful that it is not inappropriately claimed to be absent."

Might makes right, so stay vigilant!

Fascists are embracing:

If you apply enough force, you can bend the truth in your interests.

Might makes right, so let's apply as much force as we can.

What kind of politics is claimed
to be hidden within science?

Forces that …

… maintain unequal, unjust, historically engrained, arbitrary hierarchies

Forces that …

… overplay (historical) communal victimhood in order to take down people from their deserved places at the top of legitimate hierarchies

How is the case made?

Decades of (reflexive) sociological and ethnographic research, published in academic, peer-reviewed literature.

Science studying science.

Social media echo chambers.

Intransparent think tanks.

What would be the way forward?

Recognize situatedness of knowledge.

More diversity, more transparency.

Celebration of the "impossibility to know".

Full-blown breakdown of existing institutions (media, science).

Faith in a strong leader, representing the will of the people. Replace the elite of the enemy with your own elite.

Push back

Don't concede

Instead of blaming those who rightly called out discrimination, we should be blaming the liberal elites who did not listen to them, and who let capitalism destroy the environment, lives, jobs and public life/ discourse. Because the authoritarian right feeds on the resulting (subconscious) anxieties (by selling a warped, reverse, "mirror image" analysis of the problem).

Appeasement will not save you

Stand your ground

Still: open questions

Regardless of what caused alt-right denialism, how to engage with/ relate to it?

Double down "opening up" the messy reality of science?

Close ranks and highlight the strength of science?

What is the role of the university (education? research?)