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The case for the “climate humanities”: toward a transdisciplinary, equity-focused paradigm shift within climate scholarship

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Abstract

A comprehensive understanding of the difference between the social sciences and the humanities—and a recognition of humanists’ unique contributions to climate scholarship, not merely their ability to communicate STEM-based methodologies—could inform, invigorate, and accelerate twenty-first century efforts to mitigate global climate change. In the coming years and decades, environmental literature, art, philosophy, and history and cultural theory will become more instrumental to solving the “wicked problem” of climate change than they were 10 years ago. Sustainable resources and technologies are now cheaper, more effective, and more widely available than ever before, but implementing them to scale has proven challenging due in part to growing public skepticism and distrust in institutions, widespread attachment to culturally ingrained behaviors and consumption patterns, and valid concerns over the social equitability of certain sustainable solutions. Technological solutions to climate change are increasingly promising, but deploying them at scale will require profound sociocultural and behavioral transformations, as well as sustained considerations of historical, structural, and economic inequities. To take the ambitious but necessary steps toward net-zero emissions, climate scientists and policymakers must recognize and mobilize the contributions of humanists working at the cultural level to imagine, interrogate, and implement new modes of existence that are as equitable as they are sustainable. Climate scholars—a designation that should encompass environmental humanists as well as scientists and sociologists—must create multidisciplinary frameworks capable not only of advancing climate science and technology, but also of communicating the urgency of climate change, addressing public hesitancy and mobilizing populations en masse, implementing sustainable solutions at the local and global levels, rapidly deploying existing technological and political solutions, and ensuring that all transitions are “people-centered” and socially just at their inception.

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Notes

  1. Hulme (2011).

  2. Burke et al. (2016), Denis and Moser (2015) and Victor (2015).

  3. “Convergence Research at NSF.” National Science Foundation. https://www.nsf.gov/od/oia/convergence/index.jsp.

  4. Outterson-Murphy (2020).

  5. In the annals of Nature Climate Change, no articles since Hulme’s have specifically addressed the dearth of collaborative work with the humanities. One 2014 article decries the lack of both social sciences and the humanities in social science discourse, but devotes more attention to the former: Castree et al. (2014).

  6. Brown et al. (2010).

  7. Gimon et al. (2019) and Mountford et al. (2019).

  8. Oreskes (2019).

  9. Kahan (2017).

  10. Just Transition: A Framework for Change. Climate Justice Alliance: Communities United for a Just Transition (2020).

  11. Mountford et al. (2019).

  12. Ghosh (2016). As a counterpoint, see Stokols et al. (2009).

  13. Marichal (2013).

  14. Nisa et al. (2019).

  15. Morton (2016).

  16. Kline et al (2018).

  17. Malm (2016).

  18. Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data. United States Environmental Protection Agency (2021) and Ritchie and Roser (2020).

  19. Debord (1994).

  20. Ghosh (2016).

  21. Kahan (2017).

  22. Parthasarathy, Shobita. Testimony Before the United States Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development Hearing on Strategies for Energy and Climate Innovation (2021).

  23. Morton (2013).

  24. Nixon (2011).

  25. Oreskes (2018) and Houser (2020).

  26. Norgaard (2011).

  27. Weik von Mossner (2017).

  28. Jordan, Chris. “Photographic Arts” (2009–Present).

  29. Broome (2012).

  30. See Egerer et al (2021) and Fox et al. (2019).

  31. See Humanities for the Environment. https://hfe-observatories.org.

  32. Sze (2015).

  33. Stokols (2020).

  34. Smith (2019).

  35. Nixon (2011).

  36. See Stokols et al. (2008).

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Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges Dr. Barbara Finlayson-Pitts, University of California, Irvine Department of Chemistry; Dr. Daniel Stokols, University of California, Irvine Department of Psychology; Dr. Steven Davis, University of California, Irvine Department of Earth System Science; Dr. SueJeanne Koh, University of California, Irvine School of Humanities.

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    Megan Cole

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Cole, M. The case for the “climate humanities”: toward a transdisciplinary, equity-focused paradigm shift within climate scholarship. Sustain Sci 18, 2795–2801 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-023-01358-5

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