Climate Change: distinguishing critical from sceptical perspectives

In this talk, Nicholson argued that the discussion of climate change has become unhelpfully polarised, and that both sides have a flaw in their argument. 

The 'climate sceptic' side, infamously, deny the reality of the climate science, which despite what they argue does in fact overwhelmingly demonstrates that climate change is happening, and that this change is anthropogenic. 

The 'climate activist' side, however, deny the reality not of the science, but the social science on the impact of climate change on society. In contrast to the deniers of science, who presume the science to be worse than it is, the deniers of the social science presume it to be better than it is. 

We care about climate change, of course, because we presume not only that it will have an impact on society, but that that impact will be overwhelmingly negative. Yet this argument requires us not only to understand what we mean by 'climate change', but also what we mean by 'society'. What exactly is society? What ought it to be? How can we understand the impact of climate upon it? 

There are no easy answers to these questions. Indeed, one might say that our understanding of climate change is marked less by a rich understanding of the science, and more by an impoverished understanding of ourselves. 

As a result, Nicholson argues for a third way of looking at climate change, that escapes the denialism of the 'sceptics', and the naive of the 'activists'. This third way is to adopt a 'critical' stance towards climate change, accepting the science, but recognising that even once that is settled, all the most interesting and difficult questions remain untouched, questions that are fundamentally about ourselves, not the climate as such.