The Future Is Not What It Used to Be: Climate Change and Energy Scarcity

5. The Struggle over Knowledge

5 The Struggle over Knowledge A battle is raging over knowledge about climate change and energy scarcity. The fundamental bone of contention is the same in either case. Do we really have to worry, or can we discard it all as scaremongering? In either case, the answer to that question determines the frontlines of the epistemic battle. In the case of energy, the stronghold of mainstream expertise is kept by those who argue that resource issues are no serious reason for concern because they are taken care of by the market mechanism and technological progress. Small but vocal groups of alarmists besiege that stronghold, enraged by the cold refusal of the energy experts to acknowledge the gravity of the situation. The fortress is holding steadfast, despite some cracks appearing in the wall. In the climate case, the roles are exactly the reverse. Those who believe that climate change is a dreadful problem are firmly entrenched on the hilltop of mainstream science. Down in the valley are gathering those who refuse to see climate change as a serious issue, enraged by the sometimes condescending and sometimes contemptuous attitude of the alarmists . Obviously, the incumbents see no reason to cede the stronghold to their challengers. There is a puzzle. Climate change and energy scarcity are both fundamental challenges to the viability of industrial civilization. How is it possible that, in the case of climate change, the alarmists have come to represent mainstream science, whereas in the energy case they have never made much headway? To understand this puzzle, I start off by developing an analytical framework that enables us to explore the struggle over knowledge about energy scarcity and climate change. I outline three kinds of science: 108 Chapter 5 normal, abnormal, and post-normal. I further show that, depending on whether normal or post-normal science reigns supreme, there are different patterns of contestation. The framework is subsequently applied to energy and climate science. In the energy case, normal science is under siege from the abnormal science about scarcity. In the case of climate change, post-normal science is caught in a stranglehold, or double whammy, between two different breeds of abnormal scientists: radical alarmists criticizing the postnormal establishment; and contrarian scientists alienated by the shift from what they would consider normal, “value-free” science. The narrative account for each knowledge regime is complemented by an Internet-based cluster analysis of the relevant networks, graphically illustrated by the cluster maps in figures 5.3–5.6. All cluster maps have been produced with the free software Issue Crawler and indicate how specified websites are (hyper)linked to others in citation networks.1 A systematic comparison between the cases explains the different patterns of contestation in either field and tackles the crucial question of whether and how post-normal science affects the prospects for either problem, or both, to be addressed. Despite the interesting differences between climate science and the study of energy it turns out that, given the equally dismal outcome in either case, scientists are in a double bind: they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t engage in postnormal science. Three Kinds of Science Thomas Kuhn (1962) famously understood normal science as a social enterprise where an epistemic paradigm is shared by a community of scientists in such a way as to enable incremental research. In normal science there is an agreed framework of what constitutes a problem, as well as what the relevant facts are and how to interpret them. Residual uncertainty is acknowledged but seen as temporary. Scientists do not need to engage in normative debate and advocacy for specific solutions because anything that is overtly political does not belong to the “valuefree ” sphere of science. The Struggle over Knowledge 109 While many scientific fields such as mathematics, metallurgy, or structural engineering are squarely within the remit of normal science, late modernity increasingly leads to situations where “facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent” (Ravetz 2004, 349). In such post-normal situations, debates over uncertainty go beyond mere technicalities and include radical doubt and ethical contestation (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993). Because there is serious dispute around the most fundamental values to be promoted or defended, the knowledge at stake seems too existential and too political to be left to the established experts practicing normal science. As a consequence of such fundamental contestation , normal science is challenged by...