Environmental harms involve a “double diversion” — two forms of privilege that deserve greater attention. The first involves disproportionality, or the privileged diversion of rights/resources: ...Contrary to common assumptions, much environmental damage is not economically “necessary” — instead, it represents privileged access to the environment. It is made possible in part by the second diversion — the diversion of attention, or distraction — largely through taken-for-granted or privileged accounts, which are rarely questioned, even in leftist critiques. Data show that, rather than producing advanced materials, major polluters tend to be inefficient producers of low-value commodities, and rather than being major employers, they can have emissions-to-jobs ratios a thousand times worse than the economy as a whole. Instead of simply focusing on overall/average levels of environmental problems, sociologists also need to examine disproportionalities, analyzing the socially structured nature of environmental and discursive privileges. Doing so can offer important opportunities for insights, not just about nature, but also about the nature of power, and about the power of the naturalized.
Mass media in the U.S. continue to suggest that scientific consensus estimates of global climate disruption, such as those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are “exaggerated” ...and overly pessimistic. By contrast, work on the Asymmetry of Scientific Challenge (ASC) suggests that such consensus assessments are likely to
understate climate disruptions. This paper offers an initial test of the competing expectations, making use of the tendency for science to be self-correcting, over time. Rather than relying in any way on the IPCC process, the paper draws evidence about emerging science from four newspapers that have been found in past work to be biased against reporting IPCC findings, consistently reporting instead that scientific findings are “in dispute.” The analysis considers two time periods — one during the time when the papers were found to be overstating challenges to then-prevailing scientific consensus, and the other focusing on 2008, after the IPCC and former Vice-President Gore shared the Nobel Prize for their work on climate disruption, and before opinion polls showed the U.S. public to be growing more skeptical toward climate science once again. During both periods, new scientific findings were more than twenty times as likely to support the ASC perspective than the usual framing of the issue in the U.S. mass media. The findings indicate that supposed challenges to the scientific consensus on global warming need to be subjected to greater scrutiny, as well as showing that, if reporters wish to discuss “both sides” of the climate issue, the scientifically legitimate “other side” is that, if anything, global climate disruption may prove to be significantly
worse than has been suggested in scientific consensus estimates to date.
Reexamining Climate Change Debates Freudenburg, William R.; Muselli, Violetta
The American behavioral scientist (Beverly Hills),
06/2013, Letnik:
57, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Despite strong scientific consensus that global climate disruption is real and due in significant part to human activities, stories in the U.S. mass media often still present the opposite view, ...characterizing the issue as being “in dispute.” Even today, the U.S. media devote significant attention to small numbers of denialists, who claim that scientific consensus assessments, such as those by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are “exaggerated” and “political.” Such claims, however, are testable hypotheses—and just the opposite expectation is hypothesized in the small but growing literature on Scientific Certainty Argumentation Methods, or SCAMs. The work on SCAMs suggests that, rather than being a reflection of legitimate scientific disagreement, the intense criticisms of climate science may reflect a predictable pattern that grows out of “the politics of doubt”: If enough doubt can be raised about the relevant scientific findings, regulation can be avoided or delayed for years or even decades. Ironically, though, while such a pattern can lead to a bias in scientific work, the likely bias is expected to be just the opposite of the one usually feared. The underlying reason has to do with the Asymmetry of Scientific Challenge, or ASC—so named because certain theories or findings, such as those indicating the significance of climate disruption, are subjected to systematically greater challenges than are those supporting opposing conclusions. As this article shows, available evidence provides significantly more support for SCAM and ASC perspectives than for the concerns that are commonly expressed in the U.S. mass media. These findings suggest that, if current scientific consensus is in error, it is likely because global climate disruption may be even worse than commonly expected to date.
Catastrophe in the Making Freudenburg, William R; Gramling, Robert; Laska, Shirley
2012, 2015, 2009
eBook
When houses are flattened, towns submerged, and people stranded without electricity or even food, we attribute the suffering to "natural disasters" or "acts of God." But what if they're neither? What ...if we, as a society, are bringing these catastrophes on ourselves?That's the provocative theory of Catastrophe in the Making, the first book to recognize Hurricane Katrina not as a "perfect storm, " but a tragedy of our own making—and one that could become commonplace. The authors, one a longtime New Orleans resident, argue that breached levees and sloppy emergency response are just the most obvious examples of government failure. The true problem is more deeply rooted and insidious, and stretches far beyond the Gulf Coast.Based on the false promise of widespread prosperity, communities across the U.S. have embraced all brands of "economic development" at all costs. In Louisiana, that meant development interests turning wetlands into shipping lanes. By replacing a natural buffer against storm surges with a 75-mile long, obsolete canal that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, they guided the hurricane into the heart of New Orleans and adjacent communities. The authors reveal why, despite their geographic differences, California and Missouri are building—quite literally—toward similar destruction.Too often, the U.S. "growth machine" generates wealth for a few and misery for many. Drawing lessons from the most expensive "natural" disaster in American history, Catastrophe in the Making shows why thoughtless development comes at a price we can ill afford.
At least since the time of Popper, scientists have understood that science provides falsification, but not “proof.” In the world of environmental and technological controversies, however, many ...observers continue to call precisely for “proof,” often under the guise of “scientific certainty.” Closer examination of real‐world disputes suggests that such calls may reflect not just a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of science, but a clever and surprisingly effective political‐economic tactic—“Scientific Certainty” Argumentation Methods, or SCAMs. Given that most scientific findings are inherently probabilistic and ambiguous, if agencies can be prevented from imposing any regulations until they are unambiguously “justified,” most regulations can be defeated or postponed, often for decades, allowing profitable but potentially risky activities to continue unabated. An exploratory examination of previously documented controversies suggests that SCAMs are more widespread than has been recognized in the past, and that they deserve greater attention in the future.
Disaster studies have made important progress in recognizing the unequally distributed consequences of disasters, but there has been less progress in analyzing social factors that help create ...“natural” disasters. Even well-known patterns of hazard-creation tend to be interpreted generically — as representing “economic development” or “capitalism” — rather than through focusing on the more specific dynamics involved. We illustrate this point with two recent and well-known cases of floading — those in the upper Mississippi River Valley and in the Katrina-related devastation of New Orleans. In the former case, damage was caused in part by building the very kinds of higher and stronger floodwalls that were shown to be inadequate in the latter. In the New Orleans case, a more important factor in the death and destruction was the excavation of a transportation canal. In both cases, and many more, the underlying causes of damage to humans as well as to the environment has involved a three-part pattern, supported by the political system — spreading the costs, concentrating the economic benefits and hiding the real risks. In very real senses, these have been floods of folly, created not just by extreme weather events, but by deadly and avoidable patterns of political-economic choices. Comparable patterns appear to deserve greater attention in other contexts, as well.
Rather than seeking ivory-tower isolation, members of the Rural Sociological Society have always been distinguished by a willingness to work with specialists from a broad range of disciplines, and to ...work on some of the world's most challenging problems. What is less commonly recognized is that the willingness to reach beyond disciplinary boundaries can contribute not just to the solution of real-world problems, but also to the advancement of the discipline itself. This point is increasingly being illustrated in studies of environment-society relationships. Most past discussions of humans' roles in environmental problems have focused on overall or average human impacts, but rural sociologists have played leading roles in identifying what I have come to call "the double diversion." First, rather than being wellrepresented by averages, environmental damages are often characterized by high levels of disproportionality, with much or most of the harm being created by the diversion of environmental rights and resources to a surprisingly small fraction of the relevant social actors. The disproportionality appears to be made possible in part through the second diversion, namely distraction---the diversion of attention, largely through the taken-forgranted but generally erroneous assumption that the environmental harm "must" be for the benefit of us all. There are good reasons why rural sociologists would have been among the first to notice both of these "diversions"---and why they will give even greater attention to both in the future.
Existing sociological analyses express differing expectations about state control over economic actors and the political feasibility of environmental regulation. Recent literature on the ...environmental state sees environmental protection as becoming a basic responsibility of postindustrial states, with economic actors no longer having the autonomy they once enjoyed. In contrast, much of the work in environmental sociology expects commitments to environmental state responsibilities to be largely symbolic. Scholars working from this perspective tend to see environmental damage as proportionate to economic prosperity. To assess the differing expectations, we analyze actual environmental performance among the most prosperous nation-states focusing on national-level emissions of carbon dioxide. The strongest predictors of emissions are found to be measures of ecological efficiency, which tend to be associated with potentially less symbolic policy decisions. For the future, there is a need to move beyond broad as sertions, devoting greater attention to the conditions under which states are more or less likely to impose constraints on economic actors.
We propose four ways that the urban growth machine theoretical perspective can be expanded for social scientists whose focus is not necessarily urban. First, we believe the thesis is useful for ...analysis at larger and smaller geographic scales than the city. Second, once focused on a goal and set in motion the growth machines have inertia. This leads to continuity over time and also leaves records which are useful in analyzing how particular outcomes occur. Third, the processes growth machines set in motion can lead us to practices that are on the edge of our ability to control, potentially resulting in unanticipated and even disastrous consequences, having relevance for the study of disasters. Finally, the very success of the growth machine, particularly when growth is centered on the exploitation of land based resources can lead to the exhaustion of the very basis of its success and thus to collapse.
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