The construction of climate change as a global problem

The Earth’s environment is sustained by its global atmospheric greenhouse, but that greenhouse has proven to be more susceptible to human interference than was once thought likely. In principle, one would suppose there would be a worldwide interest in defending humankind’s common atmospheric protection but there are also powerful incentives for companies, governments and citizens to act in ways that provoke climate change. As this environmental problem began to be addressed in the second half of the 20th century, in mainstream circles the issue became constructed in a particular way: it was understood on the model of pollution. Industrial activities, energy production, transport and farming were polluting the global atmosphere with additional greenhouse gases. Framing the issue in this way – justified in its fundamentals as it was – shaped the kinds of responses available. It constructed climate change as a global problem in a specific sense.

Though the climate issue was, from early on, referred to as global warming – implicitly identifying it as a problem for the whole world – there have been several changes in the detailed conceptualisation of this phenomenon. For example, by the 1990s, the greenhouse problem was viewed in dominant policy circles as primarily an issue about how to stabilise or reduce warming emissions. This gave rise to contestation both about the extent to which emissions were indeed the cause of warming and about who could justly distribute the burden of emissions-reductions targets in the light of responsibility for historic emissions. The power to attach the ‘global’ label acquired political significance and the label itself became contested.

In the 21st century two key policy responses emerged to this problem; they re-shaped the leading construction of the issue. The first arose from developing scientific confidence about the links between emissions, total atmospheric carbon (or greenhouse gases), and global temperature increases. This meant that the amount of carbon that could still be used before any given temperature limit was likely to be breached could be expressed as a global quantity. The world’s problem no longer had to be construed as one of limiting polluting emissions but as the responsible use of a stock. Equally, the policy discourse came to centre on the Net-Zero goal, the idea of no further net emissions. An end to emissions would pave the way for a sustainable future.

These two proposals were both powerful. New organisations were formed to gauge whether countries were operating within the scope of the proposals. But there were characteristic difficulties. Net-Zero allows for trade-offs between emissions and sequestrations of carbon. If the capturing role can be pushed onto others or into the future, it is hard to use Net Zero to discipline current conduct. Similarly the carbon stock is an abstract quantity – it is the total amount of global carbon we can allow ourselves to consume. But there is much more carbon in the world than the ‘burnable’ stock. These new constructions of climate change as a global problem are subtle and technically sophisticated, but their very sophistication leaves them open to gaming and burden-shifting.