Conceptual Approaches

Climate change is more than just an issue for the experts – we are all affected by it. To face up to the new challenges everybody has to change his behaviour. The social scientist Claus Leggewie about the change in thinking that is required in an interview with goethe.de.

"Culture Matters" is the name of the best-seller written by your colleagues, Lawrence E. Harrison (Harvard) and Francis Fukuyama (Johns Hopkins) on economic, social and political change in the world of today. In your view, Professor Leggewie, what specific role does culture play when it comes to climate change?

Not only a major one, but one that has been underestimated for a long time. The first World Climate Conference that took place 30 years ago in 1979 made it quite clear just how relevant climate change was and what its effects would be. The scientific evidence that in the meantime has become overwhelmingly convincing along with the wide range of climate-friendly technology do not seem to have had much effect on inducing both politics and society to change their behaviour. Neither goodwill nor moral sermons have managed to achieve very much, either. The long overdue shift in attitudes to energy and climate issues seems to have been hampered by the cultural codes of the late-industrial societies, as well as by those of the threshold countries and poor regions. These codes also have to be analysed and researched to enable climate change to be opened up for transdisciplinary cooperation with the fields of the humanities and cultural science – not only on a national, but also on a European and global level.

What task would you like to see ascribed to the cultural sciences – in contrast to the natural sciences?

We are thinking in two directions here. Firstly, a global phenomenon that affects all parts of the planet in equal measure like climate change with its rise in sea levels and soil erosion can be seen from many different cultural points of view – there is only one planet, but several cultural approaches to climate change. This symbolic level is followed by a second, more pragmatic, aspect – the patterns of behaviour and reactions of the societies and the climate and environment policies derived from them are not only steeped in socio-economic, but also in politico-cultural traditions and path dependencies that could make global cooperation difficult. So far we have only been able to find out very little about this aspect or, should I say, this fact has not been taken into consideration enough either by global cooperation networks or by local action programmes.

What do you focus on most in your work? Do you deal with the questions people ask about climate change?

We basically have to try to answer these four questions – the most commonly asked ones: What is the cost of climate change and all the preventive and adaptive measures required to combat it? (Is this feasible for a market system that is going through particularly hard times at the moment?) After “Kyoto” what form would an effective and internationally legitimate system of cooperation take? (Would USA and China be part of it, too?) How would consumers in societies at different levels of development “turn their words into actions”? How could they develop a culture of sustainability? How climate- and sustainability-friendly is a liberal democracy? What relationship do climate and democracy reforms have to each other inside an authoritarian regime?

The “Third Industrial Revolution”

Your aim is to educate the general public. When does an issue or subject become suitable for this – when people are upset about it or, the other way round, when they don’t want to know anything about it?

One has to make sure of course that the subject of climate change attracts attention beyond the usual news and media channels. It should not take the form of alarmist reporting on catastrophes, nor should it be put on the back burner just because everybody’s talking about the financial crisis. Economics should not take priority over climate change politics, the “Third Industrial Revolution” has to be based on a rethink in energy and climate policies.

Climate change, to quote you, Mr. Leggewie, is a “global phenomenon of uncertain nature and duration.” How can a phenomenon like this – a phantom, as some detractors have even called it – be put into a format that can be worked on from a cultural science point of view?

Those particular subjects that are confronted with a new and interesting phenomenon open up their store of knowledge and methods and, by focusing on the problem, automatically establish links with other subjects. As in this case we are dealing with nothing less than the very foundations of our industrial culture, we have to adopt an application-oriented approach, working completely in step with actual practice and setting up global scientific networks.

Would the “KlimaKultur” project at your institute be a prime example of this?

At the moment there are two research projects in progress – one on “Catastrophe Memory” and the other called “Shifting Baselines”. The question on how catastrophes are remembered is of direct practical significance when investigating whether experiences in the past can be used to prevent and mitigate the results of catastrophes. “Shifting Baselines“, the shifting of the foundations of experience and perception, reveals a major problem when it comes to promoting an increased environmental awareness and the necessary changes in behaviour that come with it. For due to lack of points of reference the people affected do not even notice the negative consequences of their behaviour.

What is the best way of tackling research problems like this – the traditional way with a “lone warrior” cultural scientist or in a transdisciplinary team?

The “lone warrior” approach is equally as popular as the team method. Anybody reading for the first time the poet and mining engineer, Novalis (1772 – 1801), as a pre-industrial witness of environmental destruction, can do it all by himself in the peace and quiet of his study. For those however who would like to develop an idea for the field of energy research or contribute to establishing a global climate governance with a policy paper, they then should really be looking for partners. At our Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities we have a growing climate research team comprising both old hands and junior fellows who work hand in hand with visiting researchers from other institutes.

The cultural state promotes “the soliloquy of a society in freedom in its quest for meaning and identity”, as was once said pertinently by a German Minister of State. The Goethe-Institut transports public discourse in Germany to other countries. What form does the cooperation between the Goethe-Institut and KlimaKultur take?

We suggested to Goethe-Institut that they use the topic of climate and culture as one of their focuses and were absolutely overwhelmed by the positive reaction we encountered both inside the institute and outside. Now we will be able to set up global networks on climate that will not only serve the purposes of research, but also those of culture and education. Climate research can achieve nothing without this aspect of cultural education – the one thing alone that can help to change behaviour and lifestyles. The somewhat cynical slogan “Climate Change – Go For It” also has to apply when we are trying to cope with the effects of climate change. The effects of climate change cannot be dealt with alone using some kind of political technology, but the cultural strategy of people participating has to be part of it, too.