Climate science and its “global solutions”: Ecofeminist perspectives

This presentation is part of the Feminist Perspectives in the Sciences: Physics, Chemistry and Climate Science track. Climate change presents itself as one of the most dangerous threats facing the planet. The aim of this paper is to detail ecofeminist perspectives in relation to the science, as well as highlighting their views on the dominant strategies related to addressing this crisis. The role of scientists, and in particular, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) has been instrumental in providing the basis for various actions and implementations towards addressing climate change. The latest report (2007) “Climate Science: The Physical Basis,” in particular, establishes abnormal global warming caused by human activities, in which emission of greenhouse gases are noted as one of prime reasons behind climate change. In terms of action, the Kyoto Protocol stands out as a global pact that aims towards using market based actions to reduce such emissions. In this regard, United States stands out as one of the heaviest emitters of such gases, and as one of the few countries that have not committed to meeting emission targets under this protocol. In contrast to the Kyoto protocol, the formation of an alternative formed by the Bush administration (2005), namely, the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APPCDC) represents efforts by USA towards curbing greenhouse emissions. This paper presents ecofeminist perspectives on the epistemology of climate science as well as its implications on the current climate pacts and protocols (Mellor, 1997; Shiva, 1988; Mies & Shiva, 1993; Plumwood, Shiva, 2005; Shiva 2008). The contrasting and distinct epistemology of science that arise from ecofeminist ideas such as “eco-imperialism,” “patriarchal logic of exclusion,” as well as western and universalistic constructs of “reductionist science,” as a means to control or separate Nature (as dualism) will be presented in the context of the current ecological crisis (Mellor, 1997; Plumwood, 1993; Mies & Shiva, 1993). According to Shiva (1988, p. 14-15, italics in original), Modern reductionist science, like development, turns out to be a patriarchal project, which has excluded women as experts, and has simultaneously excluded ecological and holistic ways of knowing which understand and respect nature’s processes and interconnectedness as science. One of the dualisms or reductions, according to Plumwood (1993, p. 2) is that “Western culture has treated the human/nature relation as a dualism and…this explains many of the problematic features of the west’s treatment of nature which underlie the environmental crisis, especially the western construction of human identity as ‘outside’ nature.” Both the Kyoto protocol and APPCDC are analyzed from such perspectives. In particular, the role of United States as a major scientific and industrial complex contributing to this crisis and its lack of commitment in the APPCDC are highlighted. This pact is viewed as a means to “engineering the planet” (Shiva, 2008) and addressing the climate crisis solely through geo-engineering techniques such as carbon capture and storage. This approach is compared to involvement of market-based solutions found in the Kyoto protocol (Mellor, 1997; Shiva 2008). Based on these findings, the recent report put forth by the Obama administration titled “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” (2009) is also analyzed and its concordance with the scientific findings of the 2007 IPCC report are presented. In view of the dominant strategies to address climate change, ecofeminist alternatives towards resolving the climate crisis are explicated in this work