Climate Migration’s Internal Conflict
The Question
Why is climate change such an anathema to many governments, a faint annoyance to others and wholly endorsed by those especially vulnerable?
Scientific evidence supports the dire climatic consequences of mass disruption of populations and unbelievable economic damage. Governments should be on red alert. Apart from climate change denial, governments justify minimal or no action based on economic and uncalculated costs of questionable change to government policy and alternate energies.
The Conflict
But the deeper, more cogent answer lies in understanding the conflictual relationship between the optimism of the scientific method and the pessimism and uncertainty created by endless debate of the social sciences. It is the clash between science and culture. This schism confuses society. Should society accept a scientific basis for climate change or be swayed by social science arguments on cultural topics such as politics, history and migration.
In his anthology “The New Humanists”, John Brockman asks “Do we want the centre of culture to be based on a closed system, a process of text in/text out, and no empirical and no empirical contact with the real world?”
The question highlights the schism that developed and emerged in the last 100 years, a cracking of the union of science and culture which began over 500 years ago. Brockman cites Leonardo as a great artist, scientist and technologist and Michelangelo as an even greater artist and engineer.
“These men were intellectually holistic giants. To them the idea of embracing humanism while remaining ignorant of the latest scientific and technological achievements would have been incomprehensible.”
The Solution
Brockman calls for a reunion of these two forces of intelligence which would open up the methods of understanding, evaluating and refining information. It would lead to a greater ability to address our social anxieties and issues. By isolating science and its methodology from any applicability to problems of our societies, we give up on the objective, scientific methodology of solution/analysis and fall into the endless social science debates of ideas, unattached to physical realities. Hence the conflict, with ideas being at the heart of cultural discussions while hard, verifiable facts are the essence of the scientific method.
Applicability to Climate Migration
The schism between science and culture reveals itself when speaking of climate change. It is mirrored by the concept of climate migration – a concept not accepted by most governments because it does not fit the dominant cultural and political narratives of human interaction.
The idea of immigration was one that was determined and created by the culture of “territorial traps” or “nations” which have existed only for the last 200 years. That cultural definition defined national borders. However, human activity, movement and interconnection is subject to the very physical realities of a changing, climatic world.
Understandably we are not going to change 200 years of established borders, but we do need to bring back a holistic approach in solving our larger societal problems. We must realize and foster solutions from the union of both the scientific and cultural realms as emerging physical realities come to dictate human crises.
