One way forward is in collective advocacy. There’s a much greater chance of a hundred scientists having a clear view of emerging challenges and options than one lone genius. And in reality, this is how science gets translated into action on many large issues. But this does mean that experts need to be prepared to work together, and to have the humility to accept that their personal ideas may need to be reined in or modified for the common good. This is where most experts are at with big issues like climate change and vaccines. But there are many other socially important issues that either don’t rise to the level of collective efforts from scientists, or are still uncertain enough that there is not enough evidence for a consensus to emerge. So, what are socially responsible scientists to do in these cases?
In 2007, the scholar Roger Pielke Jr. grappled with some of these challenges in his book The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics.167 Pielke was especially interested in how science and scientists inform policy and operate within the political arena. Because of this, his book takes quite a narrow view of advocacy, particularly when it comes to exploring how scientists can use policy advocacy to bring about change. But much of his analysis is relevant to any scientist trying to thread the needle of remaining true to their profession while acting as a responsible citizen.
Pielke astutely recognizes that there is no single best way that scientists can translate what they know and what they believe to be true into societally relevant action. Instead, taking his own advice, he suggests that there are a range of possible options here, with four in particular standing out. These he refers to as four idealized roles of science in policy and politics, but they apply equally well to scientists trying to bring about what they consider to be positive social change. The first of these roles is the Pure Scientist. This is perhaps closest to the picture of the scientists I drew at the beginning of this section, the person committed to objectivity and evidence, who is seriously worried by the idea of making decisions where there is only uncertainty.
Pielke characterizes the Pure Scientist as someone simply interested in generating new knowledge and placing it into a common reservoir of information, which they leave to others to dip into and use. In other words, they create a wall between themselves and the society they live in, assuming that someone else may one day find some use for what they do. If this sounds a little unrealistic, it probably is. Even Pielke acknowledges that such scientists are probably found more frequently in myth than in reality. Yet this is a relatively common stereotype of scientists, certainly within Western culture.
Pielke’s next category is the Science Arbiter. This, I suspect, is where many scientists are the most comfortable. In Pielke’s framework, Science Arbiters recognize that effective and socially relevant decisions are made on good evidence and clear information about the pros and cons of different options. Rather than having an opinion on what is the right or the wrong decision, Science Arbiters help ensure people have access to the science and evidence they need to make the best possible decisions. There is a twist here, though. Pielke also argues that, because people who feel comfortable in this role have a deep belief in the scientific process, they tend to focus on issues that they believe can be resolved through science, while staying away from those that they believe cannot.
Then there are scientists—for instance, those working in areas driven by real-world challenges like health and sustainability—who feel they cannot morally justify providing what seem to them to be scientifically sound but socially hollow options to decision makers. These, in Pielke’s terminology, are the Issue Advocates. They are scientists on a mission to change the world, to fix what they see as (mainly) social problems, and to use their science to the best of their ability to do this. These are people who use science as a means to an end, and are driven by their own beliefs and convictions. Zobrist would be considered by Pielke to be an Issue Advocate, as would, I suspect, Paul Ehrlich.
And finally, there is the Honest Broker. This, in Pielke’s language, is the person who actively engages with decision-makers to help them see how science and evidence support (or don’t) the various options that are open to them. This is the scientist who believes, more than anything, in helping people make the best decision they can based on the evidence, but who understands that, ultimately, they don’t have the right to dictate which decision is made.
Pielke tries not to stand in judgment of the four ways he describes scientists engaging with politics and policy. But it’s clear from his writing that he’s a fan of the honest broker. And, to be honest, so am I. This is the role I try to carve out for myself in my public-facing work, trying not to judge others or advocate for a specific course of action, but to help people make the best-informed decisions for themselves and their communities, based on available evidence and insights.
This is an approach that, to me, avoids mistaking personal values for the “right” values, and respects deeply held beliefs and values in others, even where you may disagree with them. It’s a path toward empowering others while trying not to let your ego get in the way. And with most of the issues I grapple with in my work, I’m comfortable with it, because in most cases there are not bright-line right or wrong answers.
This Honest Broker role extends to any situation where someone with useful knowledge and insights is prepared to engage with people who might benefit from them. Of course, sometimes people will make decisions that lead to harm anyway. But how much more tragic if these decisions are made simply because they were never aware of the alternatives or the consequences. Yet, I’ll be the first to admit that this role, while being rooted deeply in values that I consider important, has its problems. And nowhere are they more apparent than when issues of such moral peril arise that not to advocate for a certain stance, or a particular way forward, ends up becoming tacit support for not taking action.
To many, inaction on climate change and the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons falls into this category, as does the rejection of vaccines. These are issues where indecision or lack of advocacy has a high chance of adversely impacting millions of people. In cases like these, there is increasing pressure to shift from being an Honest Broker to an Issue Advocate. And yet, because of the dangers of values and belief-driven short-sightedness, even in these cases, it’s hard to justify one person being the sole arbiter of truth. Rather, as Pielke argues, this is where we need institutions and socially-sanctioned organizations to act as the instruments of advocacy. Pielke mentions groups like the National Academy of Sciences, and by inference, similar organizations around the world. But I suspect others would include advocacy groups here as well that are focused on specific issues, yet recognize the importance of science in advocating for action.
This is, of course, another sticky point, because as soon as an issue becomes a focus of attention, the battles begin for whose “science” is the most legitimate. As someone with leanings toward being an Honest Broker, I would suggest that, where there is uncertainty in the science (which is pretty much always—that’s the nature of science), the weight of scientific evidence becomes critical. There are always going to be multiple ways that science can be interpreted, but some of these will most likely be more strongly supported by the evidence than others. And here, nothing good ever comes from simply selecting the science that supports your issue and rejecting the science that doesn’t. This is a path to self-delusion, because, at the end of the day, wishing something is true simply because it supports what you believe doesn’t make it so.
But then, what do you do if the evidence seems to point toward a looming catastrophe, and no one’s listening? This is where charismatic voices like Paul Ehrlich’s arise. And it’s where, as a society, we need to decide how to respond to what they preach.
Dictating the Future
In the case of Inferno, overpopulation is perceived as a looming catastrophe that will result in misery and death for hundreds of millions of people, unless radical action is taken. Zobrist sees this and believes he
has a solution. But, having been effectively outcast by the scientific community for his radical ideas, he resorts to drastic measures.
In the movie, Zobrist’s plan to cull half of the world’s population through his genetically engineered virus is, of course, abhorrent. This is what provides the dramatic tension that keeps us glued to the screen, fueled by our moral outrage. But there’s an interesting twist here, and it comes not from the movie, but the book that the film’s based on.
Dan Brown’s book Inferno, like the movie, follows a crazy countdown as Robert Langdon struggles to unravel the clues left by Zobrist to the location of the virus. As in the movie, Zobrist believes enough in the legitimacy of his actions that he’s willing to die rather than give up his secrets. But then, as the location of the virus is discovered, the book and the movie diverge quite dramatically.
In the book, Langdon and the WHO arrive too late. The virus has been released, and has been infecting people for some time. But surprisingly, no one is dying. It turns out that book-Zobrist didn’t create a killer virus. Instead, he created a virus that rendered every third person it infected sterile. What’s more, he ensured that this “every third person” trait was heritable, meaning that, in every subsequent generation, one in three people would also be sterile.
In the book, no one died as a result of Zobrist’s genetically modified virus. Rather, he set in motion a chain of events that would eventually lead to the Earth’s human population being reduced to a manageable size. Instead of being the evil scientist intent on murdering people, he emerges as a lone-genius savior of the future of humankind.
This outcome intrigues me, as it supports the idea of the lone visionary scientist as someone who can save the world. And it suggests that they could probably do it better than a committee of scientists, because they have a clarity of vision and purpose that a large and unwieldy group would lack.
I’m pretty sure that the book version of Zobrist’s plan would have had a profound and ultimately positive impact on the Earth’s human population. It may also have led to an improved quality of life for many people, although, humans being humans, there’s also the chance of self-interest and ignorance putting paid to this possibility. Yet despite its superficial elegance, something worries me about the idea of imposing sterility on a third of the world’s population in the name of social good, and this is the lack of choice that Zobrist’s victims had. For sure, he “saved” society in the book. But in doing so, did he end up betraying the individuals that make up that society?
This is a particularly knotty and ultimately unresolvable moral question, as it comes down to weighing the good of the many against the good of the few. The book version of Zobrist violates basic human rights by dictating the fate of people infected by his virus. And I doubt that this would have been a bloodless violation; while indiscriminate sterilization may seem a small price to pay for averting world hunger, try telling that to someone desperate for children who has been robbed of the opportunity, or someone who depends on growing a family to sustain their livelihood.
We’re also still left with the problem that, no matter how much we delude ourselves, we cannot predict the future. Which means that, compelling as book-Zobrist’s case was, he had no way of knowing whether he needlessly condemned a third of the world’s population to sterility. This was a gamble he was willing to take. But what gave him the right to take this gamble in the first place? Not the people whose futures he was playing with, that’s for sure. And this is ultimately where the challenge lies when it comes to lone scientist-advocates and genius-activists. No matter how compelling their vision of the future, or how persuasive their solutions to making it better, where do they get the right to act unilaterally on issues that ultimately impact us all?
Some, I suspect, would argue that time and necessity are on their side. I would counter that these are not excuses for preventing people who are likely to be affected by major decisions from having a say in their collective future. This, though, means that we need better ways of making collective decisions as a society (as was seen in chapter ten and The Man in the White Suit), especially where technological innovation is both pushing us toward potentially catastrophic futures and yet is potentially part of the solution to avoiding such futures. And we need to get better at making such collective decisions fast, because if there’s one thing that these lone scientist-advocates have right in many cases, it’s that time is short!
And nowhere is this more apparent than with an issue that’s tightly coupled to a burgeoning human population: climate change.
Chapter Twelve
THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW: RIDING THE WAVE OF CLIMATE CHANGE
“We were wrong.”
—Vice President Becker
Our Changing Climate
In July 2017, a massive chunk of ice broke off the Larson C ice shelf in Antarctica. The resulting tabular iceberg covered around 2,200 square miles—about the area of Delaware, and a tad smaller than the British county of Norfolk—and was one of the largest icebergs in recorded history to break off the continent. The event grabbed the attention of the media around the world, and was framed as yet another indication of the mounting impacts of human-activity-driven climate change.
Thirteen years earlier, the climate disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow opened with a block of ice splitting off another of the Antarctic ice shelves, in this case the Larson B shelf. At the time, the sheer size of this make-believe tabular berg was mind-boggling enough to astound and shock moviegoers. But the movie-berg ended up being rather smaller than the 2017 one, coming in at a mere 1,212 square miles.
Looking back, it’s sobering to realize that what was considered shockingly unimaginable in 2004 had become a pale reflection of reality in 2017.
Human-caused climate change is perhaps the biggest challenge of our generation. As a species, we’ve reached the point where our collective actions have a profound and lasting effect on our planet, yet we are struggling to even acknowledge the magnitude of the issues we face as a result, never mind agree on effective ways forward. This is a deeply social and political issue, and one that we’ll only make progress toward addressing through socially and politically-oriented action. Yet, underlying our changing climate, and how we handle it, is technology. It’s the technological innovations of the Industrial Revolution and what came after that helped get us here in the first place. It’s technological and scientific advances in climate modeling, and data collection and processing, that have revealed just how big the challenge is that we’re facing. It’s our continued addiction to our technology-enhanced and energy-intensive lifestyles that continues to drive climate change. And it’s breakthroughs in areas like renewable energy, carbon capture and storage, and solar radiation management that are helping open up ways toward curbing the worst impacts of climate change.
At this point I should be up front and admit that The Day After Tomorrow barely touches on any of these technologies. This is a movie that uses Hollywood hyperbole to try to shock its audience into thinking more seriously about the impacts of catastrophic climate change, but it does this through human stories and an improbable (but nevertheless dramatic) climactic tipping point. Nevertheless, it is a movie that reveals intriguing insights into the relationship between technology, society, and climate.
Here, I need to add a personal note before we get further into this chapter. Climate change is a contentious and polarizing issue. When it comes to human-driven global warming, most people have an opinion on what is and is not happening, what is and is not relevant and important, and what people should and should not be doing about it. Not to beat about the bush, it’s a minefield of a topic to write about, and one for which, no matter what I wrote, I’d end up rubbing someone up the wrong way. And yet, this is not an excuse not to write about climate change.
Given this challenge, this chapter focuses on a relatively narrow aspect of our relationship with the planet we live on and how technology plays into this. As a result, it does not contain a
comprehensive survey of climate science. It doesn’t analyze and summarize climate-change mitigation options. It doesn’t even unpack the growing field of sustainable technologies. These are all tremendously important areas, and if you’re interested in them, there are volumes upon volumes written about each of them that you can explore further. Rather, using The Day After Tomorrow as a starting point, the chapter explores what it means to live on a dynamic planet where there is a deep and complex relationship between living systems and the world they inhabit, and what this means, not only for technologies that unintentionally impact our climate, but also those that are intentionally designed to do so.
The Day After Tomorrow opens in Antarctica, with the movie’s hero, Jack Hall (played by Dennis Quaid), and his colleagues drilling out ice cores on the Larson B ice shelf, just as a Rhode-Island-sized chunk of ice breaks away from it. This somewhat convenient coincidence leads to hearings that are presided over by the US Vice President, and this is where we learn that Jack is something of a maverick scientist, and the Vice President a cynical climate-change denier.
It quickly transpires that the ice-shelf collapse is a prelude to a much more dramatic series of events. Water from the melting berg disrupts critical ocean currents, and this in turn triggers a rapid and catastrophic shift in global climate. A series of devastating megastorms rings the changes between the world as we know it and a radically altered world of the future. In this emerging new world, the global North—including many of the world’s most affluent countries—is plunged into a new ice age. It’s these catastrophic megastorms that create the disaster backdrop for the movie, including a dramatic but make-believe type of storm that’s capable of pulling down super-cooled air from the upper atmosphere and, quite literally, freezing people solid who are caught in the down-draft.
As a paleoclimatologist, Jack studies changes in the Earth’s climate throughout its history. His research has unearthed disturbing evidence of rapid climate shifts in the Earth’s past that are linked to disrupted ocean currents. And because he’s a brash Hollywood scientist, he doesn’t hesitate to make a pain of himself by telling people that they need to act now, before the same sort of catastrophic events happen all over again.
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