Fear, Social Engineering and Nobel Prizes

There is widespread joy in the climate change science community over the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.

While the impacts of this award are apparent, especially in terms of emphasis and implicit comment on U.S. policy, it raises some subtle issues that warrant careful consideration.

The Peace Prize, according to Nobel's will, is to be awarded "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

Others may argue over whether climate change politics fits this description, or if a world rife with war couldn't provide a more suitable set of recipients. It is certainly true that the Peace Prize has often been a form of political commentary.

There are two other implications of this award, however, that are instructive.

To begin with, this appears to be the first time that the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to scientists for doing science, as opposed to engaging in advocacy or direct conflict mitigation.

For example, the award also went to: Medicins Sans Frontieres in 1999; the International Campaign to Ban Landmines in 1997; the Pugwash Conferences (1995); and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in 1985.

In other words, until now the Nobel Peace Prize has been clearly recognized as a political award. The award to the IPCC thus implies that the IPCC is not a predominately scientific, but is in fact a political process: the award equates the scientific study of climate change with political advocacy.

In this, it positions climate change science -- indeed, environmental science as a whole -- as a normative exercise rather than a scientific process, especially with those inclined to doubt the objectivity of environmental science in the first place.

Even though science as a discourse is supported by, and supportive of, existing power structures, its findings and methods have usually been regarded as transparent and objective.

In this case, however, that boundary has been breached. The scientific process itself is repositioned by the Peace Prize as normative political argumentation. This victory for the postmodern critique of science is probably not a desirable outcome either for the climate change science community, or for that matter, for climate change advocates.

But there is perhaps a more fundamental implication. The two major issues that have been positioned over the past decade as existential threats to developed societies are terrorism and national security, and global climate change.

While neither has been completely successful -- the U.S. administration is highly unpopular at this time, and the U.S. has not signed the Kyoto Protocol -- both continue to be dominant chords of international policy with one playing to conservative elites and one playing to social democratic and liberal elites. The latest award, therefore, is not an aberration but merely extends current trends.

This would be of less concern if these two dominant archetypal crises did not so clearly rely on exaggeration and fear for their effectiveness. In a high information content society, where individuals increasingly construct their own information environment, fear -- especially existential fear that is beyond the control or even understanding of the common person -- serves as an effective means by which a particular theme can be effectively marketed, whether it be security and the need for an authoritarian state, or climate change as a driver for substantial reductions in quality of life.

Overwhelming fear is also effective in that it can be used without saying to construct an unquestionable need for fundamental social change that would not occur in the absence of such fear, such as giving up individual liberties likes habeas corpus to an increasingly powerful state, or forcing reductions in consumption, especially among the middle and lower classes.

Clearly, both security and climate change are complex and multifaceted issues requiring intelligent understanding and responses. That is not the issue. Indeed, given the complexity of these challenges, it is arguable that a progressive and informed society would, after due consideration of different values and options, make the most robust decision.

Ironically, the Nobel Prize for Peace award is in some ways evidence that such a path has been rejected by the liberal elites, just as it has been rejected by the U.S. administration in regards to national security.

The message is that -- just like negative and misleading political campaigning -- fear works. Do not expect a return to reasoned discourse anytime soon.

Brad Allenby is professor of civil and environmental engineering at Arizona State University, a fellow at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business, and previously was AT&T's vice president of environment, health, and safety.