Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

The IPCC and the politics of anticipation

Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages 311–313 (2017)Cite this article

Subjects

In the emerging post-Paris climate governance regime, the role of scientific expertise is radically changing. The IPCC in particular may find itself in a new role, where projections of future climate function as a kind of regulatory science. This poses great challenges to conventional ideals of scientific neutrality.

Following the Paris Agreement of December 2015, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced a new direction for the panel's assessments, moving from the attribution of causes and the detection of impacts towards solutions to address climate change1. The adoption of the Paris Agreement, which sets a long-term goal of holding global warming to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, also provides motivation for scientists to explore pathways compatible with 1.5 °C of warming. Climate governance is being increasingly organized around these pathways. Previously, scenarios of future climate change served either as futures to avoid or to aspire to. Now, pathways are used as benchmarks against which extant policies can be measured and evaluated, and with which a climate governance regime can plot a quantified route forward to meet certain climate targets. Consequently, climate science is being asked not to simply act as a Cassandra, warning of future catastrophes, but to furnish policymakers with 'regulatory science' and to anticipate and measure the performance of policies in the future. This trend is evident in the IPCC special report that has been commissioned to consider ways of meeting the 1.5 °C target.

This is a preview of subscription content

Access options

Rent or Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

from$8.99

Rent or Buy

All prices are NET prices.

References

  1. 1

    Tollefson, J. Naturehttp://doi.org/b4r8 (2015).

  2. 2

    Lövbrand, E. Sci. Public Pol. 38, 225–236 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. 3

    Rayner, S. Anthropol. Today 32, 1–2 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. 4

    Lord Stern: we need negative emissions to avoid 2C warming. Climate Home (28 October 2016).

  5. 5

    Anderson, K. & Peters, G. Science 354, 182–183 (2016).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  6. 6

    Geden, O. WIREs Clim. Change 7, 790–797 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. 7

    Anderson, K. & Peters, G. Science 354, 182–183 (2016).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  8. 8

    Buck, H. J. Climatic Change 139, 155–167 (2016).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  9. 9

    Caught in the Net: How “Net-Zero Emissions” will Delay Real Climate Action and Drive Land Grabs. (ActionAid, 2015).

  10. 10

    Guston, D. & Stilgoe, J. Handbook of Science and Technology Studies 4th edn, 853–880 (2016).

  11. 11

    Barben, D. et al. Handbook of Science and Technology Studies 3rd edn, 979–1000 (2008).

  12. 12

    Stilgoe, J., Owen, R. & Macnaghten, P. Res. Policy 42, 1568–1580 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. 13

    Parker, A. & Geden, O. Nat. Geosci. 9, 859–860 (2016).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  14. 14

    Hackmann, H., Moser, S. C. & St. Clair, A. L. Nat. Clim. Change 4, 653–655 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the German DFG in the context of the Priority Program Climate Engineering: Risks, Challenges, Opportunities? (SPP 1689), and by the University of Nottingham International Collaboration Fund.

Author information

Affiliations

  1. Silke Beck is at the Department of Environmental Politics, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, UFZ-Leipzig, Permoserstrasse 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany

    Silke Beck

  2. Martin Mahony is at the School of Geography, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK

    Martin Mahony

Authors
  1. Silke Beck
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Martin Mahony
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Martin Mahony.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Beck, S., Mahony, M. The IPCC and the politics of anticipation. Nature Clim Change 7, 311–313 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3264

Download citation

Further reading

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing