Background
Since the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988,^2 the potential impacts of global
climate change have captured the attention of the scientific
research community and made it to the top of many international
policy making agendas. As the human causes and consequences
of climate change have become increasingly apparent, social
scientists have found themselves called on to contribute to the
scientific understanding of the role of humans in global climate
change. The opportunities for social science at the international
climate change table have tended not to be filled by sociologists.
Sociologists have been slow to engage the topic of global climate
change in their research. This is despite the fact that the reports of
several governmental agencies in the United States and around the
world cite human activity as one of, if not the primary driver of
global climate change. For example, the IPCC’s Climate Change
2007: Synthesis Report^3 explicitly links climate change and
increased greenhouse gases to human activity since pre-industrial
times, and notes that the impacts of global climate change are
expected to be unequally distributed across socio-economic
groups and geographic space.
The National Academy of Science (NAS) Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change has produced
a number of reports that address various social facets of global climate change.^4 The 2008 NAS summary report,
Understanding and Responding to Climate Change, identifies several areas as crucial for scientific investigation:
- human activities that alter the earth’s environment; 2) forces that drive these activities; 3) consequences of
environmental changes for societies and economies; and 4) how humans respond to these changes.^5 The work
of the IPCC and NAS recognizes that global climate change is a social problem as much as it is a physical one;
purely technical responses to climate change will not address the complex social, cultural, and behavioral changes
that must occur if humans are to successfully confront the potential complex environmental challenges ahead.
Growing scientific and governmental acknowledgment that human activity and social behaviors are key drivers of
global climate change underscores the critical role of social science in advancing, understanding, and designing
strategies for responding to global climate change. Sociologists have a valuable array of perspectives, theories,
methods, and tools to bring to the study of global climate change. It is important for sociologists to engage with
the broader community of scholars, policy experts, and officials conducting climate change research and agenda-
setting activities.
(^2) Background on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and copies of all IPCC reports can be found at:http://www.ipcc.ch/
(^3) IPCC, Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report, Summary for Policymakers (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
(^4) Links to National Academies Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change reports can be found at: http://www7.
nationalacademies.org/hdgc/
(^5) The report can be found at: http://dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/climate_change_2008_final.pdf
Background