Understanding Climate Action: Linking Environmental History and Social Science

Environmentalism presents an interesting problem for environmental historians.  There's much we don't really understand about how and why broad shifts in values and views of the world � a swerve, in other words � take place.  Experience with environmental damage, skepticism about consumerism, views of the Earth from space, shifting economic interests: these may all be important, but it's harder to describe their actual role in, say, the rise of environmentalism as a social force in the late 1960s.

But this is also an opportunity to think about what environmental historians can learn from social scientists examining climate attitudes and actions today.  I keep track (as best I can) of emerging research in this area, mainly so I can keep current when I'm discussing climate in my Environmental Science and Politics course (the course focuses on the relations between science and politics).  And there's now lots of really interesting work being done on the factors that influence support for climate action.  One example is a study that describes the implications of calling it "global warming," vs. "climate change": this really matters!  Another example is work that shows how political preferences influence how people interpret their experience with big storms or other strange weather.

There may be lessons here for historians.  The questions being asked by social scientists about today's climate attitudes could, I think, also be applied to the past.  For example, it should be possible to apply analytical tools from the studies I mentioned above to the media record during past periods of environmental debate, such as the 1960s (or even the 1910s, and the progressive conservation era).  Perhaps historians and social scientists should get together and talk about the possibilities.  Some historians, like Sverker S�rlin and Paul Warde, have urged their colleagues to link with the social sciences.  Climate change may present both the opportunity and the need to act on this.