Communicating the Climate: From Knowing Change to Changing Knowledge

Abstract

For decades, climate scientists have been producing data demonstrating that climate change is a real, urgent threat to humanity. Yet this has not translated into political action—or even widespread public concern—at the scale needed to tackle the problem in time. Has climate science failed us? This volume tackles the question of what role—if any—science can play in the future of the climate-change debate. Should science be centered when communicating about climate risks on the ground? Who is able to access and use the knowledge science produces, and to what ends? How does science relate to other ways of knowing the world around us? The pieces in this volume, predominantly by emerging scholars, approach these questions from different angles to ask how we know and experience the climate and, ultimately, how we can transform this knowledge into action.