Planetary Politics: The Problem of Scientific Uncertainty in Climate Change Governance

Climate change has been an emerging field of transnational governance on the stages of international politics for at least forty years now. It is a model case for what is most frequently called “global environmental politics”, but should better be labeled “planetary politics” (as introduced by Karen Litfin in 2003) in order to emphasize that humanity has become a geophysical force in the 20th century that affects all subsystems of the earth system. Another important characteristic of this relatively recent field of international politics is the genuine role science plays in it: informing decision makers about the character and speed of changes in the earth system, pointing to potential dangers in the near or not so near future or to implications environmental changes might have for keeping up the life-supporting systems of the earth etc. However, scientific messages are rarely ever very smoothly translated into concrete political action. There are many reasons for this. In my paper, I will focus on scientific uncertainty in the context of climate change governance (CCG). Being a historian, I will do as historians do: I will look back into the past and discus examples of how CCG (i.e. as a field of science-policy interaction) has handled the problem of scientific uncertainty. Scenario planning has been communicated and used as a key tool for dealing with uncertainties in the decision-making context. Hence, the history of climate scenarios, their usage, and their usefulness for implementing climate governance will be crucial for a critical assessment.