“Listen to the Science” - The Use of Scientific Knowledge in Environmental Movements as Re-Politicization of the Climate Debate?

Handed in for Panel “The Scope of and Limits to Social-Ecological Change through Grassroots Participation” With the recent advent of climate-related protest groups such as Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion, climate policy has become the major issue in German politics. It is an open question, however, whether these new social movements (NSMs) open up discursive horizons for alternative socio-economic futures, as some scholars pointed out their comparatively weak goals in contrast to e.g. the climate justice or de-growth movement, which would manifest the current de-politicized state of climate policy. To shed light on the situation in the German case, this paper presents an analysis of NSM’s imaginations for climate policy in Germany based on interviews in newspapers and website content. Through narrative discourse analysis, similarities and differences in politicizing the future by both NSMs will be identified, especially in relation to advocating ideas with transformational quality, conceptualizing social change beyond consensus decision-making and contentious action to challenge the existing order and power structures. A key aspect is the movements’ relation to and use of scientific knowledge. Literature on environmental discourse and social movement studies has highlighted the linkage of certain knowledge regimes and disciplines to certain discourses, e.g. ‘ecological modernization’ as being linked to the IPCC process, natural sciences and economics or ‘radical resistance’ as being linked to post-colonial theory and the social sciences. Mike Hulme identified a prevalence of a ‘climate reductionist’ view on climate change within a modernization discourse, neglecting complex and mutual interdependencies between climate change and social dynamics. With their major claims “Listen to the science” and “Tell the Truth”, NSMs emphasize a more pivotal role for science in climate policy, yet, it is unsure what they conceptualize as ‘the science’ and ‘the truth’ and which boundary arrangements between politics and science they advocate for. As these movements are in constant flux, another interest lies in the identification of discursive dynamics, assuming an emerging shift towards radicalization. Do they follow a technocratic model of government and adapt their goals to a dominant discourse or do the movements re-politicize the climate discourse through promoting diverse sources of scientific knowledge and different political pathways? In conclusion, the paper will assess the climate future imaginaries of Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion as being an adaption to a de-politicized state or rather as attempts to re-politicize the climate discourse.