From Science to Governance: Understanding global warming controversies and politicization in nine dates

Volume 5, Issue 1, February 2021     |     PP. 1-26      |     PDF (446 K)    |     Pub. Date: January 27, 2021
DOI: 10.54647/environmental61195    194 Downloads     6594 Views  

Author(s)

KENFACK Chrislain Eric, Department of Political Science, University of Alberta, Canada

Abstract
The current global warming context is being experienced by world populations through the extreme whether events, sea level rise, loss of biodiversity, increase rise of temperature, re-insurgence of climate-related diseases and important slow and sudden-onset environmental catastrophes enhanced or accelerated by climate change among others. In such context, the global community, supported by evidenced science research are relentlessly calling for urgent climate actions to avoid reaching the point of non-return. Unfortunately, despite the fact that our planet continues to be under such threats of irreversible climate destruction, a fraction of scientists and political leaders motivated either by their nostalgic attachment to the carbon-driven developmental era or pushed by the fossil fuel industry and its influential capacity on decision-making processes and decision-makers, continue to develop negationist theories, with the aim of creating skeptical mindsets and maintaining some doubts in public opinions as far as the very fact of global warming and the role of human activities in the occurrence of such warming are concerned. In such controversial context, it is more than ever important to revisit the key drivers of the climate crisis, the historical path that led not only to the climate conscience building, but also and above all to its gradual politicization, and the key ideologies supporting the positions of both climate change defenders and climate-skeptics and deniers. This article, using a combination of bibliographic research and descriptive methodologies, intends to investigate that historical path and cover the resulting knowledge gap, through an ideology-based and chronical presentation of facts.

Keywords
Climate change, global warming history, climate politicization, climate consciousness, climate politics

Cite this paper
KENFACK Chrislain Eric, From Science to Governance: Understanding global warming controversies and politicization in nine dates , SCIREA Journal of Environment. Volume 5, Issue 1, February 2021 | PP. 1-26. 10.54647/environmental61195

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