ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Advocate Expertise and the Making of Global Climate Assessments in the 1990s

• In Event: Activist Epistemics and Artefacts 3

English Abstract

This presentation examines how advocate scientists working in environmental defense organizations became epistemic actors within global climate assessments during the 1990s, a decade in which international climate assessment was systematized through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Focusing on the early period of the IPCC, I trace the involvement of Jeremy Leggett, a geologist at Greenpeace, and Michael Oppenheimer, a physicist at the Environmental Defense Fund, showing how they contested mainstream scientific discourse that they perceived as downplaying climate risks. Their strategies combined engagement and resistance: they participated as observers and contributors to formal assessment processes while simultaneously producing technical artefacts that articulated their perspectives. Far from accepting scientific knowledge passively, environmental organizations hired scientists, cultivated transnational networks of sympathetic researchers, and strategically circulated knowledge to influence IPCC assessments. They participated in the consensus-building processes, where they could negotiate with governmental scientists and industry-hired experts over what counted as credible evidence. Yet, by engaging with formal assessment structures, these scientists largely reinforced the foundational assumptions of the IPCC framework—that “good science leads to good policy,” and that climate governance could be improved primarily through epistemic authority. Thus, their activities, while politically engaged, did not fundamentally challenge the status quo and legitimized in many ways the technocratic structures they sought to influence.

Thus, my presentation will also reflect on the ambiguity of labeling these participants as “activist scientists”, as their work involved critique and resistance but also collaboration and legitimization of unfairly distributed power structures.

Author

• Carolina Granado-Torres, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona