LSE Public Lectures and Events

Epistemic Pluralism and Climate Change

Date: March 10, 2025
Speakers: Professor Mike Hulme (Cambridge), Professor Liz Robinson (LSE)
Moderator: Professor Tim Forsyth (LSE)

Overview

This episode brings together Professor Mike Hulme, a human geographer and influential voice in climate debate, to discuss his latest work and present a critique of how societies approach climate governance. Hulme argues that scientific reductionism—what he calls "climatism"—dominates the discourse, to the detriment of other knowledge systems and social considerations. The talk explores the need for "epistemic pluralism": recognizing and integrating diverse knowledge forms—scientific, indigenous, experiential, narrative, and ethical—into climate policy-making. Professor Liz Robinson offers a thoughtful, partly oppositional response, engaging Hulme in a broader conversation about control, urgency, narratives, and risk in climate action.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Modernist Ambition: Can Climate Be Governed?

[03:03] Professor Mike Hulme

• The last three decades of climate treaties and governance efforts (from COP1 in 1995 to recent years) haven’t delivered the hoped-for control.
• Hulme frames climate governance as part of a historical "high modernist" ambition, referencing James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State, about large-scale projects of rational control (e.g., mapping, censuses, GDP management).
  • "Is climate controllable? Can it be governed?...This for me is the most important question in relation to the relationship between knowledge, politics and public discourse around climate change." [04:12]
• He offers critiques of efforts like the EU’s "You Control Climate Change" campaign and "Earth Commissioners" who promote the idea of planetary boundaries indexed by a single temperature number.

2. The Problem of Credibility

[08:30]

• Despite intense international focus, actual progress (e.g., stopping global climate warming) has been minimal.
• Hulme draws on thinkers like Hans Morgenthau and Sanda van der Le & Gary Dirks to emphasize the "illusion of control"—the persistent gap between scientific knowledge and effective societal action.
• "It would appear then... that there is something in our reading of reality that is not quite right. It would seem that how we think about the relationship between climate knowledge, strategy and policy is not well calibrated against the realities of the world." [12:27]

3. Lessons from Hayek: Dispersed vs. Centralized Knowledge

[13:45]

• Friedrich Hayek’s critique of central planning: economic knowledge is inevitably dispersed, fragmented, and context-dependent.
• Hulme applies this perspective to climate governance, warning against the "hegemony of scientific rationalism" which seeks ever-increasing centralization (e.g., the IPCC’s integrated assessment models).
  • "One particular epistemology, that of science, has come to dominate the way we think about climate change." [18:53]

4. Climate Reductionism and Climatism

[26:04-36:40]

• The focus on science-first, global temperature targets, top-down policy models (IAMs), and unified stories has created a reductionist framework that marginalizes other perspectives and knowledge systems.
• "Climate reductionism": Predictive models extract climate as the dominant, isolated variable, suggesting everything is subordinate to temperature control.
• "Climatism": The ideology that everything can or should be subordinated to climate concerns; the supreme policy goal is reducing global temperature, with net zero emissions as its practical outcome.
  • "Global temperature is the index that measures, that stands in for, as a proxy for the health of the relationship between the Earth's climate and the Earth's people." [33:25]

5. Consequences of Reductionism

• Overreliance on scientific expertise leads to:
  • Incantatory climate governance (“We must! We must!”)
  • Deadlines and “cliff-edges” (e.g., "2 years to save the world")
  • Cynicism and public apathy as deadlines pass unheeded.
  • Proliferation of "climate emergency" declarations, sometimes risking eroded liberties or trigger "dictatorial" modes of governance
  • Bypassing public disagreement via brute-force solutions (e.g., solar geoengineering)
    • "We can actually bypass all the problems of human social, political, cultural dissensus and just put the thermostat in the sky with aerosols that will shield the planet from excess heat." [36:20]
  • Danger of declaring perpetual emergency, per Hayek (The Road to Serfdom) and Aldous Huxley, risking continuous expansion of state control.

6. Towards Epistemic Pluralism and Polycentrism

[38:50-44:35]

• The need to open knowledge practices beyond the dominance of scientific reductionism to involve:
  • Practitioner, local, indigenous knowledge
  • Stories, arts, and religious narrative
  • Plural ethical frameworks
  • Polycentric governance: many centers of decision and authority rather than a single unified global policy
  • Calls for the IPCC’s recent willingness (2025 workshop) to broaden its epistemic base as a positive first step.
    • "It’s interesting that the IPCC is explicitly wanting to move away from its science-first paradigm of knowledge." [41:48]
  • Cites Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ as an example integrating science, ethics, and cosmology.

7. Moderator and Audience Responses

[46:11 – 83:03]

Professor Liz Robinson’s Response

[46:15–57:23]

• Shares agreement on perils of reductionist models, deadlines, and top-down must/should exhortations.
• Challenges the existence and influence of "climatism" as Hulme defines it, arguing few climate scientists are as naive or reductionist in practice.
  • Suggests "1.5°C" and "2°C" are shorthand, not believed literally.
  • Most scientists recognize multi-dimensional impacts (nutrition, ocean acidification, etc.).
• Raises point that climate science is fundamentally about managing risks and trade-offs, not just control—suggests the "control" label is oversimplified.
  • "We've been influencing the climate by burning a lot of fossil fuels... and that we want to just sort of reverse that." [53:46]
• Cites personal and professional experience: benefits of climate action (cleaner air, improved diets, safer cities) have value beyond narrowly climate goals.

Key Debate Points

• Risk, Urgency, and Communication: Are climate deadlines counterproductive? When is “urgency” justified?
• Control versus influence: Is the project to "control" climate or merely minimize negative human influence?
• Plural Narratives versus Scientific Authority: Can and should policymaking accommodate much greater diversity in knowledge sources?

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Professor Mike Hulme:
  • “We want experts, but which? And who? And who controls the experts?” [15:23]
  • “Epistemic pluralism will help us move away from exhortatory or incantatory climate governance... which rests on the illusion of rational and centralized control of the Earth's climate system.” [21:18]
  • “There are only so many moments of decision that are believable before they become unbelievable.” [35:10]
  • “Declare a permanent state of emergency... Are we also going to be seeing some sort of dictatorship in order to manage that emergency and to bring it to a conclusion?” [37:05]
• Professor Liz Robinson:
  • “Do I know any climatists?... I don't think I know anyone who thinks that preventing climate from getting worse will prevent everything from getting worse.” [48:10]
  • “Maybe then I'm agreeing with you, I don't know... There is a bigger question that the way we live our lives just doesn't make sense.” [54:30]
• Audience question (re: COVID analogies):
  • “It seems to me that... the techno solution did win out, so just interesting your thoughts.” [62:27]
• Professor Mike Hulme (on COVID vs climate):
  • “The risk was elevated... but what never happened... was actually what are the wider set of consequences of locking down a society for [months]?” [64:19]

Q&A Highlights and Practical Implications

Epistemic Pluralism In Practice

• Audience questioned how to avoid throwing out science entirely (as in anti-scientific populism) while still diversifying knowledge bases.
  • Hulme: Need to give science its due for discovering the scale of climate disruption, but other systems—experiential, indigenous, religious, narrative—must have their “seat at the table.” [66:05]
  • “If you simply see reality through a digital twin... it’s a very reductionist way of thinking about the human world... other forms of knowledge also need a seat at the top table if we're going to do justice to the reality of the world we live in.” [80:07]

Power, Place, and Polycentrism

• Questions emerged about how knowledge and power are intertwined, particularly regarding the historic dominance of Euro-Western science and the marginalization of other knowledge traditions (e.g., indigenous or non-English epistemologies).
  • Hulme: “The power that I’m interested in interrogating is epistemic power, the power of different knowledge systems and how that knowledge... is appropriated by different interest groups.” [71:52]
  • Cited Pope Francis (Laudato Si') as a successful model of integrating scientific, ethical, cosmological, and situated knowledge.

Cautions on “Crisis” Language and Urgency

• How can advocates drive action without falling into the pitfalls of “permanent emergency”?
  • Hulme:
    • Encourages re-framing as a “political epic,” a long-run, open-ended human challenge, rather than a ticking-time-bomb crisis.
    • Challenges the primacy of “urgency” as a unifying policy driver: “What is it we're urgent for? Why is it stopping climate change at 1.5 that is urgent? Or is it, is it hitting the SDG one about poverty?” [80:14]

Foucault, Hayek, and Philosophical Underpinnings

• While not a “dyed-in-the-wool Foucauldian,” Hulme acknowledges Foucault’s influence in considering power/knowledge dynamics; Hayek was a more direct intellectual stimulus for this talk. [76:42]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction and Opening Framing: [00:13 – 03:03]
• Hulme's Lecture (Main arguments): [03:03 – 45:45]
• Robinson Response & Exchange: [46:11 – 62:00]
• Audience Q&A (highlights): [62:27 – 83:03]

Conclusion: Takeaways

• Hulme calls for a serious reconsideration of how societies construct climate knowledge and policy, challenging the supremacy of centralized scientific models.
• Advocates for “epistemic pluralism”: integrating not just more scientific disciplines but also local, indigenous, narrative, and experiential knowledge, along with diverse ethical perspectives.
• Urges policy diversification, modesty in ambitions (the "science of muddling through”), and a shift away from fetishizing control or deadlines.
• The dialogue emphasizes the need for robust, respectful public conversation and risk negotiation, rather than univocal calls to action.
• The episode ultimately frames the climate challenge as an enduring, polycentric, and pluralistic human endeavor—one that must resist both naivety and authoritarian temptations.

For listeners: This episode is essential if you seek a nuanced, philosophically informed debate on the politics of climate knowledge, the risks of reductionism, and the promise and practicalities of pluralism in science and society.