By Martin
Update: audio and video now available here
Bruno Latour delivered a lecture at the London School of Economics last night in which he outlined some of his recent thinking on the relationship between science and politics in a time of accelerating environmental change and policy stagnation.
Bruno Latour delivered a lecture at the London School of Economics last night in which he outlined some of his recent thinking on the relationship between science and politics in a time of accelerating environmental change and policy stagnation.
Latour has
cut an interesting figure in the climate debate in recent years. A key target
of attacks against ‘relativism’ and irrationality in the 1990s ‘Science Wars’,
he has since speculated as to whether the insights of science studies
concerning the social constitution of scientific knowledge have inadvertently
contributed to the ‘artificial extension’ of the debate over the reality and
severity of anthropogenic climate change. More recently, Latour has sought to
cast himself as an ally of the climate scientists and the activists who seek a political
solution to climate change. He even related last night how climate scientists,
in France at least, have even started to seek out his advice on how to conduct
a ‘debate’ against a well-funded, smartly coordinated campaign to sow doubt and
ignorance about the causes and consequences of climate change.
