What if scientists quit?

As any person that does research would tell you, any probing into nature and complex systems always raises more questions than answers. As a chemical kineticist, I can assure you that people haven't even agreed on the kinetics of hydrogen+oxygen, the simplest group of reactions physically possible in combustion. (I am at times worried that fist fights will break out at conferences over peoples' differences in the understanding of these simple kinetics.) As humans, we are curious, and it is nice to "know" more about how things and the world work. But inevitably, the rise of more questions makes us think that we should find the answers to those questions, which inevitably leads to more research. In no way am I saying that all research is bad, but I believe that there comes a time when more research is not the best use of our time, of our energy, of our emotions.

Climate change is a fitting example of this. We have known for decades now that greenhouse gases are responsible for climate change, and that it is humans that are responsible for the emissions of these greenhouse gases. Yet, there is more and more research being done into climate change, and more and more articles and assessments being published, and more and more grants being written, and more and more time and effort and money being expended. We are never going to know how the climate works totally, but we do have a good enough understanding of how it does. And more fundamentally, we know (we know, we know, we know, we know!) that our behaviour, our ethics, are driving us to release more and more greenhouse gases. What should we do about this knowledge? (Of course the techno-optimists will say, 'We need better technology.' Well, we know how well that has worked out...) More research is probably leading to more lost time.

What if scientists said, 'Enough is enough! The best use of our time is to actually mobilise and act on our findings, not to beat a dead horse and learn more about the nuances of climate.' What if scientists quit? What if they boycotted "research" and became activists? Many of you might say, 'Well, scientists are socially awkward, and they'd be terrible organisers.' Okay. But think about the power that they have. They are the ones bringing in money to institutions of "learning." They are the ones that are teaching the youth about the issues. And they are the ones that know full well how our behaviours are leading to ecological degradation. We know all that we need to know to make huge strides towards treading lightly on this planet. We just need to take those steps.

Many people have talked about the role of scientists and engineers in public policy. Robert Pielke Jr. does a good job at delineating those roles in his book The Honest Broker. But the roles that he talks about assumes that scientists rest within the current structures of society that lead to much inertia - the government-university-industry complex. Only a handful are out there, writing more publicly, trying to organise and mobilise.

We have everything we need

One of my messages so far has been the following - (related to physical objects) let us appreciate of all what we have before we think about investing ourselves in more. I believe that when this thought is adequately applied to our lives, we may move from being a forward-looking society to one that observes and learns from the present, and hopefully, learns from the past. We will start noticing the vast amounts of human effort that have gone into building what we have today, as well as the vast tolls that this effort has inflicted on other humans, our environment, our Earth. What this may also mean is that instead of trying to "answer" questions, through research, of complicated systems, let us take a step back and fully internalise and understand what we've learned so far. Many arguments can be made for the continued investment of vast sums of money for more research, but I truly believe that we know all that we need to know to make huge strides towards "treading lightly" on this planet (thank you Jackie for that phrase), and leading less impactful, yet completely meaningful and happy lives. Not only can we be happy, but we can also reduce the huge stresses that we put on our ecosystems. For example, we've known about climate change since the 1960s, and developed a very mature understanding of it since the 1980s. In fact, Arrhenius, in the late 19th century, calculated the rise in global temperatures from a doubling of carbon dioxide emissions, and his estimate falls squarely within the bounds of what sophisticated climate models today predict.

I went to a talk today from a prominent scientist. She has been all over the world, and spent her life immersed in the learning of oceans. She gave a very thoughtful and eloquent talk about our impact on water systems of the world, but one message of hers bugged me - she said that humans need to further explore the depths of oceans and find new forms of life, so that we can know fully what our impacts on them are. She said, "How can we know what the solution is if we don't know what the problem is?" This thought gave me a strange feeling. To a certain extent, I understand why she would make a statement like that. Maybe knowing the plight of a species allows us to develop sympathy towards it, and maybe that will help us come together and stop what we are doing. But there are very few examples, if any, of humans doing something like this. On the other hand, as Wendell Berry points out in Life is a Miracle, learning about a new form of life will only drive us to find ways to use it, and therefore it will consequently lose its freedom. Interrogating it, rather than allowing us to be more mindful, in fact leads to its degradation and decimation. I struggle with this, being a "graduate student" myself, doing "research." How much more do we really need to know? How much will we continue to invest in things we may never know?

Rather than continuously looking for a new answer, why don't we raise what we know into consciousness, and actually let that act affect our decisions and choices?

Ethics in research design and the longevity of interest

Dale Jamieson's article on Ethics and Intentional Climate Change speaks to the ethical considerations that need to be seriously looked into before we deploy large-scale interventions to combat global warming. It seems as if more and more people are resting their hopes on some geo-engineering breakthrough that will combat, virtually instantaneously, decades and centuries of environmental neglect. It seems unlikely that these approaches will be foolproof; it is likely that there will be significant unforseen impacts of such interventions. Indeed, there seems to be a sort of arrogance if we solely rely on geo-engineering to get us out of such a huge mess. Regardless, there is a huge community of people that are looking at geo-engineering options. Research is being done constantly.

Does everything that can be research need to be researched? There are consequences to research that many researchers would not like to admit. Jamieson points out that:

"In many cases, research leads unreflectively to deployment. There are at least two reasons for this. The first is that we seem cultural imperative that says if something can be done it should be done. For whatever reason technologies in this society often seem to develop a life of their own that leads inexorably to their development and deployment. Opposing the deployment of technology is seen as 'Luddite' - an attempt to turn back progress that is doomed to failure. The second impetus to move unreflectively from research to development is well-documented with respect to medical technology. A research program often creates a community of researchers that functions as an interest group promoting the development of the technology that they are investigating. Since the researchers are the experts and frequently hold out high hopes for a rosy future if their technology is developed, it can be very difficult for decision makers to resist their recommendations. In many cases the social and ethical issues created by the deployment of the technology are explored only after we are already committed to it, but by then it is too late."

It is difficult to know what drives research - are we looking into things the world really needs, or are we trying to find out things we think the world needs? From a corporate standpoint, research leads to the development of newer technologies, potentially (only potentially) less environmentally harmful than current ones, and often with perverse incentives of an increase in use of resources (as things become more efficient, people use more of them, negating any efficiency gains). At the same time, to remain "competitive" requires competitors to constantly "innovate," and get newer and newer products out before others can. Further, there is a sort of hegemony that advertising and consumption has on our society; there is very little longevity of interest in one particular thing, because the next thing is out before you can make full use of what you have already. This incentivises resource extraction and trash.

In all of this, corners can be cut everywhere, resulting in poor worker conditions and environmental harm. There are reasons why industrial production is done far away from where many of us choose to live. What is guaranteed currently, however, is that ethical considerations of product deployment - asking who is affected, positively and negatively, what is affected (nature, birds, water, air, archaeological sites, etc.), and how they are affected - are left to be determined later.