Mike Hulme is Professor of Human Geography, Chair of the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was previously Professor of Climatology and Culture at King’s College London (2013-2017) and Climatologist at the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA). Professor Hulme served on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1995 to 2001 and contributed to the IPCC Second and Third Assessment Reports, which won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. The IPCC highly appreciated the work of Professor Hulme with a personal certificate recognizing his contribution to this organization.

Professor Mike Hulme has published an impressive number of articles and books. Among the latter, I quote: Why we disagree on climate change(Cambridge University Press, 2009), Weathering: Cultures of climate (SAGE, 2017), Reducing the Future to Climate: A History of Climate Determinism and Reductionism (Osiris, 2011), Can science fix climate change? The Case Against Climate Engineering (Politics, 2014). He edited and was a co-editor of the book Climate of the British Isles: present, past and future (Routledge, 1997); Climate policy options after 2012: European strategy, technology and adaptation after Kyoto (Routledge, 2005), Making climate change work for us: European perspectives on adaptation and mitigation strategies (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Published in 2013 Exploring Climate Change Through Science and Society: An Anthology of Essays, Interviews, and Speeches by Mike Hulme (Routledge), which brings together many of his most popular works on climate change since the late 1980s. In recent years he has edited/co-edited volumes Contemporary Climate Change Debates: A Student’s Guide (Routledge, 2020) and A critical appraisal of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Also as the author published Climate change – Key ideas in geography(Routledge, 2021) and Climate change is not all (Politics, 2023).

From the last book, I have selected the last chapter for Romanian readers, which I have translated with the permission of the author and under license for publication from Polity Publishing. I would like to note that the scientific work of Professor Mike Hulme is only indirectly known in Romania. Since 2016, I have mentioned his work in many of my articles on Contributors.ro, as well as in books The Awkward Idea Twister – (Almost) Politically Incorrect Essays (Integral Publishing House, 2019), Climate change is a (sometimes) politically incorrect guide (Integral Publishing House, 2020) and Climate change torn between myth and fact (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021). We have also included references to Professor Hulme’s work in two forthcoming books: A voice in the wilderness? A changing climate, from fear to facts (Editura Trei, 2024) respectively A changing climate, from fear to facts (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2024). – Konstantin Cranganu

A little over 60 years ago, in February 1962, the American philosopher Abraham Kaplan was invited to deliver the keynote address at the end of a three-day conference of the American Educational Research Association. It took place in his hometown of Los Angeles and, as it was later reported, “the culmination of a three-day meeting … was Kaplan’s comment on the choice of research methods.”[1]

Kaplan was concerned that scientists should be careful in choosing their methods to investigate research problems. The fact that certain methods are readily available or that a scientist happens to be familiar with a particular method is no guarantee that the chosen method will be suitable for the problem at hand. He later formulated his opinion as Kaplan’s Law of the Tool: “Give a little boy a hammer and he will see that everything he meets needs to be beaten.” Further developing this law, Kaplan commented, “We tend to frame our problems in such a way that it seems that solving those problems requires exactly what we already have at hand.”

The idea, which Kaplan formulated in 1962, captured the imagination of many listeners. Others picked up his idea and began to generalize it. One of them wrote of the “tendency to fit the work to the tools rather than fit the tools to the work,” while psychologist Abraham Maslow summarized Kaplan’s warning this way: “I think it’s tempting if the only tool you have is a hammer, be to everything”. like a nail’.[2] The aphorism is now commonplace, almost commonplace. Even if you put it in its most reductive form – “Think of a hammer and nails” – you can often get the point across.

I believe that climatology has some similarities to the behavior that Kaplan’s instrument law refers to. Climateism approaches the world in such a way that every problem seems to be the result of permanent human-caused climate change. If so, the solution to these problems seems to be to stop climate change. This actually reverses Kaplan’s law. “If everything looks like a nail, then we need a hammer.” If everything seems to be the result of climate change, then obviously what we need to do is stop climate change. The “climate hammer” then boils down to three interrelated ambitions: forecasting the future climate with ever greater accuracy; elimination of fossil fuels; achieving a society with zero emissions.

But these are very limited tools to deal with the world’s current social, development and environmental problems. Take, for example, the Mekong Delta in Southeast Asia. The Delta is home to 17 million people and produces nearly 10% of the world’s rice. But on average it is only one meter above sea level and is slowly deepening. A climatologist will approach this challenge through the lens of climate and sea level change that the region faces. Of course, the climate of the region is constantly changing. Sea levels are rising, with a rise of 30 to 70 cm expected this century. For climatologists, the imperative to ensure the Delta’s resilience would be to halt the pace of global climate change by dramatically reducing global carbon dioxide and other emissions and improving adaptation to projected climate change.

But this is wrong. The problems Delta faces are not a nail waiting to be hammered. The problems are not caused primarily and exclusively by climate change. The construction of dams rids the delta of sediment. Road mining removes another 54 megatons of sand from the Delta each year. In addition, agricultural intensification and flood control (for rice paddies) have replaced natural waterways and mangroves with dams and aquaculture. These problems are compounded by the pumping of groundwater for urban and agricultural use and the spiral blocking of floods, which leads to the construction of more dams, which, by strengthening river channels, lead to more floods.[3]

Thus, the solutions to the delta problem are multiple and require multiple tools. Yes, sea levels are rising and the climate is changing, but some of the necessary solutions stem from the sledgehammer of climate change. The Mekong Delta is a complex regional socio-ecological system that requires a variety of carefully designed interventions to ensure its sustainability. For example, the construction of high impact dams should still be stopped; sediments must be directed through or around existing dams; it is necessary to gradually stop the development of channel sands; agriculture in the Delta must be transformed; it is necessary to maintain the connectivity of the floodplain; nature-based coastal protection should be encouraged, for example through the development of mangrove forests. The tools in the toolbox should be diverse and used locally and in context.

If we move to a completely different part of the world, to the arctic zone, we will see the same danger of seeing a nail, because we have a hammer. The challenges of today’s life in the “frozen north” are many. The issues that dominate the discussions among the inhabitants of the Arctic themselves are related to the life experience of health and the provision of medical care; high rate of suicides and substance abuse; low level of education; economic feasibility; culture and language support; food safety; impact of extractive industries; and daily necessities of life in remote areas with extreme climates. As a group of Inuit people and researchers explains, if we focus on Arctic climate change—change that is clearly happening—we ignore many pressing and troubling things:

An exaggerated focus on climate alone produces certain agendas for improvement, namely the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by Northern Hemisphere countries and corporations, rather than addressing the multiple and pervasive problems of health, poverty, education, economic viability, cultural viability and equity.[4]

For the people of the Arctic, like the people of the Mekong Delta, climate change is only one of the many challenges they face. Using the climate sledgehammer to address these challenges can be seen as a form of advanced colonialism: “Focusing on research primarily related to sea ice and climate change can effectively obscure… community impacts, responses, meanings, policies, and even hydrological processes.”[5] A more sensitive definition of the many local and regional problems facing communities around the world decentralizes… –

Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro