Climate Change is a wicked problem

Jay Rosen has given an excellent account on climate change, why it is a wicked problem, and how journalists could cope with its coverage. This was delivered as keynote address to the 2nd UK Conference of Science Journalists, June 25, 2012 at The Royal Society, London.

Here are a few excerpts:

Wicked problems have these features: It is hard to say what the problem is, to define it clearly or to tell where it stops and starts. There is no “right” way to view the problem, no definitive formulation. There are many stakeholders, all with their own frames, which they tend to see as exclusively correct. Ask what the problem is and you will get a different answer from each. Someone can always say that the problem is just a symptom of another problem and that someone will not be wrong. The problem is inter-connected to a lot of other problems; pulling them apart is almost impossible. In a word: it’s a mess. #

But it gets worse. Every wicked problem is unique, so in a sense there is no prior art and solving one won’t help you with the others. No one has “the right to be wrong,” meaning enough legitimacy and stakeholder support to try things that will almost certainly fail, at first. Instead failure is savaged, and the trier is deemed unsuitable for another try. The problem keeps changing on us. It is never definitely resolved. Instead, we just run out of patience, or time, or money, or political will. It’s not possible to understand the problem first, then solve it. Rather, attempts to solve it reveal further dimensions of the problem. (Which is the secret of success for people who are “good” at wicked problems.)

Know any problems like that? Of course you do. Climate change! What could be more inter-connected than it? How the hell do we define it? Is it the burning of fossil fuels? Is it modernization? Capitalism? Externalities? The whole system of states? Man’s false dominion over nature? Someone can always say that climate change is just a symptom of another problem– our entire way of life, maybe — and he or she would not be wrong. We’ve never solved anything like it before, so there’s no prior art. Stakeholders: everyone on the planet, every nation, every company.