Climate Change, Capitalism, and the Challenge of Transdisciplinarity

Abstract

A new sense of urgency has grown among many scientists for policies to address climate change, resulting in unprecedented investments by scientists in public education and, in some cases, political activism. As climate scientists have investigated future climate scenarios—and potential social responses to environmental changes—they have become, ipso facto, social scientists. This article examines these changes to reflect on how they could reshape geography, a discipline that appears well positioned to advance transdisciplinary research. In light of the intellectual and political urgency of transdisciplinary climate research, why have we seen so little substantive collaboration across the science/social science divide? The answer, I argue, stems from differences between research in natural science, on one hand, and the social sciences and humanities, on the other. These problems need not cause paralysis, but to address them they must be understood. The article attends to this challenge by reflecting on Albert Einstein's arguments concerning science and capitalism.