Introduction: Climate Change, Cosmopolitanism, and Media Politics

Abstract

The four papers shown in this special section have been chosen out of the 20 papers presented in an international conference on the overall topic of Change and Risk Society: New Trends of Megacity Transformation held at Seoul National University from July 9-11, 2014, with Professor Ulrich Beck who delivered a keynote public lecture Emancipatory Catastrophism: What does it mean to Climate Change and Risk Society at Press Center in the downtown of Seoul in the afternoon of July 8, 2014.Beck's concept of global risk society starts from the recognition that modernization has produced new forms of risks that cannot avoid with advanced technology development. Modernization became a root cause of modern risks which are deeply embedded in modern society itself. In particular, global ecological risks threaten the survival of humanity. Perhaps, one of the most critical type of such global risks is climate change, a representative cross-boundary and inter-generational environmental problem. Material growth of the modern society has boosted by fossil fuel combustion, leading to climate disruption. Another representative global risk is driven by radioactive disaster. The Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 has clearly demonstrated how vulnerable the nuclear power plant system is and how globally dangerous the leakage of radiation is once it breaks out. Even though the nuclear damages depends on the distance from the source and direction of the wind, no country cannot be free since we all share air and ocean, as in the case of climate change. As long as we live on this planet, there is no way to escape from these global risks. We are locked in this shared ecological condition.Within this background, however, Beck raised two points decisively in his Seoul public address. First, he made a sharp confrontation with all kinds of pessimistic, apocalyptic outlooks of climate change and defended a European tradition of critical theory by advancing an interesting claim that climate change tends to produce emancipatory consequences on politics, social movements, human action and norms. Second, while departing from the apocalyptic inclination of climate catastrophism, he also made a sharp confrontation with a technologically oriented, top-down, an elite-centered approach to climate change, in the form of scientific solution and emancipation, and instead defended a practical, bottom-up, and action-theoretical approach to emancipation.There are numerous examples of international consultation aiming at a technological solution of climate change. For example, the 20th Conference of Parties (COP-20) of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was held in Lima, Peru in December 2014. Delegates from 196 countries just managed to reach a new global climate change agreement, called Call for Climate Action. The agreement requires every nation in the world to commit itself to cutting planet-warming greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with no divide between developed countries and developing countries in terms of GHG emissions reduction obligation. However, this agreement has to be signed by world leaders in Paris next year in COP-21. Every nation is required to submit a detailed domestic policy plan which will be published on the United Nations website for transparency and accountability. As we know, scientists have argued 2°C increase above the pre-industrial level is dangerous. The global society already reached agreement not to exceed the tipping point at COP-15 held in Copenhagen in 2009. Could we then be rescued from emerging and eminent climate risk through aggressive cooperation? Even though the Lima Accord lays the foundation for a possible agreement in Paris, unresolved questions and huge divisions among countries still remain.It is here that Beck intervenes decisively. Indeed, climate change has become the most challenging global risk in the 21st century. It is experimenting human survival on this planet. …