Representing climate change: Dialogue about, and through, an expanded sense of scale

Abstract

This article explores the link between ‘scalar thinking’ and the quality of our collective dialogues about anthropogenic climate change. Climate must be thought because it can’t be experienced directly. Climate change is an idea we fill with content, both scientific and moral, cognitive and normative. The idea can catalyse profound thought, deep dialogue and well-considered collective action, but only when a broad ‘scalar sensitivity’ is operative. This article makes the case for scale as one of our most perspicuous lenses for seeing what's at stake in a climate-changed world. After commenting on the state of current dialogue about climate change, I remind readers what scale means in the English language. Thereafter, the scalar dimensions of climate change are highlighted. Scale emerges as a powerful ‘convening concept’ that can engender ‘fractal discourse’ about climate change of the sort we require. We need to think about scale beyond its obvious dimensions of space and time.