The discursive blinkers of climate change: Energy transition as a wicked problem

Abstract

The energy transition, propagated as the flagship solution to climate change, is far more complex than replacing fossil energy with renewable energy. It is ambiguous, uncertain and often poorly understood or narrowly framed. In this sense, the energy transition resembles a ‘wicked problem’. The sensitizing concept of wicked problems sheds light on the discursive power in dominant problem-solution-framings calling into question the current international discourse on climate change and the ‘just transition’. Challenges of extractivist countries are ignored when the pathways to a low-carbon future are debated in international arenas. This reinforces a myriad of problems - besides climate change or the energy transition - such as crisis-deepening patterns of consumption and production, the notorious externalization of socio-environmental harms, and the seemingly unstoppable extractivist frontier. Under this problem-solution framing the elephant in the room, the so-called ‘imperial mode of living’, runs in danger of persisting in the new ‘green’ and low-carbon economy dooming a ‘just transition’ to fail.