Leaking the IPCC: A question of responsibility?

Abstract

In August 2021, while the world was grappling with the release of the IPCC WGI report, a group of activist scientists called Scientist Rebellion leaked parts of the Working Group III contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) prior to intergovernmental approval. Although Scientist Rebellion are not the first to leak an IPCC report, they are the most vocal leaker with a particular political agenda: to generate disruptive climate action by curtailing the carefully orchestrated intergovernmental process of the IPCC. I take this case of science in activism involving the IPCC interface as an example to examine the increasingly intricate relationship between science, activism and responsibility. The salient sense of urgency around climate action, the growing prevalence of the climate crisis narrative in both public and scientific spheres, and the increased policy‐relevance of science‐policy interfaces put strong pressures on (climate) scientists that need to be disentangled to be understood without premature judgment. I show that the leak is symptomatic of the novel responsibility to act(ivism) scientists are increasingly confronted with and I highlight some of the tensions that come with this responsibility. Emphasizing the centrality of the question of responsibility in, and of, science, I discuss the (ir)responsibility of leaking IPCC draft materials. I end on a call for more interdisciplinary attentiveness to the nexus of science, activism and responsibility and the cases in which they become entangled. This article is categorized under: The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Climate Science and Social Movements The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Knowledge and Practice The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Climate Science and Decision Making

“We are not droids”– IPCC participants’ senses of responsibility and affective experiences across the production, assessment, communication and enactment of climate science

“…There also remains more work to be done to further empirically contextualise the relationship between science and responsibility in practice, especially regarding the impact of climate emotions as drivers for assuming responsibility for climate science as well as with respect to other (institutional) spaces. This work is of particular import in light of the increasing (peer-to-peer) responsibilisation of scientists which demands, as I have argued elsewhere, "ever more critical reflexivity" (Hartz 2023a;p. 5) about scientists' personal and professional responsibilities by the scientific community itself but also society at large.…”

“…A participant newer to the process criticised the IPCC's insistence on neutrality, however, arguing that "by staying neutral you are actually taking a position" (I26). But while there have been calls on climate scientists to halt IPCC assessments (Glavovic et al 2021) or leak from science-policy interfaces to compel action (Hartz 2023a), there was agreement among many interviewees that the IPCC's guiding principle remains key to fulfil its role. Nonetheless, interviewees raised questions regarding the future and purpose of the IPCC itself, including challenges to its WG structure and its turn towards solution-oriented assessments which could become "increasingly politically uncomfortable" (I58).…”

“…Aside from such cause-and-effect-centred approaches, broader theoretical and normative attention has been paid to responsibility of science across disciplines, including philosophy (Douglas 2003;Mitcham 2003), sociology (Mitroff 1974;Pellizzoni 2010), STS (Glerup and Horst 2014;Arnaldi and Bianchi 2016) as well as within the environmental and climate sciences themselves (Schmidt 2015;Donner 2017). As I have argued elsewhere, the growing understanding of how rapidly the climate around us is changing directs more and more attention and responsibility to those who bear the knowledge and evidence of climate change (Hartz 2023a). Mounting calls by scientists on scientists to fulfil their "professional responsibility" (Green 2020; see also Oreskes 2020;Capstick et al 2022;Gardner et al 2021) increasingly function as what I term a "peer-to-peer responsibilisation".…”

Three institutional pathways to envision the future of the IPCC

“…Note: The description of five institutional pillars is based on the relevant chapters (Ch. 3,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,17,20 and 21) in ref. [5].…”

“Beyond being analysts of doom”: scientists on the frontlines of climate action

“…In summer 2021 SR leaked the IPCC WG3 report (Hartz, 2022). The watering down of the report by policymakers before the final publication led to the second global rebellion in April 2022 (El Salto, 2022;Euronews, 2022;Scientific American, 2022).…”