Avoiding Climate Change: “Agnostic Adaptation” and the Politics of Public Silence

Abstract

What does it mean to adapt to climate change without talking about climate change? The term agnostic adaptation has emerged to refer to actions that address climate change’s effects without acknowledging its existence or human causes. Although prevalent, agnostic adaptation has yet to be the focus of significant empirical research. Most studies of climate silence and denial examine the absence of action rather than its paradoxical presence. This article, by contrast, explores how action and silence coexist and even serve to reinforce each other. It draws on fieldwork in Staten Island, New York City’s most politically conservative and only predominantly white borough, where residents mobilized after Hurricane Sandy in favor of government buyouts of their damaged homes that would pay them to relocate rather than rebuild in place. The areas that received buyouts have been lauded from afar as exemplary sites of community-led climate adaptation in one of its most radical forms, managed retreat. On the ground, however, those who participated in the push for retreat were largely silent on the topic of climate change, which was not seen as politically enabling or efficacious to discuss. Agnostic adaptation minimized conflict, made for more tractable claims, and maintained relations of power but in so doing offered protection to only a select few. These findings point to the practical effects of climate silence as it exists in relation to climate talk, both of which share omissions, erasures, and forms of agnosticism that narrow the space for transformative action. Key Words: adaptation, climate change, denial, disaster, environmental politics.

适应气候变迁、却不谈论气候变迁意味着什麽？“不可知论的调适”措辞的浮现, 指涉在不承认气候变迁存在或其人类导因之下, 应对气候变迁效应的行动。尽管“不可知论的调适”相当盛行, 但却尚未成为显着的经验研究焦点。研究气候缄默与否认, 多半检视行动的缺乏, 而非其矛盾的存在。反之, 本文探讨行动与缄默如何同时存在, 甚至相互强化。本研究运用在纽约市史泰登岛这个在政治上最为保守、且唯一一个白人佔优势的自治市所进行的田野工作。该地居民在珊蒂飓风过后进行动员, 支持政府买断其损坏的房屋以偿付异地重新安置之费用, 而非就地进行重建。接受买断的地区, 被外界誉为由社区主导的最为激进的气候调适形式之一之案例——安排撤离。但实际上, 参与推动撤离的人们, 却大半对气候变迁的议题维持缄默, 并且在政治上无法视为具培力作用或有效而论之。不可知论的调适最小化冲突, 导致顺从的主张, 并维持权力关系, 但这麽做, 却仅为获选的少数提供保护。这些研究发现, 说明了其存在关乎气候讨论的气候缄默的实际效应, 两者共享忽略、抹除, 以及不可知论主义的形式, 因而窄化了转变行动的空间。 关键词：调适, 气候变迁, 否认, 灾害, 环境政治。

¿Qué significa adaptarse al cambio climático sin que se discuta sobre el mismo? Ha aparecido el término adaptación agnóstica para referirse a las acciones que enfrentan los efectos del cambio climático sin reconocer su existencia o las causas humanas del mismo. A pesar de su prevalencia, la adaptación agnóstica aún tiene que ser objeto de investigación empírica significativa. La mayoría de los estudios del soslayo y la denegación del problema climático examinan la falta de acción más que lo paradójico de su presencia. Por contraste, este artículo explora el modo como la acción y el silencio coexisten e incluso sirven para reforzarse el uno con el otro. El artículo se apoya en trabajo de campo realizado en Staten Island, el único sector predominantemente blanco y políticamente más conservador de la Ciudad de Nueva York, donde los residentes se movilizaron después del Huracán Sandy a favor del programa de adquisición de sus casas afectadas por parte del gobierno como mecanismo de relocalización en vez de reconstruir en el mismo sitio. Las áreas que se beneficiaron con adquisiciones por el gobierno han sido elogiadas desde lejos como sitios ejemplares de adaptación climática de orientación comunitaria a través de una de las alternativas más radicales, la retirada dirigida. En el terreno, sin embargo, quienes participaron en la presión por la retirada se mantuvieron en gran medida silenciosos sobre el tópico del cambio climático, que no fue visto como políticamente habilitante o conveniente para discutir. La adaptación agnóstica minimizó el conflicto, sirvió para hacer más manejables las reclamaciones y mantuvo las relaciones de poder, aunque al hacerlo brindó protección a tan solo una minoría selecta. Estos hallazgos puntualizan los efectos prácticos del silencio climático como se dan dentro de la discusión del clima, compartiendo omisiones, enmendaduras y formas de agnosticismo que estrechan el espacio para la acción transformadora.

Palabras clave:

• adaptación
• cambio climático
• denegación
• desastre
• política ambiental.

Acknowledgments

This article benefited immensely from the comments of three anonymous reviewers and Editor James McCarthy. I owe thanks to them and to a number of other colleagues and readers, including Daniel Aldana Cohen, Rebecca Elliott, Katherine Gottschalk, Dorothy Huey, Stephen King, Alexis Merdjanoff, Kasia Paprocki, John Lyon Paul, Caitlin Petre, Shelly Ronen, Ariel Schwartz, Raka Sen, and Elana Sulakshana, all of whom generously offered their feedback and ideas. I presented earlier versions of this article at Rising Waters: A Workshop on Urban Waterscapes hosted by the Penn Program in the Environmental Humanities and at annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association and American Sociological Association. My thanks to participants in these events, especially organizers Nikhil Anand, Bethany Wiggin, Sophie Bjork-James, and Kari Norgaard and discussant Adriana Petryna. Additional thanks to Jennifer Cassidento for her work throughout the review process, to Michael Rosch for his help transcribing interviews, and, as always, to the many interlocutors who shared their stories and insights with me over the course of this research. Mistakes are mine alone.

Notes

Notes

1 All names are pseudonyms.

2 In an apt illustration of this theory, the cover of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s eponymous magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, featured “IT’S GLOBAL WARMING, STUPID” in all caps on its first poststorm issue.

3 As J. L. Rice, Burke, and Heynen (2015) insightfully noted, “expert-only politics runs the risk of excluding the knowledge of individuals who do not prioritize scientific explanations, who in some cases might also be the most vulnerable. Insisting on ‘climate literacy’ might actually be a way of working on these communities rather than working with them” (260).

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this research was provided by a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship and by New York University’s Institute for Public Knowledge and Department of Media, Culture, and Communication. The writing was supported by a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. See https://shass.mit.edu/academics/graduate/mellon/postdoctoral-fellows

Notes on contributors

Liz Koslov

LIZ KOSLOV is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1656. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research explores questions of justice and the environment, the social dimensions of climate change, and the cultural and environmental politics of cities.