Rethinking Climate Change Research

Book excerpt: The problems and debates surrounding climate change possess closely intertwined social and scientific aspects. This book highlights the importance of researching climate change through a multi-disciplinary approach; namely through cultural studies, communication studies, and clean-technology studies. These three dimensions taken together have the ability to constitute a positive agenda for climate change science in its broader understanding. To cope with the climate change challenge, not only do we need new energy efficient technologies, other ways of living, and new ways to communicate but we especially need new ways to start thinking about climate change across disciplines and backgrounds. We need to begin thinking across engineering, cultural science and communication in order to create innovative solutions, as well as to generate optimistic and progressive narratives about the future. Accentuating these 'softer' scientific disciplines, their overlaps, and the positive discourses they can create, this book provides some more profoundly researched themes pertaining to climate change and by that, strengthening the analytical as well as the integrative approaches toward the fundamental questions at stake.