Hi! Happy New Year! I am technically in an interlude between Season 1 and Season 2 of Conservation Realist, keeping very busy, but I find myself… temporarily… stuck. Trapped. [pans to cat on lap] Unable to move for the time being. Unclear for how long the situation will last. So I thought I’d take this moment to do one of the few things that came to mind as a somewhat productive use of this time, and share a response to a tweet that a friend shared on her Instagram stories. And I’m not really on X or Twitter, I’m not familiar with the “who’s who” on there, but this tweet is from Jason Hickel, who is a “Global inequality, political economy, and ecological economics” expert. And he’s got some really cool tweets on there. But I wanted to challenge the premise of this particular tweet, which is:
The climate crisis reveals that our civilization has never really been organized around science, contrary to the usual Enlightenment narrative. It is organized around capital. Science is embraced when it serves the interests of capital, and is often ignored when it does not.
I’m not going to quibble with the notion that science is embraced when it supports capitalism. Whatever, that’s fine. But I want to challenge the notion that a society structured around science (as we know it) is even something that’s desirable. I think we really privilege science - I mean, I have a science background - to be honest, I’m really sick of people being like, “Science! Science! Science! Science! Let’s listen to the science!”
Obviously, I think science is important. I think it is valuable. I think having a structured way to engage in inquiry, to learn more about the world around us, to create and use new knowledge is incredibly important. However, it’s not a complete way of managing humanity. I think science misses out on a lot of the really important and, for the moment, intangible values that humanity holds. So, I wouldn’t particularly care for a society structured around science.
This also embraces the notion that science is impartial and that it’s always correct, and of course that’s not true. Science reflects the power dynamics of the time, and who had the privilege in shaping the methods and the philosophies underlying the different scientific disciplines. And we’ve seen this in conservation, that certain types of knowledge, certain ways of knowing, certain means of acquiring and presenting that knowledge, are privileged - and that’s not always a good thing.
So, for my friends who are really die-hard science fans: cool, I get it! But keep in mind that there’s more to running a successful, equitable, compassionate society, and frankly, to running even a basic project, be it a conservation project or in some other field.
So… I appear to still be trapped… [pans to cat again].