In asking this question the authors are not doubting the existence of environmental problems; rather they pointing out several things. Given the multiple factors at play in ecological issues it is difficult to understand every possible factor, creating uncertainties which can be exploited to refute entire issues (like climate change). What is considered a “problem” is based as much on social as on scientific factors in what problems are taken seriously and how they are perceived.
Framing problems as “global” issues that “we” face can ignore the varying ways different groups and societies contribute to problems and are affected by them. In deconstructing the Limits to Growth study funded by the Club of Rome in the 1970’s they point out that by looking at what might happen to the world as a whole the study obscured how this play out in rich vs. poor areas. They also point out the tendency to quantify data and place undue importance on measurements over action, something which continues today.
Framing problems as “global” implies that solutions will be global as well; conveniently this is usually seen to necessitate Western “experts”. It obscures the main culprits of the problems and fails to address the underlying issues; global climate change action, for example, often asks developing countries to save their rain forests, etc, rather than ask industrialized world to change their production habits.
I was skeptical of their question at first as just a matter of semantics but the authors bring up important points about how we look at environmental problems. These can be applied to food issues as well; we hear about “world hunger” even though the whole world is not starting. Framing problems like this often leads them to be seen as something ‘we’(ie the West) needs to solve while at the same time ignoring any acknowledgement of our own culpability.
- Taylor, Peter J. and Frederick H. Buttel. “How Do We Know We Have Global Environmental Problems?Science and the Globalization of Environmental Discourse” Reprinted from Geoforum, vol. 23, no. 3, Peter J. Taylor and Frederick H. Buttel, pp. 405–416.