Eleven years ago, on this day, May 23, 2012, there was an interesting paper published about “wicked problems” and super wicked problems.
2012 Overcoming the tragedy of super wicked problems: constraining our future selves to ameliorate global climate change published on 23 May 2012
Most policy-relevant work on climate change in the social sciences either analyzes costs and benefits of particular policy options against important but often narrow sets of objectives or attempts to explain past successes or failures. We argue that an ‘‘applied forward reasoning’’ approach is better suited for social scientists seeking to address climate change, which we characterize as a ‘‘super wicked’’ problem comprising four key features: time is running out; those who cause the problem also seek to provide a solution; the central authority needed to address it is weak or non-existent; and, partly as a result, policy responses discount the future irrationally. These four features combine to create a policy-making ‘‘tragedy’’ where traditional analytical techniques are ill equipped to identify solutions, even when it is well recognized that actions must take place soon to avoid catastrophic future impacts.
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11077-012-9151-0.pdf?pdf=button
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 396.9ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that we have known about so-called wicked problems for 50 years. And the idea of super wicked problems has been around for thirty.
Climate change is a super wicked problem par excellence, and this was especially obvious in the aftermath of the Copenhagen fiasco, which had occurred in December 2009. And it was not at this point at all clear that the UNFCCC caravan could have its wheels put back on in any meaningful sense.
What I think we can learn from this
It’s super-wicked problems all the way down… We kept punching the tar baby, and now it’s all over but the dying.
What happened next
We didn’t even acknowledge that these are super-wicked problems, let alone take actions to roll with the punches…
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.