Re-Thinking the SES Aspects of ‘Climate Change’ As a Process of Pragmatic Utopianism in Action

Abstract

Starting from the avenues indicated for re-conceptualising possible policy directions to deal with coming climate change at the end of the authors’ recently published study (Gilder and Pal, 2015), this paper further considers the sociological implications of Vadineanu’s (2001) Socio-Economic System (SES) level model (which articulates relationships among what he terms as “natural capital” and: A. Physical capital; B. Social capital; C. Cultural capital; D. Man-dominated components of the Natural capital; and, E. Natural and semi-natural components of the Natural capital) and the practical viability of his advanced Decision Support System (DSS) to foster political decisions supporting sustainable development. These sociological implications will unpacked first via a consideration of Korzybski’s (1951)“the map is not the territory” semantic concept, and then via Golay’s (2008) expanded notion that the socio-psychological processes of human constructivism articulated by Korzybski makes even the so-called “territory” of the science of climate change “not the territory” of political policies. The paper posits that only by embracing the (anti)-political stance of practical utopianism as posited by US social thinker Goodman (1960) can a way out of the “built-in” socio-political dilemmas of climate change policy silos be (possibly) envisioned.