This op-ed, written by Prof. Dario Mantovani , a professor at the Collège de France and a legal historian, introduces the overall aim of the lecture series “Reading the IPCC Reports to Understand the World Ahead, ” for which he serves as the scientific organizer. In particular, he examines the actual normative power of these reports, even though they are intended to be purely descriptive, not prescriptive.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, better known as the IPCC, is tasked with presenting, in each of its multi-year assessment cycles, “the state of the latest scientific knowledge on climate change.”
The IPCC was established in 1988 by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization. It publishes its findings in a series of reports focusing on the physical causes of climate change, its impacts on the environment and society, and possible pathways to mitigate climate change and adapt to its effects. The most recent reports, part of the Sixth Assessment Cycle, were released between 2021 and March 2023.
Over the years, the IPCC’s scientific reports have gained increasing authority as a benchmark for international climate negotiations. At the local level, they are essential for alerting policymakers and civil society and, as we will see later, are also beginning to “set a precedent.” The IPCC thus stands as an almost unprecedented example of the importance of science in shaping informed public opinion and guiding political and judicial institutions. For these reasons, we felt it appropriate to dedicate a series of lectures to these reports as part of the Collège de France’s “Avenir Commun Durable” initiative, drawing not only on experts in environmental sciences but also in the social sciences.
Reading the IPCC reports, in fact, sometimes gives the impression—especially for legal historians—of delving back into Plato’s The Republic or Cicero’s Laws, in the sense that we find ourselves grappling with what resembles a vision for society: what one might also call a utopia—that is, a reasoned hope for a more desirable world to come. Hence the value in making these reports themselves the subject of inquiry.
Let’s state from the outset what the lecture series “Reading the IPCC Reports to Understand the World Ahead” is not. It is not intended to provide an abstract of the content of the IPCC reports or of the key findings scattered throughout the thousands of pages that make up these documents. Good summaries of this kind are available elsewhere, and, moreover, the IPCC itself provides them, especially “for policymakers.” Nor will this be a critique or an unquestioning acceptance of the IPCC’s work.
The objective of these readings is different, and it is clear: to examine the method by which the reports are produced, in search of their foundations. Scientific foundations, of course, but above all ideological, political, economic, and legal ones. Collectively, drawing on the expertise of our speakers, we aim to bring to light the underlying values of these reports. In short, this is both an epistemological approach and an investigation into the relationship between science, politics, and law.
To clarify the reasons that led me, as a legal historian, to organize this series of lectures, I will summarize them in three questions. First: the IPCC is committed to remaining politically neutral; in practice, given that it addresses the future of our societies and their operating mechanisms, can this professed neutrality hold up? Second: the IPCC claims to limit itself to descriptions and never to issue prescriptions; yet, isn’t the authority its reports enjoy conferring upon them a normative dynamic—one that is increasingly prescriptive—raising questions about the legitimacy of this panel of experts? Finally: Does the IPCC’s work not contribute to a new shift in perspective regarding the relationship our societies have with time? Let’s begin with this last question.
The IPCC reports and our relationship to time.
While in antiquity—a rather conservative era—it was the past that shed light on the other dimensions of time, it is generally considered that in modernity, following the Enlightenment, it is the horizon of expectation that takes center stage; time flows toward the future. Hence the modern belief in the idea of “progress” and a happy future outcome. After 1989, we witnessed a new shift in perspective: we found ourselves confronted with what François Hartog called “presentism,” characterized by “a massive, invasive, omnipresent present that has no horizon other than itself .” Everything is transforming at an accelerated pace, and everything is subsumed into an ever-elusive present. Everything seems to lack any discernible purpose or real finality.
Over the past decade, however, a new shift seems to be taking place, and the IPCC reports—with their scenarios and their timeframes extending to the year 2100—appear to have provided a significant impetus for this change.
In the wake of its work—whose scenarios are being translated into laws, international agreements, or policy directives—the deadlines are piling up: by 2030, the goal is to adapt European Union policies to achieve a 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (“Fit for 55”); then net-zero emissions will be achieved by 2050. China, for its part, has announced its goal of carbon neutrality by 2060. In 2024, no diesel vehicles will (probably) be allowed to drive in Paris’s Low-Emission Zone; in 2030, it will be the turn of gasoline-powered cars…
What can we make of all these dates? Aren’t these expectations once again dominating public discourse? Aren’t they in the process of shaping a new vision for society? And a vision of unprecedented scope, in a style we thought belonged to the bygone era of “central planning.” This is undoubtedly the first time we’ve seen a vision take shape around climate concerns that involves virtually the entire international community. Utopia seems to be reborn—a utopia rooted in knowledge, survival, and well-being, and thus in the common good.
Equity, without democracy?
Let’s turn to our second point of inquiry. The IPCC proposes, in its own words, a science that is neutral with regard to political choices, limiting itself to describing and predicting problems and assessing the impacts of various possible options. Can we believe in the absolute axiological neutrality of the scenarios outlined by the IPCC—toward which our societies are heading—a neutrality with respect to values? Isn’t the description of courses of action and adaptation, and their possible consequences, inherently a political act?
This is not merely a hypothesis. The IPCC itself has stated on several occasions that the concept of “equity” is the cornerstone upon which the global community must build to achieve a successful ecological transition. In its own words, “equity, inclusion, and just transitions are essential for making progress on adaptation and for deepening societal ambitions for accelerated mitigation.” Equity and inclusion, then, and a concept such as “just transition”—developed in the 1980s by American labor unions—which calls for the energy transition to take place “by creating opportunities for decent work and leaving no one behind.” But among these keywords, the word “democracy” is almost never—or very rarely—found in IPCC reports. Why? So while some concepts are present, others are absent. And how can we conceive of global governance—as the IPCC advocates to address problems that are themselves global—within a context of growing geopolitical tensions? Based on what shared values?
Reports without power, yet authoritative.
Reading the IPCC reports through the lens of the societal model they imply becomes even more interesting—not only from the perspective of citizens but also of social scientists—when we consider that the data contained in the reports are increasingly being treated as rules directly applied by national courts. This is our third question. The IPCC won’t tell you what to do, but simply that something must be done and that there is a range of possible measures you could adopt. But even though it strictly limits itself to descriptions and never issues prescriptions (the IPCC would not have the authority to do so), the growing authority that its reports rightly enjoy is prompting other social actors to use the IPCC’s descriptions in a prescriptive manner, transforming them into standards. For example, in the Netherlands, in the case of Milieudefensie v. Royal Dutch Shell (2021), the court in The Hague ordered Shell to reduce its emissions by 45% by 2030. By setting this benchmark, the court enshrined in law the scenarios outlined in the IPCC reports, which, according to the Dutch court, represent “a universally endorsed and accepted standard that protects the common interest in preventing dangerous climate change.”
Although the IPCC did not issue this ruling, its authority was sufficient to elevate one of its descriptions to the status of a standard. The value of identifying the underlying principles of the IPCC reports soon becomes apparent.
Reading these reports together offers a valuable opportunity to rethink the connections between knowledge, public opinion, politics, history, and law.
