Climate Science as Worldview: Constitution of the Planetary General Intellect

Climate science is a major driver of contemporary politics. Yet there seems to be no critical sociohistorical theory that adequately explains its emergence. This article offers a concrete, archivally based historical account of this transformation of the natural sciences, using the concepts of “shearing pressure” (Moishe Postone) and “worldview” (Lucien Goldmann, Jean Piaget, and Rolando García). Climate science is shown to be an asynchronous outcome of the totality of social conflicts of the 1960s–70s, most prominently the antiwar movement. Climate science, in this era, profoundly transformed the previous Cold War configuration of science, culminating in the constitution of a “planetary general intellect.” Three scientists appear prominently in this story: Edward Teller, as the bearer of the old worldview, and Jule Charney and Rolando García, as agents of the new one.