Framing The Climate Change Debate: A Multilevel Analysis

Abstract

The author constructs a classification of dilemmas in the debate on climate change. She notes that these dilemmas arise during a democratic political response to climate change. Given that climate change is one of the most significant challenges of the 21st century, it is necessary to analyse this phenomenon from as many research perspectives as possible. The comprehensiveness of climate change requires the simultaneous articulation of a policy response at three levels of analysis: individual, national, and a given international system. Although necessary, such an overarching and all-encompassing political approach is fraught with several dilemmas. The author intends to present the complexity of the political response to climate change by framing this debate through three dilemmas: ontological-epistemological, economic-ecological, and national-global. Thus, researchers and decision-makers who deal with individual aspects of climate change will be presented in one place, with theoretical and practical tensions manifested at three levels of analysis.