Ecological Risk as a Social Risk. How “Real” Is the Climate Catastrophe?

Abstract

The necessity of dealing with risk undoubtedly accompanies society at every stage of its development and so it does today. The worldwide risk society is a proper denotation of today’s reality according to German sociologist U. Beck. The category describes the world of global threats, which source is civilization itself as well as scientific and technological progress. It is also a period in which the social consciousness of risk is fundamentally crystallized and in which the rigid distinction between the calculated (objective) risk and its (subjective) awareness is all the more blurred. One of the challenges of this reality is the issue of environmental change (ecological risk). The modern debate surrounding potential global warming, the importance attributed to the ecological security aspect and the number of actors involved in this issue, forces to reflect that climate change is not just a purely natural issue (just look at possible political, economic, and social costs of global warming).