Climate Change: From Science to Policy Backward and Forward

The chapter investigates the relationship between science and politics, focusing on the characteristics of this complex relationship in the debate regarding climate change. The thesis presented in the chapter aims to reassess the role of science concerning politics, given that the relationship between the two has often been misunderstood. Moving from the analysis of the different nature of politics and science, the author points out that it is an exclusive responsibility of politics to balance both the public and private interests of a specific community and that the principle of democracy prevents science from controlling politics. Moreover, the author highlights how politics has a duty towards the society to engage with the scientific community and to motivate, in terms of public interest, the decisions taken: to succeed, policies require a continuous dialogue with science and technology—meaning by “science” not only hard sciences but also social, economic, and legal sciences. In other words, the author’s thesis is that science should support the goals of politics but, at the same time, should not erase political negotiations and rules.